Behavioral psychology

behavioral psychology is a current of psychology with three levels of scientific organization that complement and feed each other: behaviorism, experimental analysis of behavior, and behavior engineering. The latter in turn includes a whole range of technological applications, both in the field of therapy and behavior modification.

Behaviourism

It is the special philosophy of psychology as a behavioral science, understanding behavior as the historically constructed interaction between the individual and their physical, biological, and social environment. Thus, it covers cognitive, emotional, sensory and motor traits.

Special philosophy is a philosophy of praxis. As such, it arises from the very tasks of psychological work and is in charge of discussing the assumptions, extensions and possibilities of its theoretical and applied domain, as well as establishing a position and promoting a non-reductionist attitude (neither biologist nor mentalist) to seek solutions. to the problems of the discipline that is to say the language (radical behaviourism).

Behaviourism depends on a general philosophy of science in psychology, a matter that is not yet fully elucidated. Ontologically what is defining is monistic materialism and determinism. Epistemologically for post-Skinnerian behaviorists the philosophy is "contextualism", which considers behavior as "act in context". In other words, it occurs within the framework of a certain circumstance whose analysis cannot be ignored. From this point of view contextualism is a form of selectionist pragmatism. For interbehaviorists, analytical philosophy is important. Primarily seminal in the works of Gilbert Ryle and the second Ludwig Wittgenstein. Some dialectical materialism can also be recognized here in the works of Emilio Ribes. Regarding conceptions about scientific evolution, some cite Laudan (gradual evolutions) as opposed to Kuhn (revolutions). On the other hand, Arthur W. Staats speaks of "unified positivism" (post-positivism).

In any of the cases, all the philosophical aspects indicated have clear differences with logical positivism, insofar as they recognize a prominent role in the social conformation of the environment and of the individual. Likewise, they differ from mechanism, considering in the analysis complex interrelationships of interacting variables.

Experimental analysis of behavior

It is behavioral psychology, where the categories, analytical units, parameters, research paradigms, and the laws and principles involved in data management are formulated. It is worth noting here the equations that cover the entire organismic and situational spectrum that is implicit or explicit in a behavioral episode. The best known of these equations is the one included in the formula: K = f [E,O,R,C], which means that a segment of behavior at a given moment (K) is a function (f) of the interrelationships established between stimulus (E), organismic-dispositional (O), response factors or respondent and operant response classes (R), and the consequences that strengthen the latter (C).

The central research paradigms deployed are those of classical conditioning and operant conditioning, as well as their various combinations and forms of presentation. These paradigms are equivalent to the "exemplary" of Kuhn, since from its basic modes of empirical occurrence laws, theories, applications and instrumentation come off together. Thanks to research in these areas, a large number of regularities have been obtained that lead to the formulation of application principles (such as reinforcement, extinction, punishment and counterconditioning). Some non-radical behaviorist approaches are purely methodological (E-R strands), and others besides that are only partially behavioral (E-O-R strands).

Behavioral Engineering

It involves the technological: all those procedural elaborations that, linked in some way to the basic research paradigms and their combinations, have been developed as effective applications. It can be defined as "the application of scientific knowledge for the elaboration, improvement and management of techniques of establishment, maintenance or elimination of behaviors".

This assumes that human behavior (whether cognitive-linguistic, emotional-motivational or motor-sensory) can be legally described, and that its operations of evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of problems resort to the tentative management of said regularities.

Behavioral engineering is often identified with the label of Applied Behavior Analysis, a set of actions through which the psychologist applies in different contexts, and to solve socially relevant problems from the knowledge provided by the experimental analysis of behavior.

History

Darwinian studies on the evolution of species and those of experimental physiology at the end of the XIX century, sponsored, along with the materialistic philosophy, the appearance of forms of thought more advanced with respect to the human sciences.

In 1879, Wundt created the first scientific psychology laboratory. Through introspection, and a historical study, he managed to create a base from which he approached psychology from a behavioral point of view. It should be noted that Wundt does not belong to the behaviorist school, since he was prior to it.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Watson proclaimed observable behavior as the object of study of psychology, more specifically the connections between stimuli and responses that give rise to behavior. His approaches were mainly influenced by the work of the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov.

Over time, two large types of behavioral variants arose that made the approach more complex: a radical one and a methodological or mediational one. The first of them (developed by B. F. Skinner) focused on the functional relationships that organisms establish with their environment in relation to the law of effect, that is, on the way in which the consequences of what we do regulate the emission of the future behavior (operant behavior). The second (developed by Hull and Tolman among others), based on conditioned reflexes, introduced an intervening factor (or variable) that could be neurophysiological or mental, depending on the case.

In the mid-1950s, the defections and rearrangements of influential behaviorists such as G. A. Miller, J. Bruner, and C. Pribram, and, among other things, the opening of Ch. Osgood to psycholinguistics, produced a serious split that it culminated in the detachment of the so-called cognitive psychology, which worsened with the criticism of the linguist Noam Chomsky of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior (a reply by K. MacCorquodale to Chomsky distorts said criticism).

From then on, adversaries and neophytes began to speak of a "crisis" of behaviorism and its supposed replacement as the "dominant paradigm" within psychology. However, paradoxically, it is in the decades of the 60s and 70's. in which a large number of techniques and applied works hatch in the areas of therapy and behavior modification, both groupable within the category of "behavioral engineering" due to the connection between stimulus control technologies (respondent base) and contingency management technologies (operant base). Already in the 80's there is an even more impressive emergence of techniques that, under the heading of behavioral, behavioral-cognitive, cognitive-behavioral and contextual, become essential to work on various problems.

At the same time, a large number of behavioral theoretical variants have emerged that up to the present are still valid, addressing complex behavior, language and personality in various ways, adhering to scientific coordinates.

Summarizing, based on the studies of Ivan Pavlov (conditional reflex) and Thorndike (law of effect), John B. Watson is the founder of behaviorism, continuing in the next generation B.F. Skinner (operant behaviorism), J. R. Kantor (interbehaviorism), Clark Hull and Edward C. Tolman (mediational behaviorism), E. Ribes and Josep Roca i Balasch (field behaviorism), A. W. Staats (psychological behaviorism), S. C. Hayes currently stand out (relational framework theory), H. Rachlin (teleological behaviorism) and J. Staddon (theoretical behaviorism) within radical behaviorism; H. J. Eysenck and J. Wolpe (E-R approaches) within methodological behaviorism; as well as A. Ellis, Aaron T. Beck (cognitive behavioral approach), Arnold A. Lazarus (multimodal approach) and A. Bandura (sociocognitive approach) within E-O-R behaviorism.

Applications

Research papers on the principles of learning are the frame of reference on which multiple behavior engineering technologies have been developed, such as Behavior Therapy, Behavior Modification, Applied Behavior Analysis, and even some forms of heterodox that incorporate other theoretical and philosophical notions (behavioral-cognitive and cognitive-behavioral therapies).

Thanks to them, it is possible to treat an immense variety of problems in the clinical, educational, community and organizational fields, health, sports, emergencies, gerontology and psychopathology, among others, with efficacy rates reasonably high. It should be noted that the subjects of intervention can be both individuals and couples, as well as social and family groups.

Among the many techniques available are those of contingency management and exposure in vivo (eg, positive reinforcement, shaping, extinction, positive and negative punishment, spillover, token economy, etc.), exposure in fantasy (covert reinforcement, stress inoculation, systematic desensitization and others), training in self-regulation of competencies (self-control, anxiety management, social skills, etc.), and rational restructuring (eg conflict resolution, acceptance and commitment, self-instructional training, etc.). It is noteworthy that the most complex techniques —in which language and the so-called "cognitive" repertoires usually intervene— include the procedures used by the simplest ones.

For some time the Clinical Psychology Division of the APA (American Psychological Association) has evaluated the efficacy of psychological treatments. These studies show a great predominance of behavioral techniques in empirically validated treatment guides.

Criticism

The criticisms of behavioral psychology as a whole can be categorized into five groups:

I. It ignores the existence of the unconscious, the feelings and states of the mind. It does not assign a role to the personality, the I or the "self". It does not give rise to freedom, will or intentionality.

II. It does not attempt to explain cognitive processes, intuition, information, or the creative process. View the subject as a passive receiver.

III. It is mechanistic: it conceives the psychological as a set of responses to stimuli. It neglects the innate endowment and the role of the nervous system, which is a reductionist way of looking at the human being that does not pay attention to its complexity.

IV. He is out of step with the current development of science. He works with animals, assimilating their behavior to humans. His applications are degrading (rewards, punishments) and even brutal (electric shocks, vomiting, etc.).

V. It is operationalist: it identifies phenomena with essences. It is an imported ideology, at the service of power, which maintains psychology as a natural science, not concerned with social phenomena.

General Answers

From the behaviorist point of view, it is noted that most of the criticisms reviewed are possibly based on:

a) Misunderstandings due to ignorance of the original behaviorist theses, or due to misunderstanding of the scientific terminology used to describe the human being.

b) Quotes taken out of context, or through simplifications of what "someone heard or read that someone else said", etc.

c) Antipathies typical of antagonistic positions regarding the conceptualization of psychology as a behavioral science.

d) Expositions that are not very elaborate, or biased only in a certain sense, by some of the behavioral popularizers themselves, which are taken as if they were descriptive of a general doctrinal point of view.

And it is indicated that, even if some criticisms are valid, they may be applicable to certain behavioral models and not necessarily to others.

Contemporary behaviorists respond to this in the following ways:

• Both the first and the second group of criticisms confuse "study in another way" (which is the proper way of conductism) with "not study". In fact, behavioral psychology has its own concepts and methods to address the so-called "states of mind" and cognitive phenomena. The fact is that it uses another language and an interactionist approach, instead of the typical internalistic approach of traditional psychology. There are an immense amount of behavioral publications that deal with these events, and many of them are on line.

• The third group of criticisms ignores that behavioral analysis is based on a complex interaction of variables that come from both the environment and the organism. For example, review the behavioral equations of Kanfer (E-O-R-K-C) and Kantor (fe-fr-hi-ed-md) to realize. In addition, Skinner's radical conductism makes a functionalist analysis of behavior, not mechanistic. That is, it does not base the analysis of the conduct on the consequences of the conduct, but it is considered that it is the interaction between stimuli and responses that shapes the conduct.

• The fourth group of reviews overlooks some objective data. If the behavioral psychology was upset about the current progress we would not be in the Decade of Conduct (2000-2010), Skinner would not have been proclaimed in an APA survey "The most eminent psychologist of the 20th century", and behavioral technology would not be the most recommended by the official bodies of international psychology (among others the American Psychological Association, the British Psychological Society, the American Psychiatric Association and the Sociedad Española de Psicología Clínica y de la Salud), to solve a wide range of psychological problems.

• The fifth group of criticisms has sensitive and open points for discussion, except for the naive sense of "imported ideology" and pretend that there are no social applications. On the contrary, these seem to be the most effective in the discipline (see, e.g., the review of M.D. González (1992). Prosocial behaviour: Evaluation and intervention. Madrid: Morata). It should not be forgotten that "the instrument" (the theory, research and technology) is different from the hand that handles it.

Accusations of pseudo-science

In 1971 B. F. Skinner published his book Beyond Liberty and Dignity. There he argues that human beings are totally determined by environmental contingencies and that behavioral science has made progress in identifying how this process occurs. Therefore, according to Skinner, human freedom and dignity (or moral autonomy) are backward and pre-scientific ideas that must be overcome just as religious superstitions have been overcome.

Skinner argues for "cultural engineering" whereby behavioral scientists control people using contingencies of reinforcement, in order to move towards a better and happier society for all.

This book received some severe criticism for its claim that freedom and dignity are pre-scientific. Such criticisms were made from both the political left and the right.

Left-wing cognitive scientist, linguist, and intellectual Noam Chomsky compared B.F. Skinner's position to racist anthropology of the 19th century, citing the 19th century claim that the Chinese are “an inferior race of malleable Orientals”. Chomsky argued that Skinner's proposal is a generalized version of the pseudo-science of the 19th century, where they are no longer just some races but all human beings who are malleable. According to Chomsky, Skinner offers a particular version of the theory of human malleability. Therefore, far from having scientifically demonstrated that freedom and dignity are illusions, Skinner's would be a pseudo-science.

A similar critique, but this time from economic liberalism, was formulated by Tibor Machan in his book “The pseudo-science of B. F. Skinner” (1974), where he criticizes the idea that individual freedom and dignity do not exist, noting that Skinner naively believes he is speaking from a scientifically and morally neutral position.

During the 1970s, aversion therapy was implemented in England for the treatment of homosexuality (at that time considered a pathology), a behavioral therapy designed by Hans Eysenck. In 1972 gay activist Peter Tatchell protested at a medical symposium where Eysenck was explaining aversion therapy. Tatchell was expelled from the symposium after his protest. Aversion therapy consisted of homosexual men watching erotic images of men while receiving electric shocks, so that they would associate homosexual desire with pain. It is now recognized that this therapy never made gays heterosexual as Eysenck claimed in the 1970s. In fact, it caused chronic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, even causing suicide attempts.

Matthew Colborn in his book Pluralism and the mind (2011) comments:

“Watson had no ambition. In 1924, he argued that if they gave him “doce healthy children... and my own world specified to raise them in him,” and that he “guaranteed to take anyone at random and train him to become any kind of specialist that I choose—doctor, lawyer... and yes, even beggar or thief.” Like animals, humans were really tabulas rasas and could be moulded in any way desired.

B. F. Skinner, a disciple of Watson, later took this vision a step further, and in his book Beyond freedom and dignity, outlined a society governed by behavioral principles. His novel Walden Two (1948) dramatized a society like this (...) The general effect is totalitarian and it never seems to happen to Skinner to wonder who conditions the designers of such a society.

(...) The use of aversion therapy on gay men left several traumatized men and even caused deaths. The behavioral psychologist H. J. Eysenck, pioneer of this therapy, argued that he was “for the patient’s own sake.”

These allegations, together with Skinner's social programs (...) show that knowledge – including misconception or false knowledge – is open to their abuse by those with enough money, equipment and power over others. It is also difficult to completely absolve the behavioral belief system of some responsibility for the actions of its adherents.”

M. Colborn, pp. 2024-2025.

In 2017 Wendy Burn, President of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists, publicly apologized to the gay community for the treatment they were subjected to in the 1970s using “non-evidence based procedures”.

In addition, several independent researchers, including Anthony Pelosi, David Marks, Henk van der Ploeg, Hermann Vetter, Roderick Buchanan, and King's College London (where Eysenck was a professor from 1955 to 1983), have denounced serious data misrepresentation in Eysenck's publications where he stated that behavioral therapy is the only form of successful psychological therapy and the others are innocuous or harmful.

It has been revealed that Eysenck was paid by the tobacco industry to publish research in which he claimed that smoking is not a relevant factor in cancer. Also particularly problematic are the publications by Eysenck together with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek in which they claim to have been able to prevent cancer with behavioral therapy and home bibliotherapy. David Marks, Anthony Pelosi, Henk van der Ploeg and other critics denounce the data published by Eysenck and Ronald Grossarth-Maticek as fabricated and fraudulent.

Main figures