PSY 420 Week 1 History and Philosophy of Behaviorism Example

From Watson's Manifesto to a Mesa Classroom: The History and Philosophy of Behaviorism

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSY/420: Theories of Behavior

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The student teacher, child and classroom are composites written for a model paper; historical and research material comes from the sources listed.

Behaviorism changed psychology by insisting that behavior itself, and the environment that shapes it, could be studied scientifically. Its ideas evolved over a century into applied behavior analysis, used today in classrooms, clinics and workplaces. This paper traces that history and philosophy through a student teacher's first encounter with a challenging behavior.

The Classroom

Ms. Ortega is completing her student teaching in a fourth-grade classroom in Mesa, Arizona. Jamal, ten, calls out answers, leaves his seat several times each lesson and wanders to the pencil sharpener. Her cooperating teacher explains, "He has ADHD; he just can't control himself." Ms. Ortega is unsure. The explanation names a label but does not tell her when the behavior happens, what follows it or what she could change.

Pavlov and Thorndike: The Foundations

Ivan Pavlov, a physiologist studying digestion, discovered that dogs began salivating to signals that reliably preceded food, establishing respondent or classical conditioning. Edward Thorndike placed cats in puzzle boxes and found that responses followed by escape and food became faster over trials, while ineffective responses dropped out. Thorndike stated this as the law of effect: consequences strengthen or weaken the behaviors they follow. These two lines of work, learning by association and learning by consequences, became the foundations of behaviorism.

Watson's Manifesto

Watson (1913) argued that psychology should abandon introspection and the study of consciousness and become an objective natural science of behavior, aiming to predict and control it. Watson held that the same methods should apply to humans and animals and that behavior should be explained by stimuli and responses rather than by mental states that could not be observed. This position, often called methodological behaviorism, accepted that inner states might exist but excluded them from science because they could not be publicly observed.

Skinner and Radical Behaviorism

B. F. Skinner extended Thorndike's work into operant conditioning, the study of how consequences shape voluntary behavior, using precise measurement of response rates. Skinner (1950) argued that research on learning did not need theories that explained behavior by events at another level, such as mental processes or hypothetical neural states, measured in different terms. Instead, Skinner proposed studying the direct relations between behavior and the environmental variables that control it.

Radical behaviorism, Skinner's philosophy, differs from Watson's. It does not ignore thoughts and feelings; it treats them as private behavior, governed by the same principles as public behavior. What it rejects is treating them as independent inner causes. For Jamal, a radical behaviorist would ask not what is wrong inside him but what in his environment makes calling out and leaving his seat likely.

A label told Ms. Ortega what to call Jamal; behaviorism told her what to watch.

The Birth of Applied Behavior Analysis

Baer et al. (1968) defined applied behavior analysis by seven dimensions. It should be applied, addressing behaviors important to people and society; behavioral, measuring actual behavior; analytic, showing convincingly that the intervention caused the change; technological, described precisely enough to be replicated; conceptually systematic, linked to behavioral principles; effective, making a difference people would notice in daily life; and generalizable, lasting over time and across settings.

These dimensions translate the philosophy into practice. For Jamal, they direct Ms. Ortega to define the behaviors precisely, such as "answers aloud before being called on" and "out of chair without a teacher's okay," to count them, to change something in the environment and to show with data whether the change works.

Ms. Ortega's First Steps

Following the tradition, Ms. Ortega begins by observing. Over three days, she records each call-out and seat-leaving and what happened just before and after. She notices patterns: Jamal calls out most during long whole-class discussions, and each call-out draws an immediate response, either an answer or a reprimand. He leaves his seat most often during independent writing. These observations shift attention from a label to relations between behavior and environment, which later weeks will analyze.

Behaviorism After the Cognitive Shift

From the 1960s, many psychologists turned toward cognitive explanations, studying memory, attention and thinking as information processing. Behavior analysis did not disappear; it became a specialized field with its own journals, methods and practitioners, and its applied branch grew rapidly in education, developmental disabilities and organizational settings. Many modern classroom approaches, such as positive behavior support, blend behavioral principles with attention to students' goals and understanding.

Single-Case Designs

The tradition also brought a distinctive way of gathering evidence. Instead of comparing group averages, behavior analysts often study one person intensively, measuring behavior repeatedly before, during and after a change and sometimes withdrawing and reintroducing the change to show that it, not chance, made the difference. This approach suits a teacher like Ms. Ortega, who needs to know what works for Jamal, not for the average student.

Responding to Criticisms

Critics charge that behaviorism ignores the mind, treats people as machines and manipulates them. A behavior analyst would respond that radical behaviorism includes private events, that understanding environmental influence increases rather than reduces the ability to help people and that applied behavior analysis is bound by ethical codes emphasizing consent, dignity and the least restrictive effective procedures. Legitimate concerns remain, including overreliance on external rewards and past practices with vulnerable populations, which shaped today's ethical standards.

What the Label Leaves Out

A diagnosis of ADHD may be accurate and may guide medical decisions, but it does not identify which events trigger or maintain Jamal's behavior in this classroom. Behaviorism adds a second question alongside the diagnosis: under what conditions does this behavior occur, and what keeps it going? The answers suggest changes a teacher can make today.

Conclusion

From Pavlov's and Thorndike's discoveries through Watson's call for an objective science and Skinner's radical behaviorism, the tradition built a way of studying behavior through its relations with the environment. The seven dimensions of applied behavior analysis turned that philosophy into practice, and they guide Ms. Ortega to define, measure and change what happens around Jamal rather than stopping at a label.

References

Baer, D. M., Wolf, M. M., & Risley, T. R. (1968). Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1(1), 91-97. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.1968.1-91

Skinner, B. F. (1950). Are theories of learning necessary? Psychological Review, 57(4), 193-216. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054367

Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20(2), 158-177. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0074428