Behaviorism Research Paper

Running Head: BEHAVIORISM IS NOT THOUGHTS THAT COUNTS.

Behaviorism is not the thought that counts Abstract Behaviorism was the third school of thought that manifested in the year of 1913 mainly because of the Structuralisms and Functionalists’ mindset that introspection and mind/consciousness was the main reason on how our minds work mechanically. One of the main persons responsible for the Behaviorism movement was John B. Watson who felt a need to restructure Psychology into a scientific psychology on the basis that behavior could be observed through stimulus and response methods and could be proven by experiments.Other schools of thought felt strong about the consciousness influenced our behavior as well and how we thought and with the help of Behaviorism and its theorists it changed how theorist saw Psychology as well as improved it.

Introduction Behaviorism started off very definitely and consciously as a "school," opposed to the supposedly dominant school of structuralism, and to functionalism as represented by William James and the Chicago group (Woodworth, 1948). The debate of how Psychology was of the conscious mind functioned and how it was measured scientifically was the reason behaviorism was introduced as a new school of thought.Behaviorism began in the late 1800’s mostly due to the rebuttal of Structuralism’s Introspection and Functionalist’s Mind, Soul and Consciousness theories in regards to how the brain psychology. It was not observed nor was it able to be recorded scientifically.

Behaviorists disagreed with these two schools of thoughts because if there was a behavior that was the result of the situation that behavior could be recorded and well as conditioned and if experimented the results would always come out the same because the brain was considered a machine and given the situation would always behave the same way because of the environment.Animal Psychology was the beginnings of Behavioral Psychology despite the protest that humans being were not the same. Individual behavior of action regardless of animal or human beings had the same basic instinct in situations and it was considered animalistic and when placed in an environment where behavior was recorded then the basic reaction would be recorded and be similar to each other. There were many contributors that helped develop Behaviorism and these psychologists-physiologists inputted their theories and experimental data of the observance of animal behavior.Many believe that the reaction in animal behavior was involuntary more like a reaction/reflex to the situation placed in and that their observable behavior the direct result of the automatic response given to the stimulus. In certain situations it seemed that consciousness would still play a role in behavior however it wasn’t consciousness that was the driving force.

Behaviorists had to find a way to separate the consciousness from the study of animals to prove that it was not the internal mind thought process or consciousness that drove the outcome of a specific behavior.There were laboratories set up to study animals and the study of animals which later became known as Comparative Psychology in where the animal’s behavior would be the basis of studying human behavior. It was difficult to continue Comparative psychology because it did not have many supporters in the early 1900’s and many animal psychologists could not find employment to continue their experiments.During the early 1900’s many Psychologists set out to prove that behavior was different in Germany than mental or conscious theories, the American Psychologists were also trying to experiment on human subjects but were not allowed to because it was against the rules worldwide. Despite the fact that it studies in animals grew and since animals were compared the same as human behavior , animal psychologists set out to compare their findings to prove their point and continued to study animal behavior.There were many experiments conducted with animals that exhibited behavior by stimulus and response experiments and once their behavior was controlled the same stimulus was introduced to see if the same response (behavior) was repeated, this behavior was recorded and published in Animal Psychology Journals.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936). Was very influential in the beginnings of behaviorism with his work on studying glandular secretions at the timulus-response theory and conducted experiments on animals on their behavior and attempted to show behavior by controlling the stimulus. Pavlov Introduced Conditioned reflexes, which suggested that consciousness was not necessary to study in psychology (Roback, 1923) Pavlov’s experiments were that the animal’s secretions were collected when the stimulus was introduced then compared to other secretions to see if there was a difference in saliva secretion from other types of stimulus introduced.To ensure that his theory of conditioned reflex was reliable; Pavlov created a closed private area to the experimenter and the animal so not even the experimenter could influence the animals behavior therefore ensuring the experiment was reliable and that the animal was not influenced by outside influence to include the experimenter as well. With all the findings in animal psychology there was still a resistance to the behaviorism reaching its full potential.

Behaviorism almost did not become a school of thought because it did not prove scientifically that behavior was separate from consciousness and that it was different from the views of Structuralisms and Functionalist’s findings, it was also becoming unpopular because of it until John B. Watson became involved. “Behavior is a wide term”, (Bode, 1914) stated when debating about introspection and the consciousness when the behaviorist made their point regarding and experimenting within observable behavior. John B.

Watson did not agree because he felt that Introspection formed no essential part in his methods nor was it scientific in terms of consciousness when it came to behavior, (Watson, 1914). Psychology as the behaviorist viewed (Watson, 1994) was a purely objective experimental branch of natural science and it could be to put it differently, that behaviorism faced in the right direction when it insisted that psychology was a science of adaptive behavior (Bode, 1922). Watson's published in a book called Behavior: A Textbook of Comparative Psychology, (Watson, 1914), this book would eventually come to be known as the 'Behaviorist Manifesto. (Wonziak, 1997). Generations of psychologists, reared in a post-Watsonian discipline that defined itself as the "Science of Behavior," would be taught that Watson was the Father of Behaviorism and that February 24, 1913 was the day on which modern Behaviorism had been born (Wonziak, 1997).

Watson main focus was that Psychology needed to accept animal psychology as well as human psychology and that with that acceptance and that ultimately consciousness/mind be taken out of the equation all together in Psychology because there was no room for how the situation influence common sense actions (Watson, 1919).He goes on to state that the human’s ability to deal with their situation is the result of Stimulus – Response in their environment and that not everyone’s behavior is going to be the same because behavior is dependent on the individual, however that the lowest basic behavior form would be present and was observable and that most would feel some sort of neurological outcome (response), dependent of stimulus. Watson experimented on adults as well as children; he used the same techniques that he had used on his animal studies.His Stimulus – Response studies had a flaw whereas you could not control spontaneous behavior (Moore, 2011).

Other theorists began to alter the S-R to control behavior reliability in experiment which resulted in the birth of Neo-Behaviorism during the 1930’s. Watson also conducted tests with Pavlov’s Condition Reflex; he decided to use this style to replace introspection to observe behavior that was conditioned in ways to analyze the behavior response, there was no difference between animal or human test results recorded.Watson studies in behavior opened the doors as well to others behavioral approaches such as how humans and animals comparison was not equal because humans environment , genetic make-up influenced their behavior it was not just all neurological but learned and conditioned behavior, he also accepted that instinct could also play a role in behavior even though his opinion was that instinct is plays a part that come from the conditioning reflex (Watson, 1914).Although Watson left Behaviorism because of his negatively publicized personal life, he still wanted to stay involved as a behaviorist and even though he was the main supporter of Behaviorism his accomplishments had influence other psychologists so the development of Behaviorism as a school of thought continued to flourish in the Psychology arena, because of other heorists who agreed that animals and human behavior was more important than what consciousness and Introspection offered at the time, Watson’s contribution although criticized by other theorists to include Marybeth Calkins (1913) in her review of Watson’s Journal of as a Psychology as the behaviorists views it, (1994) paper she interjected that the “Self” , was just as important as the behavior. Theorists of other fields of Psychology developed from Humanistic and Cognitive Psychology were influence by Watson’s Behaviorist theories.

Theorists also believed that you could not have behavior without consciousness or the internal thinking, (automatic behavior that makes human thought seem mechanical) that leads to such behavior regardless of the criticisms’; Watson opened the doors to other fields of Psychology of science in regard to how the consciousness had nothing to do with the acting out of an action caused a reaction be it from S-R Response experiments to Classical/Operant Conditioning experiments. (e) One to three summary paragraphs where you summarize the findings of your paper; f) One to three "implications" paragraphs in which you describe the importance of this research References Bode, B. H. (1914). Psychology as a science of behavior.

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