3.3: Behaviorism

Learning Objectives

1. Identify behaviorist principles.
2. Differentiate between classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
3. Explain how reinforcement, punishment, and modeling influence children's behavior and learning.

Behaviorism

While cognitivists examined what was going on in the mind, behaviorism rejected any reference to the mind and viewed overt, observable behavior as the proper subject matter of psychology. Through the scientific study of behavior, it was hoped that laws of learning could be derived that would promote the prediction and control of behavior.²⁵

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov (1880-1937) was a Russian physiologist interested in studying digestion. As he recorded the amount of salivation his laboratory dogs produced while eating, he noticed that they actually began to salivate before the food arrived, as the researcher walked down the hall and approached the cage. “This,” he thought, “is not natural!” One would expect a dog to salivate when food hits their palate automatically, but BEFORE the food comes? Of course, what had happened was . . . you tell me. That’s right! The dogs knew that the food was coming because they had learned to associate the footsteps with the food. The key word here is “learned.” A learned response is called a “conditioned” response.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Ivan Pavlov. Image is in the public domain.

Pavlov began to experiment with this concept of classical conditioning. He began to ring a bell, for example, before introducing the food. Sure enough, after making this connection several times, the dogs could be made to salivate to the sound of a bell. Once the bell had become an event to which the dogs had learned to salivate, it was called a conditioned stimulus. The act of salivating to a bell was a response that had also been learned, now termed in Pavlov’s jargon, a conditioned response. Notice that the response, salivation, is the same whether it is conditioned or unconditioned (unlearned or natural). What changed is the stimulus that makes the dog salivate. One is natural (unconditioned), and the other is learned (conditioned).

Let’s think about how classical conditioning is used on us. One of the most widely applied applications of classical conditioning principles was introduced by the psychologist John B. Watson.

John B. Watson

John B. Watson (1878-1958) believed that most of our fears and other emotional responses are classically conditioned. He gained a good deal of popularity in the 1920s with his expert advice on parenting, which he offered to the public.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): John B. Watson. Image is in the public domain.

He tried to demonstrate the power of classical conditioning with his famous experiment with an 18-month-old boy named “Little Albert”. Watson sat Albert down and introduced a variety of seemingly scary objects to him: a burning piece of newspaper, a white rat, etc. But Albert remained curious and reached for all of these things. Watson knew that one of our only inborn fears is the fear of loud noises, so he proceeded to make a loud noise each time he introduced one of Albert’s favorites, a white rat. After hearing the loud noise several times paired with the rat, Albert soon came to fear the rat and began to cry when it was introduced.

Watson filmed this experiment for posterity and used it to demonstrate that he could help parents achieve any outcomes they desired, if they would only follow his advice. Watson wrote columns in newspapers and magazines, which gained a lot of popularity among parents eager to apply science to their household chores.

Video

Video Description and Text Link

Actual footage from the Little Albert Experiment in which a baby is conditioned to fear fluffy animals. It is now considered to be one of the early twentieth century's most unethical experiments. However, the research was also groundbreaking for it's time and is considered the first modern-day experiment of its kind to show that a human could be classically conditioned. The Little Albert Experiment by News Dog Virals Text link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5duLMjaTL0U

Operant conditioning, on the other hand, looks at the way the consequences of a behavior increase or decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring again. So let’s look at this a bit more.

Operant Conditioning

B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), who introduced the principles of operant conditioning, suggested that reinforcement is a more effective means of encouraging a behavior than criticism or punishment. By focusing on strengthening desirable behavior, we have a greater impact than if we emphasize what is undesirable. Reinforcement is anything that an organism desires and is motivated to obtain.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): B. F. Skinner. Image is in the public domain.

A reinforcer is something that encourages or promotes a behavior. Some things are natural rewards. They are considered intrinsic or primary because their value is easily understood. Think of what kinds of things babies or animals, such as puppies, find rewarding.

Extrinsic or secondary reinforcers are things that have a value not immediately understood. Their value is indirect. They can be traded in for what is ultimately desired.

The use of positive reinforcement involves adding something to a situation to encourage a behavior. For example, if I give a child a cookie for cleaning a room, the addition of the cookie makes cleaning more likely in the future. Think of ways in which you positively reinforce others.

Negative reinforcement occurs when something unpleasant is removed from a situation to encourage a behavior. For example, I have an alarm clock that makes a very unpleasant, loud sound when it goes off in the morning. As a result, I get up and turn it off. By removing the noise, I am reinforced for getting up. How do you negatively reinforce others?

Punishment is an effort to stop a behavior. It means to follow an action with something unpleasant or painful. Punishment is often less effective than reinforcement for several reasons. It doesn’t indicate the desired behavior, it may result in suppressing rather than stopping a behavior, (in other words, the person may not do what is being punished when you’re around, but may do it often when you leave), and a focus on punishment can result in not noticing when the person does well. Not all behaviors are learned through association or reinforcement. Many of the things we do are learned by watching others. This is addressed in social learning theory.

Social Learning Theory

Albert Bandura (1925-2021) is a leading contributor to social learning theory. He calls our attention to the ways in which many of our actions are not learned through conditioning; instead, they are learned by watching others (1977). Young children frequently learn behaviors through imitation.

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Albert Bandura. Image by Albert Bandura is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sometimes, particularly when we do not know what else to do, we learn by modeling or copying the behavior of others. A kindergartner on their first day of school might eagerly observe how others are acting and try to act the same way to fit in more quickly. Adolescents struggling with their identity rely heavily on their peers to act as role models. Sometimes we do things because we’ve seen it pay off for someone else. They were operantly conditioned, but we engage in the behavior because we hope it will pay off for us as well. This is referred to as vicarious reinforcement (Bandura, Ross, and Ross, 1963).

Bandura (1986) suggests that there is interplay between the environment and the individual. We are not just the product of our surroundings, rather we influence our surroundings. Parents not only influence their child’s environment, perhaps intentionally through the use of reinforcement, etc., but children influence parents as well. Parents may respond differently with their first child than with their fourth. Perhaps they try to be the perfect parents with their firstborn, but by the time their last child comes along, they have very different expectations both of themselves and their child. Our environment creates us, and we create our environment.³⁰

Bandura and the Bobo Doll Experiment & Today's Children and the Media

Other social influences: TV or no TV? Bandura et al. (1963) began a series of studies to examine the impact of television, particularly commercials, on children's behavior. Are children more likely to act out aggressively when they see this behavior modeled? What if they see it being reinforced? Bandura began by conducting an experiment in which he showed children a film of a woman hitting an inflatable clown doll, also known as a “Bobo” doll. Then the children were allowed into the room, where they found the doll and immediately began hitting it. This was without any reinforcement whatsoever. Not only that, but they found new ways to behave aggressively. It’s as if they've taken on an aggressive role.

Video	Video Description and Text Link
	Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment by Everywhere Psychology Text link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmBqwWlJg8U

Children view far more television today than they did in the 1960s; so much, in fact, that they have been referred to as Generation M (for media). The amount of screen time varies by age. As of 2017, children aged 0-8 spend an average of 2 hours and 19 minutes. Children aged 8-12 spend almost 6 hours a day on screen media. And 13- to 18-year-olds spend an average of just under 9 hours a day on entertainment media.

The prevalence of violence, sexual content, and messages promoting foods high in fat and sugar in the media is certainly cause for concern and the subjects of ongoing research and policy review. Many children spend even more time on the computer viewing content from the internet. The amount of time spent connected to the internet continues to increase with the use of smartphones that essentially serve as mini-computers. And the ways children and adolescents interact with the media continue to change. The popularity of YouTube and the various social media platforms is an example of this. What might be the implications of this? ³¹

Main Points to Note About Behaviorism

Behaviorists look at observable behavior and how it can be predicted and controlled.

• Pavlov experimented with classical conditioning, the process of conditioning a response to a stimulus (the dog’s salivation to the sound of the bell).
• Watson offered advice to parents to show them how classical conditioning can be used. His most famous experiment was conditioning Little Albert to fear a white rat.
• Skinner believed that reinforcing behavior is the most effective way of increasing desirable behavior. This is done through operant conditioning.
• Bandura noted that many behaviors are not learned through any type of conditioning, but rather through imitation. And he believed that people are not only influenced by their surroundings, but that they also have an impact on their surroundings.

References, Contributors and Attributions

25. History of Psychology by David B. Baker and Heather Sperry is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

30. Exploring Behavior by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0; Lecture Transcript: Developmental Theories by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0

31. Exploring Behavior by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0