Behaviorism is a natural approach to psychology that focuses on observable behavior and environmental influences rather than mental processes. John B. Watson founded behaviorism and believed that human emotion was produced through classical conditioning. He conducted an experiment called "Little Albert" to show that emotional reactions can be conditioned. B.F. Skinner expanded on behaviorism through his concepts of operant conditioning using positive and negative reinforcement and punishment in a controlled chamber called a Skinner box. He believed that behavior is shaped through reinforcement of successive approximations.

1. Behaviorism

2. What is
Behaviorism
?

3. Behaviorism …
 is a natural approach to
Psychology that
traditionally focuses on
the study of
environmental influences
on observable behavior

4. Behaviorism …
 is the view that behavior
should be explained by
observable behavior, not
by mental processes.
defined by Psychologists as the thoughts,
feelings, and motives that each of us
experiences but that cannot be observed by
others.

5. Behaviorists

6. John B. Watson
1878 - 1958

7. John B. Watson
 founder of Behaviorism
 Married Rosalie Rayner, with
whom he did the famous study
with the infant named Albert.

8. John B. Watson
 He is a radical environmental
determinist
 He believed that all we come
equipped with at birth are a few
reflexes and a few basic
emotions, and through classical
conditioning these reflexes
become paired with a variety of

9. John B. Watson
 Human emotion was a product of
both heredity and experience
o We inherit three emotions – fear,
rage and love.

10. John B. Watson
 noted that consciousness could
be studied only through the
process of INTROSPECTION, a
notoriously unreliable research
tool.
o because consciousness could not be
reliably studied, he said, it should not
be studied at all.

11. John B. Watson
 To be scientific, psychology
needed behavior as a subject
matter that was stable enough to
be reliably measured.
 Watson felt that the main concern
for the psychologist should be
behavior and how it varies with
experience.

12. John B. Watson
 The focal point of epistemological
inquiry for thousands of years
was looked on by the behaviorist
as only a hindrance in the study
of human behavior.

13. John B. Watson
X Instrospection
X Talk of instinctive behavior
X No more attempts to study the
human consciousness or
unconscious mind
Behavior is what we can see, and
therefore behavior is what we study

14. John B. Watson
 He saw behaviorism as a means
of stripping ignorance and
superstition from human
existence, thereby paving the way
for more rational, meaningful
living.

15. John B. Watson
 Clearly, Watson was a rebel. He
took the various objective
approaches to the study of
Psychology that were appearing
here and there, and through his
forceful writing and speaking,
organized them into a new school
of psychology

16. John B. Watson
 He had two lasting effects on
Psychology.
1. he change Psychology’s goal from
attempting to understand
consciousness to the prediction and
control of behavior.

17. John B. Watson
 He had two lasting effects on
Psychology.
2. He made made behavior
psychology’s subject matter

18. Experiment
with Little
Albert

19. “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-
informed, and my own specified world to
bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take
any one at random and train him to
become any type of specialist I might
select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant,
chief, and yes, even beggarman and thief,
regardless of his talents, penchants,
tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race
of his ancestors.”

20. Little Albert
1920

21.  In this experiment…
Unconditione
d stimuli (US)
Unconditione
d response
(UR)Conditioned
stimuli (CS)
Conditioned
response
Loud noise
Fear produced
by the noise
rat
Fear of the rat

22.  Watson showed that our
emotional reactions can be
rearranged through classical
conditioning.

23.  Albert’s fear was generalized to a
variety of objects that were not
feared at the onset of the
experiment: a rat, a rabbit, a dog,
a fur coat, cotton and a Santa
Claus mask

24.  For Watson, learning occurred
simply because events followed
each other closely in time.
Classical conditioning occurs, not
because the US reinforces the
CS, but because the the CS and
US follow each other in close
succession

25.  Modeling
– a method used in certain
techniques of psychotherapy
whereby the client learns by
imitation alone, without any
specific verbal direction by the
therapist

26. Burrhus Frederic
Skinner

27. B. F. Skinner
 Was born in Susquehanna,
Pennsylvania
 He received his master’s degree
in 1930 and his Ph.D. in 1931
from Harvard University

28. B. F. Skinner
 His B.A. degree was obtained
from Hamilton College in New
York, where he majored in
English
 He was a highly prolific writer.
One of his main concerns was to
relate his laboratory findings to

29. Major
Theoretical
Concepts

30. Radical Behaviorism
 The scientific orientation
rejects scientific
language and
interpretations that refer
to mentalistic events.

31. Radical Behaviorism
 observable and measurable
aspects of the environment
of an organism’s behavior,
and of the consequences of
that behavior are the critical
material for scientific
scrutiny

32. Respondent & Operant Behavior
 2 Kinds of Behavior
1. Respondent behavior –
elicited by a known stimuli
Ex. Unconditioned responses – reflexes,
such as jerking one’s hand when jabbed
with a pin or the constriction of the eye
when exposed to bright light

33. Respondent & Operant Behavior
 2 Kinds of Behavior
2. Operant behavior – not
elicited by a known stimulus
but is simply emitted by the
organism
Ex. Most of our everyday activities are operant
behaviors.
Beginning to whistle, standing up and walking
about

34. Type S and Type R Conditioning
 2 Kinds of Conditioning
1. Type S or Respondent
conditioning – identical to
classical conditioning.
Emphasize the importance
of the stimulus in eliciting the
desired response. The
strength of conditioning is
shown by magnitude of the CR.
Similar
to
Pavlov’s
Classical
Condi -
tioning

35. Type S and Type R Conditioning
 2 Kinds of Behavior
2. Type R or Operant
Conditioning – involves
operant behavior. The
strength of conditioning is
shown by response rate.
Similar to Thorndike’s Instrumental
Conditioning

36. Skinner on Reinforcement
 2 General Principles are
associated with Type R
Conditioning
1. Any response that is followed
by a reinforcing stimulus tends
to be repeated
2. A reinforcing stimulus is
anything that increases the
rate with which an operant
response occurs

37. Skinner on Reinforcement
 Contingent Reinforcement
– the organism must respond
in such a way as to produce the
reinforcing stimulus
Skinner defined culture as a set of
reinforcement contingencies

38. The Skinner Box
 Small test chamber
 Usually has a grid
floor, light, lever and
food cup.
 It is arranged so that
when the animal
depresses the lever,
the feeder mechanism
is activated, and a
small pellet of food is
released into the food

39. Cummulative Recording
 Keep track on an
animal’s behavior in
the Skinner box
 Quite different from
other ways of graphing
data in learning
experiments.
 Time  x-axis
 total no. of responses -
> y-axis

40. Conditioning the Lever-Pressing
Response
Typically, conditioning the lever-pressing
response involves the following steps:
1. Deprivation
- is simply a set of procedures that is
related to how an organism performs on a
certain task; nothing more needs to be said.

41. Conditioning the Lever-Pressing
Response
Typically, conditioning the lever-pressing
response involves the following steps:
2. Magazine Training
- the experimenter uses an external hand
switch and periodically triggers the
feeder mechanism (magazine).

42. Conditioning the Lever-Pressing
Response
Typically, conditioning the lever-pressing
response involves the following steps:
3. Lever Pressing
- the animal can be left in the Skinner box
on its own.

43. Shaping
• Placing the deprived animal in the
Skinner box and simply leave it there.
The animal either learns or dies.
• 2 components:
1. differential reinforcement
- some responses are reinforced and
others are not
2. successive approximation
- only those responses that become
increasingly similar to the one the
experimenter wants are reinforced

44. Secondary
Reinforcement
• Any neutral stimulus paired
with a primary reinforcer (eg
food or water) takes on
reinforcing properties of its
own

45. Generalized Reinforcers
• A secondary reinforcer that
has been paired with more
than one primary reinforcer.
ex. money is a generalized reinforcer
because it is ultimately associated with
any number of primary reinforcers.

46. Chaining
• One response can bring the
organism into contact with
stimuli that act as a
Secondary Stimulus for
another response, which in
turn causes it to experience
stimuli that cause a third

47. Primary Positive Reinforcement
• This is something that is naturally
reinforcing to the organism such
as food, water, and is related to
survival
• Any neutral stimulus associated
with primary positive reinforcement
takes on positive secondary

48. Primary Positive Reinforcement
• A positive reinforcer, either primary
and secondary, is something that,
when added to the situation by a
certain response, increases the
probability of that response’s
recurrence.

49. Primary Negative Reinforcement
• is something naturally harmful to
the organism such as an aversive
loud tone or an electric shock.
• Any neutral stimulus associated
with a primary negative reinforcer
takes on secondary negative
reinforcing characteristics.

50. Primary Negative Reinforcement
• A negative reinforcer, either
primary or secondary, is
something that, when removed
from the situation by a certain
response, increases the probability
of that response’s recurrence

51. Punishment
• Occurs when a response removes something
positive from the situation or adds something
negative. In everyday language we can say that
punishment is either taking away something an
organism wants, or giving it something it does not
want. In either case, the outcome of the response
temporarily decreases the probability of
recurrence of that response… it does not
decrease the probability of a response. Although
punishment suppresses a response as long as it
is applied, it does not weaken the habit. Skinner
(1971) said.