Behaviorism at 100: Over its second 50 years, the study of behavior evolved to become a discipline
The study of the human condition is complex. Psychology attempts to connect the mind to behavior (That is the really, really short version). Behaviorism espouses the belief that behavior, emotions and thinking itself are behaviors and can be influenced and changed with various types of conditioning only (Think BF Skinner, Pavlov, etc.)
Of course, human behavior cannot be reduced to a single dogma or school of thought. We are all different, we all respond to universal and unique stimuli. Still, we are all unique and while reinforcing behaviors have clear influence on us (nurture) there is no question we are each in possession of certain inborn characteristics (nature).
The article below examines the growth, evolution and limitations of Behaviorism and further examines and explores the nature/nurture discussion.
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Behaviorism as a philosophy of science began with an article by John B. Watson in 1913, and its several varieties inform different behavior-related disciplines. During the past 100 years, disciplinary developments have led to a clarified version of behaviorism informing a basic, separate natural science of behavior. This recently emerged independent discipline not only complements other natural sciences, but also shares in solving local and global problems by showing how to discover and effectively control the variables that unlock solutions to the common behavior-related components of these problems.
In 1963, B. F. Skinner published “Behaviorism at 50,” reviewing the varieties of behaviorism and the directions of natural behavior science. (The 1957 article reproduced nearby covers many of those topics.) By the 1960s common wisdom held that the experimentally discovered laws of behavior were largely irrelevant to normal human beings; instead, they were thought applicable mostly to treating psychotic individuals and to training animals. Skinner challenged that notion on scientific as well as philosophical grounds, and data accumulating over the next 50 years have validated his position that the natural laws governing behavior are relevant to all behavior of human beings and other animals. The 1960s were also a time when natural scientists of behavior were continuing their attempts to change psychology, the discipline in which many worked, into a natural science. Over the next 50 years, as recognition increased that resistance to those efforts was adamant, natural scientists of behavior gradually took their discipline outside psychology, founding a separate and independent natural science that some recognized formally in 1987 using the name behaviorology. That name is synonymous with “the natural science of behavior” and is conveniently shorter.
With behaviorism turning 100 in 2013, a review of those developments, and their implications for other natural sciences and today’s world, seems appropriate. The natural science of behavior can elevate the status of the natural sciences, lead to solving more human problems, reduce susceptibility to superstition and mysticism (both theological and secular), and improve human intellectuality, rationality and emotionality.