Behaviorism: Antecedent Influences

July 20, 2010

Outline of the Topic: Behaviorism

• Behaviorism: Antecedent Influences
o The Story of Clever Hans
 Animal Psychology Study of Behaviors
o Toward a Science of Behavior
o The Influence of Animal Psychology on Behaviorism
 Jacques Loeb (1859-1924)
 Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind
o Important People to Largely Influence Behaviorism
 Edward Lee Thorndike
• Life
• Connectionism
• The Puzzle Box
• Laws of Learning
 Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov
• Life
• Conditioned Reflexes
• E.B. Twitmeyer
 Vladimir M. Bekhterev
• Associated Reflexes
o The Influence of Functional Psychology on Behaviorism

• Behaviorism: The Beginnings

• Behaviorism: After the Founding

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Review

Major Philosophical Bases

• Positivism- recognizes only natural phenomena or facts that are objectively observable.
• Reductionism- explanation of larger phenomena can be explained when reduced into
simple components.
• Empiricism- The pursuit of knowledge through the observation of nature and attribution
of all knowledge to experience; knowledge through experience and nothing else.
• Materialism- universe can only be explained in physical terms and by properties of
matter and energy.
• Determinism- Acts are determined by past experiences; past events shape thoughts
• Mechanism-Man’s actions are like machines, image of the universe as a great machine,
natural processes are mechanically determined and capable of explanation by physics
and chemistry
• Mentalism- all knowledge is a function of mental phenomena and dependent on the
experience of the perceiving or experiencing person.

*Reflex-Action Theory: Rene Descartes

• Bodily movements frequently occur without a person’s conscious intention
• “undulatio reflexa” (in which an external object or a stimulus brings about an
involuntary response. Reflexive behavior involves no thought or cognitive process as it
appears to be completely mechanical or automatic.
Major Schools of Thought

• Structuralism: (E.B. Titchener) structure or elements of consciousness and experience,

“introspection”
• Functionalism: (William James) functions rather than the components of consciousness;
phenomena and conditions; applicability of psychology to natural setting; goal of
psychology is not the discovery of the elements of experience but the study of living
people as they adapt to the environment.

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Behaviorism: Antecedent Influences

The Story of Clever Hans: The Wonder Horse

• Berlin, Germany, 1900: owned and trained by Wilhelm von Osten, a retired Math
teacher
• Numerical Reasoning ability equivalent to that of a typical 14-old boy
• Scene: was asked to count the gentlemen wearing straw hats= distinguished between
straw hats worn by ladies.
• Goal: to prove that Darwin was correct in suggesting that human and animals have the
same mental processes.
• Von Osten: the only reason that animals appear to be less intelligent is because they
have not been given sufficient education.
• Scandalous during that time: trickery involved?

Toward A Science of Behavior

• 2nd decade of the 20th Century (40 year after Wundt): not all of the psychologists agree
on the value of introspection, the existence of mental elements, and psychology as a
pure science (unacceptable at Leipzig and Cornell)
• Looking back at the functionalism: did not deliberately attack the establishment of
Wundt and Titchener, but modified it, added a bit, so that after some years, a new form
of psychology emerged. The functionalist built their positions on the past.
(functionalism was maturing, while structuralism maintained a strong but not exclusive
position)
• 1913: a deliberate break from these 2 positions: revolutionary movement was called
Behaviorism by John Watson (35y/o) who received his PhD from functionalism’s Angell
(Univ. of Chicago)
• Basic Tenets of Watson’s Behaviorism
o Scientific psychology that dealt only with the observable behavioral acts that
could be described objectively through terms such as stimulus and response
(What philosophical bases: positivism, mechanism)
o Rejects all mentalistic concepts and terms
o Consciousness have absolutely no value for behavioral psychology
(consciousness=old concept of the soul)
o MAJOR FORCES WATSON EFFECTIVELY BROUGHT TOGETHER TO FORM HIS
SYSTEM OF BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGY: Objectivism and Mechanism, Animal
Psychology, and Functional Psychology
o Viewed humans as machines
The Influence of Animal Psychology on Behaviorism

• Watson: “Behaviorism is a direct outgrowth of studies in animal behavior during the 1st
decade of the 20th century.

• Animal Psychology grew out of evolutionary theory and led attempts to demonstrate:
1. Existence of mind in lower organisms
2. Continuity between the animal and the human mind

• Jacques Loeb
o German physiologist and zoologist
o Significant step towards greater objectivity in animal psychology is credited to
him
o Developed a theory of animal behavior based on TROPISM: an involuntary forced
movement.
 An animal’s reaction to a stimulus in direct and automatic, thus forced by
a stimulus and does not require explanation of the alleged consciousness.
o Although his work represented the most objective approach to animal
psychology, Loeb did not reject consciousness in animals that were high on the
evolutionary scale, such as humans.
 Animal consciousness was revealed by ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY: animals
had learned to react to certain stimuli in a desirable way (e.g.: animal
responds to sound when it means getting food--- shows mental
connection)
o Connection: Watson took courses with Loeb at the University of Chicago, showed
curiosity about Loeb’s mechanistic views, but was somehow stopped by Angell
and HH Donaldson, a neurologist.

• Rats, Ants, and the Animal Mind

o Robert Yerkes: Started in 1900, using a variety of animals. His research
strengthened the position and influence of comparative psychology.
o Willard S. Small: 1900 in Clark University
 Introduced the “rat maze” which became the standard method for the
study of learning.
 Still, consciousness continued to intrude in animal psychology, as Small
used “ideas” and “images” in interpreting the rat’s behavior (mentalistic
concepts)
o Watson’s doctoral dissertation: “Animal Education: The Psychical Development
of the White Rat”. Until 1907, he was discussing conscious experience in rats.
o Charles Henry Turner (African American)
 Ph.D. magna cum laude in zoology from the University of Chicago
 1906, published an article, “A Preliminary Note on Animal Behavior”
 Watson reviewed it for a journal Psychological Bulletin
 In his review, Watson used the word behavior, from Turner’s title
o 1910: 8 comparative psychology laboratories had been established (Clark,
Harvard, Chicago).
o Other universities offered coursed in the field (Cornell, animal psychology).
 Margaret Floy Washburn: taught Animal Psychology and published, “The
Animal Mind”(1908), 1st comparative psychology textbook published.
o Obstacles: was not easy to be an animal psychologist
 Less funding: no practical value, no relation to practical public service
 Students of Yerkes sought jobs in applied fields
  Most expendable faculty; in times of hardship, animal psychologists were
likely the first to be fired.
 Watson: no place to keep the animals and no funds to run the menagerie
if we have the place.
 1908: only 6 animal studies were published in psychology journals
 1909: APA Meeting= only 9 animal psychologists
 Catell’s American Men in Science in 1910= 6 out of 218 psychologists are
active in animal research.
o 1911: beginning of the “Journal of Animal Behavior” (Journal of Comparative
Psychology)
o 1906: lecture of Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist, was published in the journal
“Science”= American audience
o 1909: Psychological Bulletin- Pavlov’s methods by Yerkes and a student
o Greater objectivity-supported by the events in Germany in 1904
 The year the government established a committee to investigate Clever
Hans’ powers (circus manager, vet, horse trainers, an aristocrat, director
of Berlin Zoo, and psychologist Carl Stumpf from the Univ. of Berlin).
 September 1904: No fraud, no deceit… (but Stumpf was not satisfied)
 Task was assigned to a student, Oskar Pfungst, who carefully approached
the task through experimental psychology.
• People who knew answers and people who did not
• Hans was receiving cues, and been unintentionally conditioned by
his owner. Hans did not have a storehouse of knowledge.
• Von Osten- reinforced Hans through sugar lumps or carrots, after
some time, he no longer has to reinforce every correct behavior.
(BF Skinner- effectiveness of partial and intermittent reinforcement)
• Von Osten was devastated and cursed Hans (attributed intelligence)
 Value of Hans case= necessity of experimental approach to the study of
behavior.
 Pfungst’s report on Hans was reviewed by Watson for the Journal of
Comparative Neurology and Psychology)

Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949)

- Interpret learning in terms of concrete connections between stimuli and responses
- Provide an example of independent simultaneous discovery—Thorndike’s Law of
Effect (1898) and Pavlov’s similar Law of Reinforcement in 1902.

• Life
o Received all of his education in the U.S. (significant that this was possible)
o Interest was awakened when he read James’ “The Principles of Psychology”
(later studied under James in Harvard University)
o Planned to conduct research on children, but was forbidden, so he chose chicks
instead (difficulty housing his chicks, helped by James)
o Did not complete his study in Harvard, continued at Columbia University under
Cattell
o 1898: “Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes
of Animals” (1st doctoral dissertation to use animal subjects)
o Became an instructor in psychology in Teachers College in Columbia University
(worked with human subjects on learning, children, and young people)
o Educational Psychology and Mental Testing
o 1910: founded the Journal of Educational Psychology
o 1912: president of APA
o 1924: annual income of 70,000
 o 50 years in Columbia University-most productive in the history of psychology=
507 items listed on his biography.
o Retired in 1939

• Connectionism
o Connection between situations and responses
o Varying strength between:
 Situations, elements of situations, and compounds of situations
 Responses, readiness to respond, facilitation, inhibitions, and directions of
responses
o Learning is connecting. The mind is man’s connection system. (Direct extension
of the older philosophical notion of association, only that Thorndike was dealing
with connections between verifiable situations and responses).
o Continued to invoke mental processes: annoyance, discomfort, satisfaction
o In spite of a mentalistic tinge, Thorndike’s approach was indeed mechanistic=
stimulus-response units.

• The Puzzle Box

o Designed and built puzzle boxes for his research on animal learning
 Animals have to learn to operate a latch to escape from the box (from
Morgan and Romanes).
 Deprived Cat Experiment: random behaviors first, then accidentally
opened the door. On subsequent trials, random behaviors were less
frequent, until learning was complete.
 Use of quantitative measures: log of wrong behaviors, time elapsed before
the cat escaped.
 Stamping In: behaviors that lead to success
 Stamping Out: unsuccessful responses (disappear)
 Trial and Error Learning/ Trial and Accidental Success (Thorndike)

• Laws of Learning
o Law of Effect
 Act that produces satisfaction becomes associated with the situation
 Act that produces discomfort becomes disassociated with the situation, so
that if the situation recurs, the act is less likely to occur.
o Law of Exercise or the Law of Use and Disuse
 The more the response is used in the situation, the more strongly it
becomes associated with it.
 Prolonged disuse of the response tends to weaken the association.
o Further researches persuaded Thorndike that satisfactory results (rewards) of
the response are more effective than merely repeating the response.
o Upon reexamination of the law of effect, Thorndike’s results revealed that:
 Rewarding a response indeed strengthen it but
 Punishing a response did not produce a comparable negative effect
(greater emphasis on rewards than punishment).

• Comment
o Contributions
 Objective spirit=important contribution to behaviorism
 One of Psychology’s Most influential figures: signaled a shift from
speculation to experimentation

Ivan Petrovitch Pavlov (1849-1936)

 - Shift associationism from its subjective to objective and quantifiable physiological
events (glandular secretions and muscular movements).

• Life
o Central Russia, eldest among 11- early sense of responsibility and drive to work
hard.
o Entered theological seminary but changed his mind after reading Darwin
o Attended St. Petersburg to study animal psychology, a several hundred miles far.
o “Intelligentsia” (too intelligent for peasantry, but too poor and common for
aristocracy)
o Degree- 1875 and pursued physiological research
o Not distracted by salary, clothing, or living conditions (1890, child died due to
finances)
o Kept no money for him, but spent the funds for dogs in his laboratory.
o 1897-1936---150 researches worked under his supervision and direction,
producing 500 scientific papers (whole lab like a mechanism of the clock)
o Pavlov’s temper (no gunfires, insults, congratulate both assistants and dogs), but
was treated like a royalty by his students
o Dogs: unfortunate fate but unavoidable in scientific research (statue of a dog)
o Relationship with the Soviet Union was difficult—wrote protest letters to Stalin,
the tyrannical dictator who killed and exiled millions. Even so, the government
was generous to him.
o Remained a scientist to the last—Self-observation whenever he was ill (My brain
is not working well, obsessive feelings and involuntary movements appear,
mortification may be setting in. It is time to get up! Help me, I must dress!”)

o During his career, Pavlov worked on 3 major problems:

o Function of the nerves of the heart
o Primary digestive glands
o Conditioned reflexes
 Accidental discovery (dog salivating involuntarily when food is placed
on their mouth, but sometimes flowed even before the food was given
—upon sight of food or footsteps of the feeder).
 Reflexes that are conditional on the association or connection between
the stimulus and response

 Psychic Reflexes
• Mentalistic experiences
• Reaction formed because other stimuli (footsteps and mere sight of
the attendant) were so often associated with feeding
• Credit to Rene Descartes 300 years ago
• Dog Situation
o When food is placed on its mouth, salivating is a reflex of the
digestive system (innate or unconditional reflex)
o Salivating at the sight of the food is not reflexive but must be
learned, dependent on the dog’s association (conditional
reflex)
o “conditioned reflex” by WH Gantt
o Thorough method- equipment to collect the saliva (limits
errors)

o The Tower of Silence

  Another prevention of outside influences to interfere with the reliability of
the research
 Special cubicles, where feeder cannot be seen by the animal
 Extra thick glass, double steel doors, steel girders, straw filled moat- X
vibration, noise, temp extremes, odors and drafts.

o A Conditioning Experiment
 An unconditioned stimulus-food
 Conditioned stimulus-light
 Animal will salivate with the light alone, given that marami ang times na
nasundan ng pagkain ang ilaw (reinforcement).
Reinforcement: something that increases the likelihood of a response

• Comment on Pavlov
o Basic element of “behavior”—a workable unit
o Greater objectivity in subject matter and method and reinforced the trend
toward practical and functional applications.
o Referred to himself as an experimental psychologist (a turn point from his old
psychology as a pure science stand).
• Other Influences
o E.B. Twitmeyer (Edwin Burket Twitmeyer)-Knee-jerk reflex (research findings
ignored)
o Alois Kreil- goldfish
o Vladimir M. Bekhterev (1857-1927)
 Summoned to examine the dictator Stalin- paranoia
 Associated Reflexes- elicited not only by unconditioned stimuli but also by
stimuli that was associated with the unconditioned stimuli (ex: buzzer—
shock---buzzer---withdrawal of finger)

The Influence of Functional Psychology on Behaviorism

• Direct antecedent of behaviorism- functionalism (with greater objectivity like
Catell)
• Little use for introspection
• Cattell- Grandfather of Behaviorism; Watson- Father of Behaviorism
• Psychology as the science of behaviors.