Psychological Behaviorism and Analytical Analysis

In psychology class we are going over many different concepts and how they obtain to psychology. With this being said, many people have dealt with many different concepts but are unsure of what they mean and how they work. The concept that will be explained is behaviorism. Behaviorism is not what it appears to be but rather something opposite. Behaviorism focuses on humans and animals but not in the way you would think. Rather than focusing on humans, animals and their behavior it focuses on how humans and animals react in different situations with a different environment. A scientist named John Broadus Watson came up with this concept. Shortly after Watson came up with this concept a man named Burrhus Fredrick Skinner, took the concept into a different meaning and transformed it into not only human behavior but also how animals react in certain situations. The concept as a whole is still active in today’s psychology fields and will continue to be used for many years.

According to Watson, he thought that psychologists needed to focus on “behavior study” rather than focusing on mental states. “So instead of describing conscious experiences, Watson proposed that psychologists focus entirely on the study of behavior- what people do, rather than what people experience- because behavior can be observed by anyone and it can be measured objectively” (Gilbert Nock Schacter Wegner 13). Saying this, Watson decided it would be a better idea for people to focus on behavior, therefore it was easier to measure by certain people. Making it an easier thing to deal with in the psychologist field. Behaviorism was used in the same term but with rats instead of any specific animal. Essentially scientists would get animals and put them in certain situations, and they would study what the animals would do in the situations rather than what they experience in these situations.

Another scientist named Burrhus Frederick Skinner started to develop a different kind of behaviorism. “Skinner completed his PhD studies in psychology at Harvard (Wiener 1996) and began to develop a new kind behaviorism” (Gilbert 15). Skinner changed behaviorism by looking at rats and how they acted in a cage setting rather than focusing so much on humans. Skinner would put them in this cage, and he set it up to where there was one lever that would drop food. He concluded that the rats would roam around for a minute until “accidentally hitting the bar” then they would keep doing it until their hunger was gone. “Skinner recognized that in everyday life, animals don’t just stand there- they do something! Animals act on their environments in order to find shelter, food, or mates, and Skinner wondered if he could develop behaviorist principles that would explain how they learned to act in those situations” (Gilbert 15). Essentially Skinner took his experiment one step further. Rather than Skinner looking at just how they act trying to find shelter and food and other things, he looked at trying to build principles to see if they followed these principles throughout their lifetime.

Behaviorism means the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns. Behaviorism at a psychologist level is examined as how animals and humans react in situations, without bringing in their thoughts or feelings into trying to solve these situations. Behaviorism really only has one part to it, and that is studying “what people do rather than what they experience” (Gilbert 13). Skinner transformed this different type of behaviorism in the late 1930s. Leading behaviorism to be seen as more of how animals react in situations rather than how their mentality would be.

Radical Behaviorism falls in line of all three categories of behaviorism, methodological, analytic, and psychological. Methodological behaviorism means that all theories and explanations should be based on observable stimuli and behavior. Which basically means anything that can be observed with how the living organism grows and what activities they do. Analytic behaviorism means that a doctor is able to talk about mental things. Essentially meaning they talk about how someone seeks out something. Say Tom really enjoys Oreos, analytic behaviorism allows the doctor to understand that they seek it out. Meaning they enjoy it more than other things and are more likely to seek that option out rather than anything else. Psychological behaviorism is defined as how human behaviors are learned. Say a couple people are shipped off to an island and they have to live out there for a year but instead of already having shelter and secure food and water they have to use survival tactics to try and survive. Behaviorism happens by looking at how this group of people would react to this situation and psychologists would observe what would be going on between these people and watch how they keep dealing with the situation.

Behaviorism as a whole is pretty interesting. You can see it ended up getting developed by not one but two different people. One person came up with it then another person on step further and applied to a test subject, which ended up being rats and how they reacted to being in a cage with a lever for food. It appeals to many people because it does not focus on just humans, but it also brings in how animals react in different situations as well rather than focusing just on humans like many studies do. The concept will be continued to used today and will be continued to be used for years on end, because it applies to animals and humans and it continues to be so effective with so many studies.