Leahy T. History of modern psychology

Behaviorism

The most important categories of behaviorism are stimulus, which refers to any impact on the body from the environment, including this current situation, reaction And reinforcement, which for a person can also be the verbal or emotional reaction of people around him. Subjective experiences are not denied in modern behaviorism, but are placed in a position subordinate to these influences.

In the second half of the 20th century, behaviorism was replaced by cognitive psychology, which has dominated psychological science ever since. However, many ideas of behaviorism are still used in certain areas of psychology and psychotherapy.

Story

One of the pioneers of the behaviorist movement was Edward Thorndike. He himself called himself not a behaviorist, but a “connectionist” (from the English “connection” - connection).

That intelligence is associative in nature has been known since the time of Hobbes. The fact that intelligence ensures the successful adaptation of an animal to its environment became generally accepted after Spencer. But for the first time, it was Thorndike's experiments that showed that the nature of the intellect and its function can be studied and assessed without recourse to ideas or other phenomena of consciousness. Association no longer meant a connection between ideas or between ideas and movements, as in previous associative theories, but between movements and situations.

The entire learning process was described in objective terms. Thorndike used Wen's idea of ​​"trial and error" as a regulating principle of behavior. The choice of this beginning had deep methodological reasons. It marked a reorientation of psychological thought towards a new way of deterministically explaining its objects. Although Darwin did not specifically emphasize the role of “trial and error,” this concept undoubtedly constituted one of the premises of his theory of evolution. Since possible ways of responding to constantly changing environmental conditions cannot be foreseen in advance in the structure and modes of behavior of the organism, the coordination of this behavior with the environment is realized only on a probabilistic basis.

The teaching of evolution required the introduction of a probabilistic factor, acting with the same immutability as mechanical causation. Probability could no longer be regarded as a subjective concept (the result of ignorance of causes, according to Spinoza). The principle of “trial, error and accidental success” explains, according to Thorndike, the acquisition of new forms of behavior by living beings at all levels of development. The advantage of this principle is quite obvious when compared with the traditional (mechanical) reflex circuit. Reflex (in its pre-Sechenov understanding) meant a fixed action, the course of which is determined by methods that were also strictly fixed in the nervous system. It was impossible to explain with this concept the adaptability of the body's reactions and its learning ability.

Thorndike took as the initial moment of a motor act not an external impulse that sets into motion a bodily machine with pre-prepared methods of response, but a problem situation, that is, such external conditions for adaptation to which the body does not have a ready-made formula for a motor response, but is forced to build it through its own efforts. So, the connection “situation - reaction”, in contrast to the reflex (in its only mechanistic interpretation known to Thorndike), was characterized by the following features: 1) the starting point is a problem situation; 2) the body resists it as a whole; 3) he actively acts in search of choice and 4) he learns through exercise.

The progressiveness of Thorndike's approach in comparison with the approach of Dewey and other Chicagoans is obvious, because they accepted the conscious pursuit of a goal not as a phenomenon that needs explanation, but as a causal principle. But Thorndike, having eliminated the conscious desire for a goal, retained the idea of ​​active actions of the organism, the meaning of which is to solve a problem in order to adapt to the environment.

Thorndike's works would not have had pioneering significance for psychology if they had not discovered new, strictly psychological laws. But no less clearly is the limitation of behaviorist schemes in terms of explaining human behavior. The regulation of human behavior is carried out according to a different type than was imagined by Thorndike and all subsequent supporters of the so-called objective psychology, who considered the laws of learning to be the same for humans and other living beings. This approach gave rise to a new form of reductionism. The patterns of behavior inherent in humans, which have a socio-historical basis, were reduced to the biological level of determination, and thus the opportunity to study these patterns in adequate scientific concepts was lost.

Thorndike, more than anyone else, prepared the emergence of behaviorism. At the same time, as noted, he did not consider himself a behaviorist; in his explanations of learning processes, he used concepts that later behaviorism demanded to be expelled from psychology. These were concepts related, firstly, to the sphere of the psyche in its traditional understanding (in particular, the concepts of the states of satisfaction and discomfort experienced by the body during the formation of connections between motor reactions and external situations), and secondly, to neurophysiology (in particular, "law of readiness", which, according to Thorndike, involves a change in the ability to conduct impulses). Behaviorist theory prohibited the behavior researcher from addressing both what the subject experiences and physiological factors.

The theoretical leader of behaviorism was John Brodes Watson. His scientific biography is instructive in the sense that it shows how the development of an individual researcher reflects the influences that determined the development of the main ideas of the movement as a whole.

The motto of behaviorism was the concept of behavior as an objectively observable system of reactions of the body to external and internal stimuli. This concept originated in Russian science in the works of I. M. Sechenov, I. P. Pavlov and V. M. Bekhterev. They proved that the area of ​​mental activity is not limited to the phenomena of the subject’s consciousness, cognizable through internal observation of them (introspection), because with such an interpretation of the psyche, the splitting of the organism into soul (consciousness) and body (organism as a material system) is inevitable. As a result, consciousness became disconnected from external reality and became isolated in the circle of its own phenomena (experiences), placing it outside the real connection of earthly things and involvement in the course of bodily processes. Having rejected such a point of view, Russian researchers came up with an innovative method of studying the relationship of an entire organism with the environment, relying on objective methods, while interpreting the organism itself in the unity of its external (including motor) and internal (including subjective) manifestations. This approach outlined the prospect for revealing the factors of interaction between the whole organism and the environment and the reasons on which the dynamics of this interaction depend. It was assumed that knowledge of the causes would allow psychology to realize the ideal of other exact sciences with their motto “prediction and control.”

This fundamentally new view met the needs of the time. The old subjective psychology was everywhere revealing its inconsistency. This was clearly demonstrated by experiments on animals, which were the main object of research by American psychologists. Speculation about what happens in the minds of animals when they perform various experimental tasks turned out to be fruitless. Watson became convinced that observations of states of consciousness were as little useful to a psychologist as to a physicist. Only by abandoning these internal observations, he insisted, would psychology become an accurate and objective science. In Watson's understanding, thinking is nothing more than mental speech.

Influenced by positivism, Watson argued that only what can be directly observed is real. Therefore, according to his plan, all behavior should be explained from the relationships between the directly observable effects of physical stimuli on the organism and its also directly observable responses (reactions). Hence Watson’s main formula, adopted by behaviorism: “stimulus-response” (S-R). From this it was clear that the processes that occur between the members of this formula - be it physiological (nervous), be it mental - psychology must eliminate from its hypotheses and explanations. Since various forms of bodily reactions were recognized as the only real ones in behavior, Watson replaced all traditional ideas about mental phenomena with their motor equivalents.

The dependence of various mental functions on motor activity was firmly established in those years by experimental psychology. This concerned, for example, the dependence of visual perception on the movements of the eye muscles, emotions on bodily changes, thinking on the speech apparatus, and so on.

Watson used these facts as evidence that objective muscular processes can be a worthy replacement for subjective mental acts. Based on this premise, he explained the development of mental activity. It was argued that man thinks with his muscles. A child’s speech arises from disordered sounds. When adults connect a specific object to a sound, that object becomes the meaning of the word. Gradually, the child’s external speech turns into a whisper, and then he begins to pronounce the word to himself. Such inner speech (inaudible vocalization) is nothing more than thinking.

All reactions, both intellectual and emotional, can, according to Watson, be controlled. Mental development comes down to learning, that is, to any acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities - not only specially formed, but also arising spontaneously. From this point of view, learning is a broader concept than teaching, since it also includes knowledge purposefully formed during training. Thus, research into the development of the psyche comes down to the study of the formation of behavior, the connections between stimuli and the reactions that arise on their basis (S-R).

Watson experimentally proved that it is possible to form a fear reaction to a neutral stimulus. In his experiments, children were shown a rabbit, which they picked up and wanted to stroke, but at that moment they received an electric shock. The child fearfully threw the rabbit and began to cry. The experiment was repeated, and the third or fourth time the appearance of a rabbit, even in the distance, caused fear in most children. After this negative emotion was consolidated, Watson tried once again to change the emotional attitude of the children, forming in them an interest and love for the rabbit. In this case, the child was shown a rabbit while eating a delicious meal. At first, the children stopped eating and started crying. But since the rabbit did not approach them, remaining at the end of the room, and delicious food (chocolate or ice cream) was nearby, the child calmed down. After the children stopped crying when the rabbit appeared at the end of the room, the experimenter moved it closer and closer to the child, while adding tasty things to his plate. Gradually, the children stopped paying attention to the rabbit and in the end they calmly reacted when it was already near their plate, and even picked it up and tried to feed it. Thus, Watson argued, emotional behavior can be controlled.

The principle of behavior control gained wide popularity in American psychology after the work of Watson. Watson's concept (like all behaviorism) began to be called “psychology without the psyche.” This assessment was based on the opinion that mental phenomena include only the evidence of the subject himself about what he considers to be happening in his mind during “internal observation.” However, the area of ​​the psyche is much wider and deeper than what is directly conscious. It also includes the actions of a person, his behavioral acts, his actions. Watson's merit is that he expanded the sphere of the psyche to include the bodily actions of animals and humans. But he achieved this at a high price, rejecting as a subject of science the enormous riches of the psyche, irreducible to externally observable behavior.

Behaviorism did not adequately reflect the need to expand the subject of psychological research, put forward by the logic of the development of scientific knowledge. Behaviorism acted as the antipode of the subjective (introspective) concept, which reduced mental life to “facts of consciousness” and believed that beyond these facts lies a world alien to psychology. Critics of behaviorism later accused its supporters of being influenced by its version of consciousness in their opposition to introspective psychology. Having accepted this version as unshakable, they believed that it could either be accepted or rejected, but not transformed. Instead of looking at consciousness in a new way, they preferred to do away with it altogether.

This criticism is fair, but insufficient for understanding the epistemological roots of behaviorism. Even if we return to consciousness its object-shaped content, which in introspectionism turned into ghostly “subjective phenomena,” then even then it is impossible to explain either the structure of real action or its determination. No matter how closely the action and the image are related to each other, they cannot be reduced to one another. The irreducibility of action to its object-shaped components was the real feature of behavior that appeared exaggeratedly in the behaviorist scheme.

Watson became the most popular leader of the behaviorist movement. But one researcher, no matter how bright he may be, is powerless to create a scientific direction.

Among Watson's associates in the crusade against consciousness, prominent experimentalists William Hunter (1886-1954) and Carl Spencer Lashley (1890-1958) stood out. The former invented an experimental design in 1914 to study a reaction he called delayed. For example, the monkey was given the opportunity to see which of two boxes contained a banana. Then a screen was placed between it and the boxes, which was removed after a few seconds. She successfully solved this problem, proving that animals are already capable of a delayed, and not just an immediate reaction to a stimulus.

Watson's student was Carl Lashley, who worked at the University of Chicago and Harvard, and then at the Yerkes Laboratory for the Study of Primates. He, like other behaviorists, believed that consciousness is irreducibly reducible to the bodily activities of the organism. Lashley's well-known experiments on studying the brain mechanisms of behavior were based on the following scheme: an animal developed a skill, and then various parts of the brain were removed in order to find out whether this skill depended on them. As a result, Lashley came to the conclusion that the brain functions as a whole and its various parts are equipotential, that is, equivalent, and therefore can successfully replace each other.

All behaviorists were united by the conviction that the concept of consciousness is futile and that it was necessary to do away with “mentalism.” But unity in the face of a common enemy - the introspective concept - was lost when solving specific scientific problems.

Both in experimental work and at the level of theory in psychology, changes were made that led to the transformation of behaviorism. Watson's system of ideas in the 1930s was no longer the only version of behaviorism.

The collapse of the original behaviorist program indicated the weakness of its categorical “core.” The category of action, one-sidedly interpreted in this program, could not be successfully developed by reducing the image and motive. Without them, the action itself lost its real flesh. Watson's image of events and situations, towards which action is always oriented, turned out to be relegated to the level of physical stimuli. The motivation factor was either rejected altogether or appeared in the form of several primitive affects (such as fear), which Watson was forced to turn to in order to explain the conditioned reflex regulation of emotional behavior. Attempts to include the categories of image, motive and psychosocial attitude into the original behaviorist program led to its new version - neobehaviorism.

1960s

The development of behaviorism in the 60s of the 20th century is associated with the name of Skinner. The American researcher can be attributed to the movement of radical behaviorism. Skinner rejected mental mechanisms and believed that the technique of developing a conditioned reflex, which consists in strengthening or weakening behavior in connection with the presence or absence of reward or punishment, could explain all forms of human behavior. This approach was used by an American researcher to explain forms of behavior of a wide variety of complexity, from the learning process to social behavior.

Methods

Behaviorists have used two main methodological approaches to study behavior: observation in laboratory, artificially created and controlled conditions, and observation in the natural environment.

Behaviorists conducted most of their experiments on animals, then the establishment of patterns of reactions in response to environmental influences was transferred to humans. Behaviorism shifted the focus of experimental psychology from the study of human behavior to the study of animal behavior. Experiments with animals allowed better research control over the connections between the environment and the behavioral response to it. The simpler the psychological and emotional makeup of the observed creature, the greater the guarantee that the connections being studied will not be distorted by accompanying psychological and emotional components. It is impossible to ensure such a degree of purity in an experiment with humans.

This technique was later criticized, mainly on ethical grounds (see, for example, the humanistic approach). Behaviorists also believed that thanks to manipulations with external stimuli, it is possible to form different behavioral traits in a person.

IN THE USSR

Development

Behaviorism laid the foundation for the emergence and development of various psychological and psychotherapeutic schools, such as neobehaviorism, cognitive psychology, behavioral psychotherapy, rational-emotional-behavioral therapy. There are many practical applications of behaviorist psychological theory, including in areas far from psychology.

Now similar studies are continued by the science of animal and human behavior - ethology, which uses other methods (for example, ethology attaches much less importance to reflexes, considering innate behavior more important for study).

see also

• Instrumental reflex
• Descriptive behaviorism
• Molecular behaviorism
• Molar behaviorism

Links

• Cognitive-behavioral approach to working with the emotional sphere, in particular, with social fears.

Notes

In the 20th century, the face of American psychology is undoubtedly determined by behaviorism. She radically changed and transformed the entire system of ideas about the psyche. First of all, this concerned the subject of psychology as a science. According to behaviorism, the subject of psychology is not consciousness, but behavior. One of the pioneers of behaviorism as a branch of psychology was Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949). It was his works that were the first in line with this direction. He called himself a connectionist, and the psychology he studied was connectionism.

First at Harvard, under W. James, then at Columbia University under Cattell, he conducted research on animals. He considered educational psychology his life's work and described an approach to teaching animals. He also formulated the formula of connectionism, the “formula of new psychology”: S¦R S – stimulus, R – reaction.

In 1898, E. Thorndike, in his doctoral dissertation “Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of Associative Processes in Animals,” proposed the basic principles of animal psychology. Hobbes also proved that intelligence is associative in nature. Spencer proved that it is intelligence that ensures the successful adaptation of organisms to nature, to the environment. But it was Thorndike, in his experiments (507 works on behavioral psychology were published), who first showed that intelligence can be studied without resorting to consciousness. Thorndike believed that association does not mean a connection between ideas (as with associationists), but a connection between movements and situations. He described the entire learning process through the idea of ​​“trial and error,” reward and punishment. He wrote: “The effective part of association is the direct connection between the situation and the stimulus.”

V. Köhler (in 1925) argued that animals were forced to resort to the method of blind trial and error by the very design of “Thorndike problem boxes”, because the locked animal (subject of experience) did not see how the releasing mechanism worked; it could not “reason” about its path to freedom. In his experiments, Thorndike “led” animals to a primitive strategy of trial and error. He developed a radically simplified theory of learning, extending it to both animals and humans.

Thorndike believed that the goal of psychology should be the control of behavior. The connection between the elements of the formula “S¦R”, in contrast to the reflex in the mechanistic interpretation, had the following features: 1) a problem situation as a starting point; 2) opposition to it by the organism as a whole; 3) his actions in search of choice; 4) learning through exercise.

The progressiveness of Thorndike's approach was obvious in comparison with the approach of Dewey and the Chicagoans. The sphere of psychology, according to Thorndike, was the interaction between the organism and the environment.

Previous psychology believed that connections exist between the phenomena of consciousness. Previous physiology argued that connections are formed between the stimulation of receptors and the response movement of muscles. These connections are expressed by reflexes. According to E. Thorndike, connexation is the connection between a reaction and a situation, i.e. it is an element of behavior. But he does not use the term behavior, but uses the concepts of “intelligence” and “learning”.

The regulation of human behavior occurs differently than in animals, i.e. not at all the way E. Thorndike and all subsequent supporters of the so-called objective psychology imagined it, who considered the laws of learning to be uniform, common to animals and humans.

Thus, behaviorists reduced the socio-historical foundations of human behavior to the biological level of determination. It is paradoxical that, having prepared the emergence of behaviorism, Thorndike did not consider himself a behaviorist, because he used concepts from traditional neurophysiology and psychology (for example, the concept of the body’s state of satisfaction or discomfort when exposed to external stimuli, motor reactions, etc.). And behaviorism forbade turning to the waste that the subject experienced, i.e. to physiological factors.

E. Thorndike proposed two laws of behavior for humans and animals (Based on the book by T. Leahy). The first law is the law of effect (discovered in 1911): “of several responses to the same situation, those that are accompanied by the satisfaction of the animal’s desire or those following which it immediately occurs, other things being equal, are more firmly associated with situation, i.e. when it is repeated, the responses are more likely to be repeated. On the other hand, punishment reduces the strength of the connection. The greater the reward or the greater the punishment, the more the connection changes.” The second law is the law of exercise: “any response to a situation will, other things being equal, be more strongly associated with the situation, in proportion to the number of times the response was associated with it, as well as the average strength and duration of the connection.”

In his series of lectures on Human Behavior (1929) at Cornwall University, Thorndike applied connectionism to human behavior and presented psychology in terms of a binary S¦R scheme in which many stimuli are associated with many responses through a hierarchy of stimulus-response associations.

Thorndike argued that it is possible to determine the degree of probability of a reaction using the formula “S¦R” (for example, food will cause salivation - the probability is close to 1, and a sound will cause salivation, the probability is close to 0).

But, as in the case of animals, he reduced the human mind to automatism and habit. At the same time, Thorndike recognized the concern of naturalistic psychology about taking into account human behavior depending on the meaning of the stimulus: a person reacts to the meaning of words he comprehends, but an animal does not.

So the question arises: was Thorndike a behaviorist? On the one hand, he was engaged in purely behaviorism without any admixture of physiology (as I.P. Pavlov did), but on the other hand, Thorndike put forward the “principle of belonging”, which violates the development of unconditioned reflexes, because those elements that are most closely associated in time and space, and will be connected during learning. T. Leahy admits that Thorndike became a practical behaviorist rather than a theorist.

And the theoretical leader of behaviorism was John Brodes Watson (1878-1958). His scientific biography proves how the development of an individual researcher can reflect the influence of all the basic ideas of an entire direction in science.

At the beginning of the 20th century, during numerous discussions about the subject of psychology, Angell was the first to note that the subject of psychology had changed, but he was not sure whether this was a good thing. His student Watson proclaimed a manifesto of behaviorism in 1913, and psychologists agreed that psychology should become an objective science, not a subjective one, i.e. the subject of its study should not be consciousness, but behavior.

Watson wrote about himself that he developed the ideas of objective psychology while still a student at the University of Chicago. But it was not until 1913, in lectures on animal psychology at Columbia University, that he publicly revealed his views in the article “Psychology as the Behaviorists See It.” This article became the manifesto of a new direction in psychology. Watson himself, like many behaviorists, was an animal psychologist before becoming a representative of this trend.

The program of behaviorism included the following fact as its starting point: organisms, i.e. people and animals adapt to their environment, so psychology should study adaptive behavior, not the content of consciousness. Descriptions of behavior lead to predictions of behavior in terms of stimulus and response. It should be noted that, although J. Watson did not quote Kant, his program for describing, predicting and controlling observable behavior clearly traces the tradition of positivism, for which the only form of explanation was physico-chemical terms.

Watson's position was extremely radical, according to T. Leahy, because Watson said: not only does the soul not exist, but the cerebral cortex does nothing except broadcast, connect stimulus and response (i.e., the work of a broadcast station). Both the soul and the brain can easily be ignored when describing the prediction and control of behavior. A person and his inner world are a “black box” that cannot be researched.

Thus, the motto of behaviorism became the concept of behavior as an objectively observable system of the body’s reactions to external and internal stimuli.

This concept originated in the mainstream of physiology. In the works of I.M. Sechenov, I.P. Pavlova, V.M. Bekhterev, who managed to prove that the area of ​​the psyche is not limited to the consciousness of the subject, cognizable through introspection.

These scientists - innovators in the study of the connection of the organism with the environment - relied on objective methods, treating the organism in the unity of external and internal manifestations. Having studied V.M. Bekhterev’s book “Objective Psychology,” J. Watson became convinced that the conditioned reflex (according to Bekhterev, a combination reflex) should become the main unit of behavior analysis. And I.P. Pavlov’s teaching on the conditioned reflex gave Watson the confidence that the conditioned reflex was the key to developing skills, complex movements, and any form of learning.

Watson recognized various forms of bodily reactions as the only real ones; he replaced all traditional ideas about mental phenomena with their motor equivalents: for example, the dependence of visual perception on the movement of the eye muscles; emotions - from bodily changes; thinking - from the speech apparatus. With such examples, J. Watson argued that, supposedly, objective muscular processes can be a worthy replacement for subjective mental acts. Based on this premise, he even explained the development of human mental activity as “mental activity with muscles.”

He argued that all emotions and intellectual reactions can be controlled, because mental development comes down to learning, i.e. acquisition of knowledge, skills and abilities.

Behaviorists rejected the idea of ​​age periodization, believing that there are no general patterns of development in a given age period. For example, by teaching children from two and three years old to read and write, they are trying to prove: what is the environment, so are the patterns of child development. But at the same time, they considered it necessary to create a functional periodization that established the stages of learning and developing any skill.

From their point of view, the stages of play and learning to read are actually functional periodization.

The principle of behavior management has spread widely and firmly in American psychology.

Watson's concept came to be called “psychology without the psyche.” His merit was in expanding the sphere of the psyche, into which he included the actions and acts of behavior of animals and humans. But at the same time, he rejected huge layers of the psyche in the subject that cannot be reduced to externally observable behavior.

Behaviorism became the antipode of subjective (introspective) psychology, which reduced all life to “facts of consciousness.” Behaviorists preferred to take a new look at consciousness, in other words, “get rid of it”, not take it into account.

T. Leahy writes that Watson gave behaviorism “an angry voice and the name behaviorism,” but his manifesto did not attract much attention to behaviorism. The psychologists just calmed down, because... knew that psychology “has ceased to be a science of consciousness.”

Two other scientists associated with behaviorism should be mentioned: Walter Hunter (d. 1954) and J. Watson's student Carl Lashley (d. 1958). Hunter invented an expert scheme in 1914 for studying the reaction, which he called delayed (in his experiments, the monkey was shown which of two boxes contained a banana, then both boxes were placed behind a screen; then the screen was removed. And the animal found the banana in the right box). Hunter's experiments confirmed that animals are capable of a delayed reaction to a stimulus, and not just an immediate one, as previously thought.

Karl Lashley conducted the following experiments: he developed a skill in animals, and then removed different parts of the brain to find out whether the skill depended on them. He came to the conclusion that the animal’s brain functions as a whole, its individual parts are equivalent (equipotential). They can replace each other.

By the 30s of the 20th century, Watson’s ideas were no longer the only version of behaviorism: the weaknesses of behaviorism were identified (the weakness of the categorical apparatus, the image and motive of action in the category of action were rejected by behaviorists).

Attempts to include such categories as image, motive, attitude into the program of behaviorism as a direction after the Second World War lead to the emergence of its new version - neobehaviorism. And the 30s - 40s of the 20th century began to be called the “golden” age of theoretical psychology of behaviorism; studies of learning (rather than perception, thinking, group dynamics and other processes).

Neobehaviorism

This movement was led by American psychologists Edward Chase Tolman (1886 - 1959) and Clark Leonard Hull (1884 - 1952).

Edward Tolman outlined his main ideas in the book “Target Behavior in Animals and Humans” (1932). He conducted experiments on white rats, believing that the laws of behavior for animals and humans are the same. He objected to limiting the analysis of behavior only to the S¦R formula and ignoring factors that may be in between. He called these factors intervening variables.

Tolman viewed behavior as a dependent variable, conditioned by independent environmental variables and internal, but not mental, variables. The ultimate goal of behaviorism is “to describe a formula for generating a function connecting the dependent variable (behavior) to the independent variables (stimulus, heredity, learning, and the physiological state of hunger).” Since it is impossible to immediately achieve such a goal, so-called intermediate variables were introduced, which connected independent and dependent variables for control, with the help of which the behavior of a given variable can be predicted from the independent ones.

The terms introduced by Tolman (dependent, independent, intermediate variable) have been preserved in the language of psychology for a long time.

What distinguished Tolman from other behaviorists was that he believed that behavior was not limited to the development of motor skills. According to his experimental data, the organism, mastering the situation, builds a cognitive map (cognitive map) of the path it follows when solving a problem. In Tolman's experiments, the main task of the animals was to find a way out of the maze in order to get food and satisfy their need for food.

Tolman identified a special type of learning - latent learning. This hidden, unobservable learning plays a role when reinforcement is absent. Such learning can change behavior.

Tolman's theory forced us to reconsider the facts governing the organism's adaptation to the environment. Among them, the targeted regulation of animal actions and their ability for active cognitive work, even when developing motor skills, are especially highlighted. After Tolman's experiments, a revision of already existing views on behavior was required.

His ideas were useful much later in the computational concept of cognitivism.

Tolman anticipated the information-processing concept of the mind, which emerged in 1948, in which the mind is a control room that processes impulses into a cognitive map of the environment (later the computer's response also depended on the incoming signal). Tolman called his behaviorism operational, because. This adjective reflects two features of behaviorism: 1) it operationally defines intermediate variables, 2) it emphasizes that behavior is the activity by which an organism “operates in the environment.”

The next representative of neobehaviorism, Clark Hull, created mechanical behaviorism, because. found himself professionally in mathematical and natural sciences. He builds his psychological theory on the basis of accuracy, harmony, and logic, just as physicists and mathematicians do. This approach was called the hypothetico-deductive method.

Clark Hull relied on Pavlov's theory of conditioned reflexes and attached particular importance to the power of skill; this power is decisively influenced by the reduction of need. The more often a skill's power is reduced, the greater it is. The amount of need reduction is determined by the quantity and quality of reinforcements. The strength of the skill also depends on the interval between the reaction and its reinforcement, as well as on the interval between the conditioned stimulus and the reaction.

Hull believed that there are primary and secondary reinforcers. The primary reinforcer is, for example, food for a hungry organism.

The need is connected to the stimulus, and the reaction to them is secondary reinforcement. He was the first to raise the question of the possibility of modeling conditioned reflex activity and anticipated cybernetic models of self-regulation of behavior. He created a large scientific school that developed physical and mathematical methods and models of ways to acquire skills in relation to the theory of behavior.

Further, neo-behaviorism developed as a direction of psychology in line with the theory of operant behaviorism by Berhouse Frederick Skinner (1904 - 1990), who, without exaggeration, can be called the central, cult figure of the behavioristic direction.

The decline of behaviorism occurred in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century due to dissatisfaction with experimental psychology. In the middle of the 20th century, many movements of behaviorism arose: philosophical, formal, radical. The latter was created by B. Skinner on the basis of the theory of operant behaviorism.

Based on experimental studies and a theoretical analysis of animal behavior, Skinner formulates a position on three types of behavior: unconditioned reflex, conditioned reflex, operant. It was the latter that constituted the specificity of Skinner’s teaching.

The first two types of behavior are caused by stimuli and are called responding or responding behavior. This is a type S reaction. These reactions constitute a certain part of the behavioral repertoire, but they are not the only ones that ensure adaptation to the real environment. In reality, the adaptation process is built on the basis of active samples, i.e. the impact of an animal on the environment. These influences can accidentally lead to useful results. The beneficial result is consolidated.

Such reactions R, which are not caused by a stimulus, but are secreted by the body (some of them turn out to be correct and are reinforced), Skinner called operant reactions, these are reactions of the R type.

It is these reactions that predominate in the adaptive behavior of animals; they are a form of voluntary behavior. Based on the analysis of behavior, Skinner formulates his theory of learning: the main means of forming new behavior is reinforcement.

According to Skinner, the entire procedure of learning in animals is called “sequential guidance to the desired response.” He transfers data on animal behavior to human behavior, this leads him to a biologizing interpretation of man. Based on the results of animal learning, Skinner's version of programmed learning arose, which takes into account the individualization of learning. The limitation of programmed learning according to Skinner is that it reduces learning to a set of external acts of behavior and reinforcement of the correct ones of these acts.

In Skinner's version of learning there is no possibility to internalize (appropriate) an action, i.e. cognitive activity is ignored as a conscious process. Thus, Skinner follows the principles of J. Watson's behaviorism; he describes mental processes in terms of reinforcement reactions, and for him a person is just a creature acting under the influence of external circumstances and influences.

According to Skinner, the whole procedure turns out to be “cleverly designed reinforcements.” B. Skinner's book “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” (1971) is notorious. In it, he transforms these concepts of freedom and dignity and excludes them from human life. To solve social problems, he proposed creating a behavior technology that helps control some people over others. And he called control of reinforcements a means of behavior management in psychology, which allows one to manipulate people.

The principle of operant behavior he formulated states: the behavior of an animal is completely determined by the consequences to which it leads. Depending on whether these consequences are pleasant, unpleasant or indifferent, the body will strive to repeat this behavioral act, not attach importance to it, or avoid repeating it in the future.

But a person is able to foresee the consequences of his behavior and independently avoid actions that lead to negativity. The higher the likelihood of negative consequences, the more strongly it influences a person’s behavior.

Thus, Skinner did not consider himself a supporter of “SR psychology”, because this formula assumes a reflexive link between stimulus and response, and Skinner believed that the body can be influenced by controlling variables that are not necessarily considered stimuli.

Social behaviorism

In addition to the learning process, behaviorists also studied the socialization of children. George Mead (1863 - 1931) from the University of Chicago tried to understand the conditionality of human behavior and called his concept social behaviorism.

Studying the stages of a child’s entry into the world of an adult, he realized that a child’s personality is formed in interaction with other people. The child plays different roles.

J. Mead's theory is also called the theory of expectation: after all, children play their roles depending on the expectations of an adult and on past experience. These two factors influence the fact that children play the same roles in different ways (adult expectations and past experience). J. Mead distinguishes between story games and games with rules.

In addition to him, other psychologists have conducted research on antisocial behavior (in particular, aggressive) and prosocial behavior. Thus, D. Dollard (1900 - 1980) created the theory of frustration (disorganization of behavior caused by the inability to cope with difficulties). Dollard believed that restraining weak manifestations of aggression can lead to very powerful aggression, i.e. all frustrations experienced in childhood can lead to aggression in adulthood. Today, his opinion is considered controversial, because, despite the fact that every day a preschooler experiences approximately 19 frustrations in the family, kindergarten, and in communication with peers, only a small number of them can lead to aggressive behavior.

The works of Albert Bandura (1925 – 1988) are of great importance in social behaviorism. He was born in Canada; Having moved to the USA, he worked at Stanford. Bandura believed that people do not always require direct reinforcement to learn, because... they can also learn from the experiences of others.

This is how the concept of indirect reinforcement, based on observation of the behavior of other people, important for Bandura’s theory, emerged. He paid special attention to imitation. He believed that we often imitate simpler patterns of behavior or those with which a person is more often in direct contact (this could be the behavior of people of the same gender, the same age, or high social status).

Children learn behavioral models “in reserve,” even when these models are not very successful. They easily imitate aggressive behavior. A. Bandura's research describes the causes of aggression in the family, and the sequence of occurrence of a certain type of behavior is as follows: from reward and imitation to the formation of certain behavior patterns in children. Bandura's works were the first to describe self-reinforcement mechanisms associated with assessing one's own effectiveness and ability to solve complex problems. He concludes that people with high self-efficacy are more able to control their behavior and are more successful in life. Bandura's conclusion: a significant mechanism of personal action is the effectiveness of control over a person's existence. His work on the correction of deviant behavior is also important in social psychology (he studied the aggressive behavior of children aged 8–12 years). In addition, Bandura recognized that successful activity evokes a desire to imitate and relieves tension in the client under psychotherapeutic conditions (his method was called the method of systematic desensitization (reducing or eliminating the body’s increased sensitivity - sensitization - to the effects of a substance).

D. B. Rotter's social learning theory (b. 1916) describes social behavior using the following concepts:

Behavioral potential (a person develops a set of behavioral reactions throughout his life);

Subjective probability (i.e. a person's expectations);

The nature of reinforcement and its value for a person;

Locus of control (external - a person transfers responsibility for everything that happens to him to other people and external circumstances, and internal locus of control - a person considers himself responsible for all the events of his life).

Behavioral potential, according to Rotter, includes five blocks of behavioral reactions or “techniques of existence”:

Behavioral reactions aimed at achieving success (they serve for social recognition of the individual);

Behavioral responses of accommodation and adaptation are techniques for coordinating behavior with social norms;

Defensive behavioral reactions - they are used in situations that require exceeding a person’s capabilities at the moment (this is denial, suppression of desires, devaluation);

Avoidance techniques: exiting the “field of tension”, leaving, escape, rest and others;

Aggressive behavioral reactions include real physical aggression and symbolic forms of aggression: irony, criticism, ridicule, intrigue directed against the interests of other people.

Behaviorism, which determined the face of American psychology in the 20th century, radically transformed the entire system of ideas about the psyche. His credo was expressed by the formula according to which the subject of psychology is behavior, not consciousness. (Hence the name - from the English behavior, behavior.) Since then it was customary to equate the psyche and consciousness (processes that begin and end in consciousness were considered mental), a version arose that by eliminating consciousness, behaviorism thereby eliminates the psyche .

The true meaning of the events associated with the emergence and rapid development of the behaviorist movement was different and consisted not in the annihilation of the psyche, but in a change in the concept of it.

One of the pioneers of the behaviorist movement was Edward Thorndike (1874-1949). He himself called himself not a behaviorist, but a “connectionist” (from the English “connection” - connection). However, researchers and their concepts should not be judged by what they call themselves, but by their role in the development of knowledge. Thorndike's work opened the first chapter in the annals of behaviorism.

Thorndike outlined his conclusions in 1898 in his doctoral dissertation “Animal Intelligence. An Experimental Study of Associative Processes in Animals.”* Thorndike used traditional terms – “intelligence”, “associative processes”, but they were filled with new content.

* I.P. Pavlov considered this work to be a pioneer in objective studies of behavior. After defending his dissertation, Thorndike worked as a teacher at a teachers' college for 50 years. He published 507 papers on various problems of psychology.

That intelligence has an associative nature has been known since the time of Hobbes. The fact that intelligence ensures the successful adaptation of an animal to its environment became generally accepted after Spencer. But for the first time, it was Thorndike's experiments that showed that the nature of the intellect and its function can be studied and assessed without recourse to ideas or other phenomena of consciousness. Association no longer meant a connection between ideas or between ideas and movements, as in previous associative theories, but between movements and situations.

The entire learning process was described in objective terms. Thorndike used Wen's idea of ​​"trial and error" as a regulating principle of behavior. The choice of this beginning had deep methodological reasons. It marked a reorientation of psychological thought towards a new way of deterministically explaining its objects. Although Darwin did not specifically emphasize the role of “trial and error,” this concept undoubtedly constituted one of the premises of his evolutionary teaching. Since possible ways of responding to constantly changing environmental conditions cannot be foreseen in advance in the structure and modes of behavior of the organism, the coordination of this behavior with the environment is realized only on a probabilistic basis.

The teaching of evolution required the introduction of a probabilistic factor, acting with the same immutability as mechanical causation. Probability could no longer be regarded as a subjective concept (the result of ignorance of causes, according to Spinoza). The principle of “trial, error and accidental success” explains, according to Thorndike, the acquisition by living beings of new forms of behavior at all levels of development. The advantage of this principle is quite obvious when compared with the traditional (mechanical) reflex circuit. Reflex (in its pre-Sechenov understanding) meant a fixed action, the course of which is determined by paths that were also strictly fixed in the nervous system. It was impossible to explain with this concept the adaptability of the body's reactions and its learning ability.

Thorndike took as the initial moment of a motor act not an external impulse that sets into motion a bodily machine with pre-prepared methods of response, but a problem situation, i.e. such external conditions for adaptation to which the body does not have a ready-made formula for a motor response, but is forced to build it through its own efforts. So, the connection “situation - reaction”, in contrast to the reflex (in its only mechanistic interpretation known to Thorndike), was characterized by the following features: 1) the starting point is a problem situation; 2) the body resists it as a whole; 3) he actively acts in search of choice and 4) learns through exercise

The progressiveness of Thorndike's approach in comparison with the approach of Dewey and other Chicagoans is obvious, because they accepted the conscious pursuit of a goal not as a phenomenon that needs explanation, but as a causal principle. But Thorndike, having eliminated the conscious desire for a goal, retained the idea of ​​active actions of the organism, the meaning of which is to solve a problem in order to adapt to the environment.

So, Thorndike significantly expanded the field of psychology. He showed that it extends far beyond the limits of consciousness. Previously, it was assumed that a psychologist beyond these limits could only be interested in unconscious phenomena hidden in the “recesses of the soul.” Thorndike decisively changed his orientation. The sphere of psychology was the interaction between the organism and the environment. Previous psychology argued that connections are formed between the phenomena of consciousness. She called them associations. Previous physiology argued that connections are formed between the stimulation of receptors and the response movement of muscles. They were called reflexes. According to Thorndike, connexation is the connection between a reaction and a situation. Obviously this is a new element. In the language of subsequent psychology, connection is an element of behavior. True, Thorndike did not use the term “behavior.” He talked about intelligence, about learning. But Descartes did not call the reflex he discovered a reflex, and Hobbes, being the founder of the associative movement, had not yet used the phrase “association of ideas,” invented half a century after him by Locke. The concept matures before the term.

Thorndike's works would not have had pioneering significance for psychology if they had not discovered new, strictly psychological laws. But no less clearly is the limitation of behaviorist schemes in terms of explaining human behavior. The regulation of human behavior is carried out according to a different type than was imagined by Thorndike and all subsequent supporters of the so-called objective psychology, who considered the laws of learning to be the same for humans and other living beings. This approach gave rise to a new form of reductionism. The patterns of behavior inherent in humans, which have a socio-historical basis, were reduced to the biological level of determination, and thus the opportunity to study these patterns in adequate scientific concepts was lost.

Thorndike, more than anyone else, prepared the emergence of behaviorism. At the same time, as noted, he did not consider himself a behaviorist; in his explanations of learning processes, he used concepts that later behaviorism demanded to be expelled from psychology. These were concepts related, firstly, to the sphere of the psyche in its traditional understanding (in particular, the concepts of the states of satisfaction and discomfort experienced by the body during the formation of connections between motor reactions and external situations), and secondly, to neurophysiology (in particular, "law of readiness", which, according to Thorndike, involves a change in the ability to conduct impulses). Behaviorist theory prohibited the behavior researcher from addressing both what the subject experiences and physiological factors.

The theoretical leader of behaviorism was John Braadus Watson (1878-1958). His scientific biography is instructive in the sense that it shows how the development of an individual researcher reflects the influences that determined the development of the main ideas of the movement as a whole.

After defending his dissertation in psychology at the University of Chicago, Watson became a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (since 1908), where he headed the department and laboratory of experimental psychology. In 1913, he published the article “Psychology from the Point of View of a Behaviorist,” which is regarded as a manifesto of a new direction. Following this, he published the book “Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology,” in which for the first time in the history of psychology the postulate that the subject of this science is consciousness was decisively refuted.

The motto of behaviorism was the concept of behavior as an objectively observable system of reactions of the body to external and internal stimuli. This concept originated in Russian science in the works of I.M. Sechenov, I.L. Pavlov and V.M. Bekhterev. They proved that the area of ​​mental activity is not limited to the phenomena of the subject’s consciousness, cognizable through internal observation of them (introspection), because with such an interpretation of the psyche, the splitting of the organism into soul (consciousness) and body (organism as a material system) is inevitable. As a result, consciousness became disconnected from external reality and became isolated in the circle of its own phenomena (experiences), placing it outside the real connection of earthly things and involvement in the course of bodily processes. Rejecting such a point of view, Russian researchers took the innovative path of studying the relationship of the whole organism with the environment, relying on objective methods, while interpreting the organism itself in the unity of its external (including motor) and internal (including subjective) manifestations. This approach outlined the prospect for revealing the factors of interaction between the whole organism and the environment and the reasons on which the dynamics of this interaction depend. It was assumed that knowledge of the causes would allow psychology to realize the ideal of other exact sciences with their motto “prediction and control.”

This fundamentally new view met the needs of the time. The old subjective psychology was everywhere revealing its inconsistency. This was clearly demonstrated by experiments on animals, which were the main object of research by US psychologists. Reasoning about what happens in the minds of animals when they perform various experimental tasks turned out to be fruitless. Watson became convinced that observations of states of consciousness were as little useful to a psychologist as to a physicist. Only by abandoning these internal observations, he insisted, would psychology become an accurate and objective science.

The most objectionable thing to Skinner's behaviorism was his extreme positivism and rejection of all theories. Skinner's opponents argue that it is impossible to reduce all theoretical constructions to zero. Since the details of the experiment must be planned in advance, this in itself is evidence of the construction of at least the simplest theory. It has also been noted that Skinner's adoption of basic principles of conditioning as the basis for his work is also to some extent theorizing.

The established belief system gave Skinner confidence in economic, social, political and religious issues. In 1986 he wrote an article with a promising title<Что неправильно в западном образе жизни?>(What is Vrong with Life in the Western World?) In this article he argued that<поведение жителей Запада ухудшилось, но его можно улучшить посредством применения принципов, выведенных на основании экспериментального анализа поведения>(Skinner 1986, p. 568). Critics have charged that Skinner's willingness to extrapolate from empirical data is inconsistent with his anti-theoretical stance and demonstrates that he is going beyond strictly observable data in his quest to present his own project for the reconstruction of society.

The narrow range of behavior studies in Skinner's laboratories (pressing a lever or plucking a key) has also not escaped criticism. Opponents of Skinner's theory argued that this approach simply ignores many aspects of behavior. Skinner's assertion that all behavior is learned was challenged by a former student of his who trained more than six thousand animals from 38 species to perform in television programs, attractions, and fairs (Breland & Breland. 1961). Pigs, chickens, hamsters, dolphins, whales, cows and other animals have shown a tendency towards instinctive behavior. This means that they substituted instinctive behavior for the one that was being reinforced, even if that instinctive behavior prevented them from getting food. Thus, reinforcement was not as omnipotent as Skinner claimed.

Skinner's position on verbal behavior—in particular, his explanation of how children learn to speak—has been challenged on the grounds that certain behaviors must be heritable. Critics argued that rather than learning language word by word, the infant learns the grammatical rules necessary to form sentences through the reinforcement received for each correctly spoken word. But the potential for the formation of such rules, Skinner's opponents argue, is hereditary, not learned (Chomsky.1959,1972).