A variety of behaviorism that departs from the ones described in earlier sections of this tutorial, despite some occasional superficial similarities in terminology, is "behavior analysis." Behavior analysis is most closely associated with the work of B. F. Skinner. Its practitioners, or behavior analysts, are often known by such other names as "operant conditioners" and "Skinnerians." Skinner began his professional work in the early 1930s and continued it for over 50 years. A full history of behavior analysis may be found in other sources, such as the three volumes of Skinner's autobiography, or the writings of other formative figures in the field. For present purposes, we note that behavior analysis has three components: (a) the experimental analysis of behavior, (b) the applied analysis of behavior, and (c) the conceptual analysis of behavior.
The experimental analysis of behavior is the systematic context for research in psychology. In the early years of the field, the experimental analysis of behavior was concerned mainly with basic research questions in the animal laboratory. In recent years, the experimental analysis of behavior has become concerned with more complex questions, involving humans, the role of verbal behavior, and so on. In all cases, the experimental analysis of behavior is concerned with basic, fundamental processes (e.g., reinforcement, punishment, avoidance, escape, discrimination, generalization, acquisition, extinction) influencing the behavior of individual organisms. Research is characterized by the extensive, intensive analysis of relatively few organisms. Questions of generality and replicability are addressed by the careful demonstration of the control of behavior, often through a series of repeated exposures to experimental conditions. The research does not usually, if ever, involve aggregating data across groups of subjects and conducting tests of statistical inference on the aggregated data. In the case of operant behavior, it is concerned with the fundamental effects of contingencies, reinforcement, stimulus control, etc., rather than with the derived, actuarial effects of those contingencies within a population.
The applied analysis of behavior is the systematic application of behavioral technology and principles in the world outside the laboratory. The technology and principles may be applied to solve particular problems in a remedial setting, such as an institution, in an educational setting, such as a classroom, or in a broader social context, such as a community recycling or energy conservation program. In practice, new principles are sometimes discovered in the applications. Consequently, the applied analysis of behavior is sometimes very close to the experimental analysis of behavior, although its primary emphasis remains the application, rather than the derivation of knowledge. Such terms as behavior modification, contingency contracting, and contingency management are from the applied analysis of behavior.
The conceptual analysis of behavior is the philosophical, theoretical examination of the subject matter and methods of behavior analysis, as well as other forms of psychology. The "philosophy of science" underlying the conceptual analysis of behavior is called "radical behaviorism." The phrase radical behaviorism was first used in the early 1920s, to signify an extreme form of methodological behaviorism that denied the relevance of anything that was not publicly observable. In its current usage, the term radical is now used in a completely different sense to signify the "thoroughgoing," "comprehensive" analysis of all forms of activity, even those that aren't publicly observable, according to behavioral principles. In this sense, radical behaviorism is particularly concerned with epistemology, that is, with understanding the nature and limits of knowledge. Thus, radical behaviorism is particularly concerned with verbal behavior, the relation between verbal behavior and knowledge, and the nature of the intellectual activity that underlies science. The principles of radical behaviorism guide behavior analysts as they practice the experimental and applied analysis of behavior.
Radical behaviorism has a lot to say about the way other orientations approach these questions. In particular, radical behaviorism has a lot to say about mentalism and methodological behaviorism. Let's look a bit more at the nature of radical behaviorism.
A person is first of all an organism, a member of a species and a subspecies, possessing a genetic endowment of anatomical and physiological characteristics, which are the product of the contingencies of survival to which the species has been exposed in the process of evolution. The organism becomes a person as it acquires a repertoire of behavior under the contingencies of reinforcement to which it is exposed in its lifetime. The behavior it exhibits at any moment is under the control of a current setting. It is able to acquire such a repertoire because of processes of conditioning, to which it is susceptible because of its genetic endowment. (From Skinner, 1974, p. 213)
1. The study of behavior is concerned with the interaction between organism and environment. Behavior is important as a subject matter in its own right, and may be dealt with at its own level. Two implications follow from this characteristic. The first implication is that behavior is not reducible to physiology. Physiology is an independent science concerned with how the parts of the body work when an organism interacts with the world. Psychology is an independent science concerned with the relation between the behaving organism and the parts of the world with which the organism interacts. The second implication is that behavior is not important as simply the basis for validating inferences about causes in another dimension, such as a neural, mental, or conceptual dimension. There are no other dimensions, so there can be no other causes in them. In particular, there is no mental dimension, so there can be no mental causes. Some of the mental phenomena to which traditional explanations of behavior appeal are simply fanciful explanatory fictions, endowed with just the right set of powers and forces to explain the behavior in question. Others are metaphors. Still others come from a wide variety of other inappropriate sources. Radical behaviorism argues that we need not be concerned with these sorts of phenomena. Sometimes, however, mental phenomena may be understood as really behavioral in nature, even though the individuals proposing the phenomena believe they are different from behavior and require a different kind of analysis. The special characteristic of these phenomena is that they are covert or private, and not accessible to anyone else. The lack of accessibility does not mean they are actually mental, or that a special kind of analysis is actually required.
2. Behavior is a function of (a) genetic endowment, as evolution selects certain behavioral characteristics over the lifetime of a species filling an ecological niche; (b) the material environment, as such factors as contingencies of reinforcement select the behavior of the individual organism during its lifetime; and (c) the social/cultural environment, in which social/cultural contingencies select broader practices affecting the social group of which the individual organism is a member. Thus, psychology is actually a part of the broader field of biology. Behavior is adaptive, and the adaptation may be understood by applying the principles and concepts of biology, beginning with behavior as a product of evolution. Organisms that haven't adapted to a changing environment simply haven't survived. Some forms of behavior are phylogenic, and are selected during the natural history of the species. Other forms of behavior are ontogenic, and are selected during the lifetime of the individual organism. Still other forms of behavior are also ontogenic and are selected during the lifetime of the organism, but they are a function of being in a social group and would not develop otherwise. This third form contributes to the survival of the group, or more broadly, the culture. In any event, the theme of selection by consequences, beginning with Darwinian natural selection, may be applied at three levels to understand the full context in which behavior occurs.
3. Some behavior is elicited, in the sense that its probability is attributable to the presentation of a particular stimulus. A large part of the behavior studied by ethologists (e.g., taxes, kineses, fixed action patterns) is of this type. So also is simple reflex behavior. In the vocabulary of behavior analysis, reflex behavior is called respondent behavior. When a formerly neutral stimulus signals the presentation of an eliciting stimulus, and behavior changes to the formerly neutral stimulus in specified ways, the process is called respondent conditioning (also, classical conditioning, Pavlovian conditioning). To the extent a contingency is involved, the contingency is between the formerly neutral stimulus, called the CS, and the stimulus that unconditionally elicits a response from the response system in question, called the US.
4. Other behavior is emitted, in the sense that its probability is attributable to the response having certain consequences. Behavior of this nature is called operant behavior. When the consequences increase the probability of behavior, the consequence is called a reinforcer. When the consequence decreases the probability of behavior, the consequence is called a punisher. Punishment is an effective means of changing behavior. However, punishment is often not recommended, because it has undesirable side-effects. When a formerly neutral stimulus signals that a response will have a characteristic consequence, and the probability of behavior changes in the presence of the stimulus, the process is called operant conditioning (also, instrumental conditioning, Thorndikian/Skinnerian conditioning). The systematic relation among the antecedent circumstance, the response, and a reinforcing consequence is called a contingency of reinforcement. The contingency of reinforcement is fundamental unit of analysis for operant behavior. A contingency may be schematically depicted as follows:
S D : R ==> S R +
This notation suggests that a discriminative stimulus ( S D) sets the occasion ( : ) for a response (R) to produce ( ==> ) a reinforcer ( S R + ). Most forms of behavior that are of interest to us are forms of operant behavior. Thus, the analysis of those forms of behavior is concerned with an analysis of the contingencies responsible for them. Behavior analysis incorporates the concept of motivation through its concept of the establishing operation. The establishing operation is defined as an operation that alters the discriminative significance of antecedent stimuli or the reinforcing significance of consequences in contingencies affecting operant behavior.
5. Verbal behavior is regarded as operant behavior. It is reinforced through the mediation of other persons, rather than through any direct effects on the material environment. Otherwise, it is to be analyzed in the same way as any other form of operant behavior. Four features of this approach are noteworthy. First, verbal behavior does not give special evidence of underlying mental processes or phenomena. There are no underlying mental processes or phenomena. Second, verbal behavior is not amenable to the early associationistic, S - R model of classical behaviorism, such that words are presumed to be produced by a serial process, like beads on a chain. Rather, as operant behavior, verbal behavior is analyzed in terms of the underlying contingencies. Third, verbal behavior is not a logical phenomenon. To the extent that much of science is verbal behavior, then the analysis of science does not imply an analysis in terms of logic. Logic is simply not a transcendental system that causes verbal behavior to be meaningful. If anything, logic is a description of relations among classes of dependent variables in the speaker's repertoire. Theory testing, hypothesis testing, theoretical constructs, and so on may be important in a science. However, they are not always so, and when they are, it is because of their role in contingencies, rather than logic. Fourth, operational definitions are important because they specify what discriminative stimuli and reinforcers control the emission of the term, as an instance of verbal behavior. They do not specify the publicly observable variables symbolized by a term referring to an unobservable. Verbal behavior is not symbolic any more than any other kind of operant behavior.
6. Some part of the environment is private, in the sense that it is accessible only to one individual. Events in this part are important, but they are important as events in the behavioral dimension, not in the mental dimension. The term subjective, as contrasted with objective, is concerned with these same sorts of events. These private or subjective behavioral events are the sorts of phenomena identified in everyday language by such terms as "thinking," "problem solving," "recalling," and "imagining." Thus, radical behaviorism will accept that some behavioral phenomena are private, but not that their ontology is that of a mental or subjective dimension that differs from the physical or objective dimension. In particular, they do not need to be analyzed according to a different conceptual scheme, simply because they are not accessible to more than one individual. Any particular usage of a "mental" or "subjective" term in everyday language is to be analyzed to determine in what respects it is occasioned by behavioral, but not necessarily publicly observable, relations. The important questions are (a) what contingencies are responsible for the development of private events, and (b) what contingencies are responsible for any influence that private events exert on subsequent behavior. For example, as verbal behavior under the control of a private stimulus, introspection is an instance of behavior that needs to be explained. Introspection does not explain other behavioral phenomena. What contingencies make it possible to give introspective reports?
7. Responses and stimuli are generic in nature and are functionally defined. That is, responses and stimuli are members of classes of similar phenomena, and are not independent, unrelated entities. They are defined with respect to the environmental relations in which they participate, rather than in terms of their physical properties as such. Classes of operant behavior are created by differential reinforcement with respect to classes of discriminative stimuli. An operant is not necessarily a single movement. It may in fact be a series of movements. The nature and topography of an operant is determined, which is to say selected, by the environmental contingencies.
8. Matters of truth, value, and ethics are matters of pragmatism, or successful working in everyday life. These matters are assessed in terms of contingencies. These contingencies operate across time, for individuals, for the social/cultural group to which the individual belongs, and for the species to which the individual belongs. To be sure, humans have unconditioned reactions against being exploited and oppressed. These reactions have presumably been selected during evolution. Consequently, the pragmatism described here does not sanction brutality of one human against another. Rather, the pragmatism described here simply holds that truth, values, and ethics are determined through interactions, rather than as some part of a superordinate system whose origin is independent of that interaction.
9. Our society/culture should actively promote practices that will enhance, and should actively discourage practices that decrease, the quality of life for its citizens. These steps should be carried out according to known behavioral principles.
Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. New York: Knopf.
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