Behaviorism: Concepts and Techniques
Behaviorism
How to Change Behavior
To accomplish tasks you need to do but don’t want to do, you can:
- Set goals
- Develop a plan
- Schedule time for each step
To break a habit, you can:
- Avoid certain situations
- Practice weaker forms of the habit
To conquer a symptom, you can tell yourself that the symptom is distressing but not health-threatening.
Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism
Skinner is a radical behaviorist because he believes that environmental stimuli, rather than internal psychological variables, determine behavior.
Operant vs. Classical Conditioning
Unlike classical conditioning, operant conditioning produces consequences that increase or decrease the likelihood of a behavior and involves the substitution of stimuli.
Key Concepts in Operant Conditioning
- Chaining: A complex form of conditioning in which simple conditioned units are linked in sequence.
- Shaping: Using reinforcers to promote learning of a graduated series of behaviors that occur in the correct sequence.
- Contingency: The relationship between an operant and a reinforcer. Skinner uses the term to represent the schedule of reinforcement.
- Extinction: Behavior weakened by the elimination of common reinforcing consequences.
- Stimulus Generalization: A variety of stimuli with a common property that evoke varying degrees of the same behavior.
- Schedules of Reinforcement: Special provisions for the delivery of reinforcers. These programs determine the rate, intensity, and quality of behavior.
Types of Reinforcement Schedules
- Fixed Interval: Reinforcement based on a fixed time, sometimes requiring at least one correct response.
- Variable Interval: Reinforcement is given based on an average time interval.
- Fixed Ratio: Reinforcement based on a fixed number of behaviors.
- Variable Ratio: Reinforcement corresponds to a variable number of behaviors, usually based on an average number of behaviors.
- Intermittent Reinforcement: A partial schedule of reinforcement, reinforcing a fraction of the correct behaviors.
- Continuous Reinforcement: Reinforcement given for each correct behavior, useful during the acquisition phase.
Reinforcers
Reinforcers are stimuli that increase the likelihood of behaviors.
Types of Reinforcers
- Learned and Unlearned (Conditioned and Unconditioned): Natural reinforcers compared with learned reinforcers, e.g., food vs. prizes.
- Natural and Artificial: Natural reinforcers are the direct result of the operant behavior. Artificial reinforcers are desirable stimuli used to instigate the operant behavior.
- Specific and Generalized: Specific reinforcers are directly related to a specific need, such as food for a hungry animal. Generalized reinforcers influence a wide variety of behaviors.
- Visible and Invisible: Reinforcers perceived as such vs. reinforcers that operate without the person realizing it.
- Managed by Others and Self-Administered: Reinforcers arranged and delivered by others vs. reinforcers arranged and delivered by oneself.
- Positive and Negative: Positive reinforcement strengthens the approach behavior, while negative reinforcement strengthens avoidance and escape behaviors.
- Contingent and Non-Contingent: Reinforcers dependent on the issuance of an operant behavior vs. reinforcers given without requiring a behavior.
- Differential Reinforcement: Informing the subject of changes in physiological functions through a signal, enabling them to gain control.
Extinction
Behavior is weakened by the elimination of common reinforcing consequences.
Reinforcement and Skinner
Reinforcement is so fundamental to Skinner’s method that he has been called the “psychologist of reinforcement.” Positive reinforcement strengthens approach behavior, while negative reinforcement strengthens avoidance and escape behaviors.
Avoidance and Escape
- Avoidance: Behavior that prevents an unwanted stimulus, strengthened by a negative reinforcer.
- Escape: Behavior that eliminates or ends a painful stimulus; the successful outcome is negatively reinforced.
Operant Behavior
Operant behavior acts on the environment and produces an objective outcome. It is synonymous with instrumental behavior. Transactions can be classified as approach, avoidance, or escape.
- Approach: Goal-directed behavior that ensures operant reinforcement, strengthened by a negative reinforcer.
Bandura’s Observational Learning
According to Bandura, observational learning occurs when simply observing the behavior of a model is sufficient to promote learning. Observational learning can be promoted by both prosocial and deviant models. The lack of appropriate models can cause learning disabilities.
Direct vs. Observational Learning
Direct learning is usually slower and requires appropriate times and conditions.
Cognitive Symbols in Observational Learning
Cognitive symbols play an important mediating role in observational learning. Concepts, images, and verbal mediators serve as a knowledge base.
Factors Influencing Observational Learning
Both the model’s behavior and its consequences affect the observer’s learning and behavior.
Components of Observational Learning
Learning through modeling requires attention, retention, the skills, and the incentive to carry out what has been learned.
Types of Behavior Acquired Through Observational Learning
Three types of behavior are typically acquired through observational learning:
- The acquisition of new responses
- The strengthening or weakening of inhibitions
- The encouragement of existing behaviors
Rotter’s Social Learning Theory
Rotter specifies six directional trends (needs): recognition, dominance, independence, protection-dependency, love and affection, and physical comfort.
Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Ellis stresses cognitive variables as key determinants of emotion and behavior. He identifies unrealistic assumptions, hidden internal verbalizations, faulty compound sentences, irrational thinking, and inappropriate values, ideals, and objectives.
Mischel’s Cognitive-Affective Personality System
Mischel questioned the extreme environmentalist approach of radical behaviorists and the extreme personalistic approach of psychoanalytic theory. He proposed a cognitive-affective personality system that emphasizes individual variables in the processing of stimuli and the direction of behavior. These variables include:
- Cognitive and behavioral skills
- Cognitive categories and concepts
- Expectations of stimulus and behavioral consequences
- Stimulus preferences and aversions
- Strategies, intentions, and plans for self-regulation