Behaviorism is a behavioral direction of psychology. Behaviorism. The founder of the theory, its essence. Development of the direction and reasons for the transition to non-behaviorism

05.11.2020

Behaviorism. The founder of the theory, its essence

Behaviorism, which defined the face of American psychology in the 20th century, radically transformed the entire system of ideas about the psyche. His credo was expressed by the formula according to which the subject of psychology is behavior, not consciousness. (Hence the name - from the English. Behavior, behavior.) Since then it was customary to equate the psyche and consciousness (mental processes were considered that begin and end in consciousness), a version arose that, by eliminating consciousness, behaviorism thereby eliminates the psyche ...

The true meaning of the events associated with the emergence and rapid development of the behaviorist movement was different and consisted not in the annihilation of the psyche, but in a change in the concept of it.

One of the pioneers of the behavioral movement was Edward Thorndike (1874-1949). He himself called himself not a behaviorist, but a "connectionist" (from the English. "Connection" - connection). However, researchers and their concepts should be judged not by what they call themselves, but by their role in the development of knowledge. Thorndike's work opened the first chapter in the annals of behaviorism.

Thorndike presented his conclusions in 1898 in his doctoral dissertation "Intelligence of animals. Experimental study of associative processes in animals." * The terms Thorndike used the traditional - "intelligence", "associative processes", but they were filled with new content.

* This work by I.P. Pavlov considered pioneering in objective studies of behavior. After defending his thesis, Thorndike worked as a teacher at the teacher's college for 50 years. He published 507 papers on various problems of psychology.

The fact that intelligence has an associative nature has been known since the days of Hobbes. It was generally accepted after Spencer that intelligence enables an animal to successfully adapt to its environment. But for the first time it was Thorndike's experiments that showed that the nature of intelligence and its function can be studied and evaluated without resorting to ideas or other phenomena of consciousness. Association no longer signified a connection not between ideas or between ideas and movements, as in previous associative theories, but between movements and situations.

The entire learning process was described in objective terms. Thorndike used Wen's idea of \u200b\u200b"trial and error" as the governing start of behavior. The choice of this beginning had deep methodological grounds. It marked the reorientation of psychological thought to a new way of deterministic explanation of its objects. Although Darwin did not specifically emphasize the role of "trial and error", this concept was undoubtedly one of the premises of his evolutionary teaching. Since the possible ways of responding to the constantly changing conditions of the external environment cannot be foreseen in the structure and methods of behavior of the organism, the coordination of this behavior with the environment is realized only on a probabilistic basis.

The evolutionary doctrine demanded the introduction of a probabilistic factor acting with the same immutability as mechanical causality. Probability could no longer be viewed as a subjective concept (the result of ignorance of the reasons, according to Spinoza). The principle of "trial, error and accidental success" explains, according to Thorndike, the acquisition of new forms of behavior by living beings at all levels of development. The advantage of this principle is quite obvious when compared with the traditional (mechanical) reflex scheme. A reflex (in his pre-Sechenov understanding) meant a fixed action, the course of which is determined by paths that are also strictly fixed in the nervous system. It was impossible to explain by this concept the adaptability of the reactions of the organism and its learning.

Thorndike took as the initial moment of the motor act not an external impulse that launches a bodily machine with pre-prepared response methods, but a problem situation, i.e. such external conditions for adaptation to which the organism does not have a ready-made formula for the motor response, but is forced to build it by its own efforts. So, the connection "situation - reaction", in contrast to the reflex (in its only mechanistic interpretation known to Thorndike), was characterized by the following features: 1) the starting point - a problem situation; 2) the organism opposes it as a whole; 3) he is active in seeking choices and 4) is learned through exercise

The progressiveness of Thorndike's approach in comparison with that of Dewey and other Chicagoans is obvious, for they perceived a conscious striving for a goal not as a phenomenon that needs explanation, but as a causal principle. But Thorndike, having eliminated the conscious striving for the goal, retained the idea of \u200b\u200bactive actions of the body, the meaning of which is to solve a problem in order to adapt to the environment.

So Thorndike expanded the field of psychology substantially. He showed that it extends far beyond consciousness. Previously, it was assumed that the psychologist outside these limits could only be interested in unconscious phenomena hidden in the "recesses of the soul." Thorndike changed his orientation drastically. The sphere of psychology turned out to be the interaction between the organism and the environment. Earlier psychology argued that connections are formed between the phenomena of consciousness. She called them associations. Previous physiology argued that connections are formed between receptor stimulation and muscle response. They were called reflexes. For Thorndike, connection is the link between a reaction and a situation. Obviously this is a new element. In the language of subsequent psychology, connection is an element of behavior. True, Thorndike did not use the term "behavior." He talked about intelligence, about learning. But after all, Descartes did not call the reflex discovered by him a reflex, and Hobbes, being the founder of the associative trend, had not yet used the phrase "association of ideas", invented half a century after him by Locke. The concept matures before the term.

Thorndike's works would not have pioneering significance for psychology if they had not discovered new, psychological laws proper. But no less clearly is the limitation of behaviorist schemes in terms of explaining human behavior. The regulation of human behavior is carried out according to a different type than it was imagined by Thorndike and all subsequent supporters of the so-called objective psychology, who considered the laws of learning to be the same for man and other living beings. This approach gave rise to a new form of reductionism. The patterns of behavior inherent in humans, having social and historical foundations, were reduced to the biological level of determination, and thus the opportunity to study these patterns in adequate scientific terms was lost.

Thorndike, more than anyone else, prepared the way for behaviorism. At the same time, as noted, he did not consider himself a behaviorist; in his explanations of learning processes, he used concepts that later emerged behaviorism demanded to be banished from psychology. These were concepts related, firstly, to the mental sphere in its traditional understanding (in particular, the concepts of the states of satisfaction and discomfort experienced by the body during the formation of connections between motor reactions and external situations), and secondly, to neurophysiology (in particular, "law of readiness", which, according to Thorndike, involves a change in the ability to conduct impulses). Behavioral theory forbade the behavioral researcher to refer to both the subject's experience and physiological factors.

The theoretical leader of behaviorism was John Braadus Watson (1878-1958). His scientific biography is instructive in the sense that it shows how the influences that determined the development of the main ideas of the direction as a whole are reflected in the formation of an individual researcher.

After defending his dissertation in psychology at the University of Chicago, Watson became a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (since 1908), where he headed the department and laboratory of experimental psychology. In 1913, he published the article "Psychology from the point of view of a behaviorist," assessed as a manifesto of a new direction. Following this, he published Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, in which, for the first time in the history of psychology, the postulate that the subject of this science is consciousness was decisively refuted.

The motto of behaviorism has become the concept of behavior as an objectively observable system of body responses to external and internal stimuli. This concept originated in Russian science in the works of I.M. Sechenov, I.L. Pavlova and V.M. Bekhterev. They proved that the field of mental activity is not exhausted by the phenomena of the subject's consciousness, cognizable by internal observation of them (introspection), because with such an interpretation of the psyche, the splitting of the organism into a soul (consciousness) and a body (an organism as a material system) is inevitable. As a result, consciousness was disconnected from external reality, closed in the circle of its own phenomena (experiences), placing it outside the real connection of earthly things and involvement in the course of bodily processes. Rejecting this point of view, Russian researchers embarked on an innovative way of studying the relationship of an integral organism with the environment, relying on objective methods, treating the organism itself in the unity of its external (including motor) and internal (including subjective) manifestations. This approach outlined the prospect for disclosing the factors of interaction of the whole organism with the environment and the reasons on which the dynamics of this interaction depends. It was assumed that knowledge of the causes would allow psychology to realize the ideal of other exact sciences with their motto "prediction and control".

This fundamentally new view met the needs of the time. The old subjective psychology everywhere laid bare its inadequacy. This was vividly demonstrated by experiments on animals, which were the main object of research by US psychologists. Discussions about what happens in the minds of animals when they perform various experimental tasks turned out to be fruitless. Watson became convinced that observations of states of consciousness are as little needed by the psychologist as by the physicist. Only by abandoning these internal observations, he insisted, would psychology become an accurate and objective science.

The general trend of the transition from consciousness to behavior, from the subjective method of analyzing the psyche to the objective was observed in various sectors of the scientific front. After reading (in German and French translations) Bekhterev's book Objective Psychology, Watson finally became firmly convinced that the conditioned reflex (Bekhterev called it combinative) should become the main unit of behavior analysis. Acquaintance with Pavlov's teachings poured into Watson the confidence that it was the conditioned reflex that was the key to developing skills, building complex movements from simple ones, as well as to any forms of learning, including those of an affective nature.

Influenced by positivism, Watson argued that only what can be directly observed is real. Therefore, according to his plan, all behavior must be explained from the relationship between the directly observable effects of physical stimuli on the body and its directly observable responses (reactions). Hence the main formula of Watson, perceived by behaviorism: "stimulus - response" (S-R). From this it was clear that the processes that occur between the members of this formula - whether physiological (nervous), whether mental, psychology should eliminate from its hypotheses and explanations. Since various forms of bodily reactions were recognized as the only real ones in behavior, Watson replaced all traditional ideas about mental phenomena with their motor equivalents.

The dependence of various mental functions on motor activity was firmly established in those years by experimental psychology. This concerned, for example, the dependence of visual perception on the movements of the eye muscles, emotions - on bodily changes, thinking - on the speech apparatus, etc.

Watson used these facts as evidence that objective muscular processes can be a worthy substitute for subjective mental acts. Based on this premise, he explained the development of mental activity. It was argued that a person thinks with muscles. A child's speech arises from disordered sounds. When adults connect a certain object with a sound, that object becomes the meaning of the word. Gradually, the child's outer speech turns into a whisper, and then he begins to utter a word to himself. Such inner speech (inaudible vocalization) is nothing more than thinking.

All reactions, both intellectual and emotional, can, according to Watson, be controlled. Mental development is reduced to learning, that is, to any acquisition of knowledge, skills, skills - not only specially formed, but also arising spontaneously. From this point of view, learning is a broader concept than learning, since it also includes knowledge purposefully formed during learning. Thus, studies of the development of the psyche are reduced to the study of the formation of behavior, the connections between stimuli and the reactions arising on their basis (S-R).

Based on this view of the psyche, behaviorists concluded that its development occurs during the life of a child and depends mainly on the social environment, on living conditions, i.e. from incentives supplied by the environment. Therefore, they rejected the idea of \u200b\u200bage periodization, since they believed that there are no common developmental patterns for all children in a given age period. The proof was also their studies of learning in children of different ages, when, with purposeful learning, two-three-year-old children learned not only to read, but also to write, and even to type on a typewriter. Thus, the behaviorists concluded that what the environment is, so are the patterns of child development.

However, the impossibility of age-related periodization did not exclude, from their point of view, the need to create a functional periodization, which would make it possible to establish the stages of learning, the formation of a certain skill. From this point of view, the stages in the development of play, learning to read or swimming are functional periodization. (In the same way, the stages of the formation of mental actions, developed in Russia by P.Ya. Galperin, are also functional periodization.)

Evidence of the vital formation of basic mental processes was provided by Watson in his experiments on the formation of emotions.

It would seem that James's hypothesis about the primacy of forest changes and the secondary nature of emotional states should have suited Watson. But he resolutely rejected it on the grounds that the very idea of \u200b\u200bthe subjective, experienced should be removed from scientific psychology. In emotion, according to Watson, there is nothing but intra-bodily (visceral) changes and external expressions. But he saw the main thing in something else - in the ability to control emotional behavior according to a given program.

Watson experimentally proved that it is possible to form a fear response to a neutral stimulus. In his experiments, the children were shown a rabbit, which they took in their hands and wanted to stroke, but at that moment received an electric shock. The child threw the rabbit in fear and began to cry. The experiment was repeated, and for the third or fourth time, the appearance of a rabbit, even at a distance, caused fear in most children. After this negative emotion took hold, Watson tried once again to change the emotional attitude of the children, forming their interest and love for the rabbit. In this case, the child was shown a rabbit while eating a delicious meal. At the first moment, the children stopped eating and started crying. But since the rabbit did not approach them, staying at the end of the room, and delicious food (chocolate or ice cream) was nearby, the child calmed down. After the children stopped crying to the appearance of the rabbit at the end of the room, the experimenter moved it closer and closer to the child, at the same time adding tasty things to his plate. Gradually, the children ceased to pay attention to the rabbit and in the end reacted calmly when he was already near their plate, and even took him in their arms and tried to feed him. In this way, Watson argued, emotional behavior can be controlled.

The principle of behavioral control gained wide popularity in American psychology after Watson's works. Watson's concept (like all behaviorism) came to be called "psychology without a psyche." This assessment was based on the opinion that mental phenomena include only the evidence of the subject himself about what he considers to be happening in his consciousness during "internal observation". However, the area of \u200b\u200bthe psyche is much wider and deeper than the directly conscious. It also includes the actions of a person, his behavioral acts, his actions. Watson's merit is that he expanded the sphere of the psychic to include those forest activities of animals and humans. But he achieved this at a high price, rejecting as a subject of science the enormous wealth of the psyche, which cannot be reduced to outwardly observable behavior.

Behaviorism inadequately reflected the need to expand the subject of psychological research, put forward by the logic of the development of scientific knowledge. Behaviorism acted as the antipode of the subjective (introspective) concept, which reduced mental life to "facts of consciousness" and believed that beyond these facts lies a world alien to psychology. Critics of behaviorism later accused its adherents of being influenced by their own version of consciousness in their statements against introspective psychology. Taking this version as unshakable, they believed that it could be either accepted or rejected, but not transformed. Instead of looking at consciousness in a new way, they chose to do away with it altogether.

This criticism is valid, but insufficient for understanding the epistemological roots of behaviorism. Even if consciousness is returned to its objective-figurative content, which has turned into ghostly "subjective phenomena" in introspectionism, then neither the structure of real action, nor its determination can be explained. No matter how closely the action and the image are interconnected, they cannot be reduced to one another. The irreducibility of an action to its object-like components was that real feature of behavior that exaggeratedly appeared in the behaviorist scheme.

Watson became the most popular leader of the behaviorist movement. But one researcher, no matter how brilliant he may be, is powerless to create a scientific direction.

Among Watson's associates in the crusade against consciousness, prominent experimenters W. Hunter (1886-1954) and C. Lashley (1890-1958). The first invented in 1914 an experimental circuit for studying the reaction, which he called delayed. The monkey, for example, was given the opportunity to see which of the two boxes the banana was placed in. Then a screen was placed between it and the boxes, which was removed after a few seconds. She successfully solved this problem, proving that animals are already capable of a delayed, and not just a direct response to a stimulus.

Watson's student was Carl Lashley, who worked at the Universities of Chicago and Harvard, and then at the Yerkes primate laboratory. He, like other behaviorists, believed that consciousness is reducible to the bodily activity of the organism. Lashley's famous experiments on the study of the brain mechanisms of behavior were built according to the following scheme: an animal developed a skill, and then various parts of the brain were removed in order to find out whether this skill depended on them. As a result, Lashley came to the conclusion that the brain functions as a whole and its various parts are equipotential, that is, they are equivalent, and therefore can successfully replace each other.

All behaviorists were united by the belief in the futility of the concept of consciousness, in the need to put an end to "mentalism." But unity in front of a common enemy - an introspective concept - was lost when solving specific scientific problems.

Both in experimental work and at the level of theory in psychology, changes were made that led to the transformation of behaviorism. Watson's system of ideas in the 1930s was no longer the only version of behaviorism.

The disintegration of the original behaviorist program revealed the weakness of its categorical "core." The category of action, one-sidedly interpreted in this program, could not be successfully developed when the image and motive were reduced. Without them, the action itself lost its real flesh. The image of events and situations, to which action is always oriented, turned out to be reduced to the level of physical stimuli by Watson. The motivation factor was either rejected altogether or appeared in the form of several primitive affects (such as fear), to which Watson had to turn to in order to explain the conditioned reflex regulation of emotional behavior. Attempts to include the categories of image, motive and psychosocial attitude in the original behaviorist program led to its new version - non-behaviorism.

behaviorism psyche watson

Man is expressed in his actions. Every morning he gets out of bed and starts doing something. When there is interaction with other people, he acts in one way, and his interlocutors in another. Why do people do different things in the same situations? Everything related to human behavior is studied by behaviorism in psychology, the theory, directions and representatives of which should be considered.

What is Behaviorism?

Behaviorism is a psychological idea of \u200b\u200bsocial psychology that deals with the study of human behavior. It is based on the ideas of I. Pavlov, who studied the reactions of animals, and also J. Watson, who wanted to make psychology a more accurate science, which has objective and visible evidence.

A great contribution was made by B. Skinner, who dealt with the comparison of behavioral actions with mental reactions. He came to the conclusion that freedom of will, morality and other highly spiritual norms is imaginary and illusory, since a person acts exclusively from a position of manipulation and influence on others.

Behavior is a set of actions, reactions and emotional mood that a person expresses in a certain situation. Behavior distinguishes a person or, conversely, reminds of other people with whom you previously communicated and observed a similar manner in them. This is a component of any individual, often regulated by himself.

Why is human behavior so different or so similar to each other? Why do some people do this and others do otherwise in the same situation? It all depends on the source. Behavior is governed by the following factors:

Human motives.
Social norms accepted in society.
Subconscious programs, algorithms of actions that a person learned in childhood or that are dictated by instincts.
Conscious control, that is, a person understands what he is doing, why he himself controls the process of his own behavior.

Conscious control is the highest level of human development. People very rarely can control their behavior, as they are often included in the emotional background of what is happening, obeying emotions, and they are already dictating to them a certain program of behavior that they are used to performing in a particular situation. But when a person enters into a situation without sensory perception, then he is able to control his own behavior.

Subconscious programs are very important for a person, especially in the first years of life. Until the individual has reached a conscious age, he is guided by instincts and patterns of behavior that he observes in the world around him. This method of copying allows a person to survive, rehearse the methods of contact with other people developed by others and determine which are effective for him and which are not.

Social norms are assimilated by a person at a more conscious age. It is often dictated only by the desire to arouse sympathy or interest in other people, as well as to establish business contacts with them. Social norms are very good in the early stages of meeting a new person, but then behavior changes depending on the participants in the acquaintance.

A person's motives also regulate his behavior. They take a background position when a person does something that does not contradict his desires. But when an individual begins to “step on his own throat,” that is, to do something to the detriment of his own interests, then his motives begin to take a dominant position in the behavior algorithm.

Behaviorism in psychology

When psychologists became interested in the question of what prompts a person to perform specific actions, this led to the development of a whole science - behaviorism, which takes its name from the English word "behavior" - in translation "behavior". Behaviorism in psychology deals with the study of behavior. do not become abstract phenomena, but appear as reactions of the organism.

According to behaviorists, thoughts and feelings cannot influence human behavior. Only the reactions that arise in a person as a result of exposure to certain stimuli become useful. Accordingly, the formula "stimulus - reaction - behavior" is at work here.

A stimulus is the impact of the outside world.
A response is the response of the human body to an attempt to reject or adapt to a stimulus that has arisen.

Reinforcement can be between the stimulus and the response - this is an additional factor that affects the person. Reinforcement can be:

positive, that is, it encourages a person to make the reaction to which he is tuned (praise, reward, etc.);
negative, that is, it encourages a person not to commit those actions to which he is tuned (criticism, punishment, pain, etc.).

Positive reinforcement encourages a person to continue to perform the actions that he performed. Negative reinforcement tells the person that it is necessary to abandon the actions taken, to change the behavior model.

Behaviorists do not consider intrinsic motives for behavior because they are difficult to study. Only external stimuli and reactions are considered. Behaviorism goes in two directions:

Predicting reactions based on available stimuli.
Determination of a potential stimulus by a person's response.

The study of this area allows you to study the individual on whom you want to influence. Previously, it was considered impossible to anticipate human behavior, but behaviorism considers the mechanisms of influence on people. People who know what incentives can induce them to do what they want can create conditions that will help them achieve what they want, which is influence.

In addition to all the available data, Pavlov's teachings were taken - conditioned reflexes, their formation and consolidation.

The psychologist Tolman did not look at the “stimulus-response” scheme so simplistically, pointing out that his physical and mental state, experience, and heredity are involved in the occurrence of certain actions. Thus, these factors affect a person immediately after the stimulus, prompting him to take specific actions, which may change over the years.

Sinner refuted the illusion of free will, because he pointed to the choice of certain actions depending on the results that he will achieve or wish to achieve. Thus, the concept of operant influence was introduced, when a person first focuses on the consequences of his actions, and then chooses which of them to commit.

Bandura based his teachings on the human tendency to imitate. Moreover, he copies only the behavior that, in his opinion, is most favorable for him.

Directions of behaviorism

The founder of various directions of behaviorism is John Watson (classical behaviorism). He studied only visible phenomena, completely excluding internal (mental) stimuli. In his concept, there were only stimuli and reactions, which were the same for many living beings. This helped him form the theory that by creating certain external environmental conditions, one can influence the development of certain inclinations, qualities, and models of human behavior.

Pavlov studied the reflexes of living beings, which were formed depending on the stimulus and reinforcement. The more significant the reinforcement became, the deeper the reflex was strengthened.

The behavioral direction made it possible to supplement psychological knowledge, which was only over time correctly adjusted. So, “what a person wants to express through his behavior”, “what needs to be done to change the situation”, “what an individual wants to change in his own behavior” became significant.

At a certain stage, the simplified stimulus-response scheme did not evoke the approval of specialists, which was resolved only from the time a variable was introduced into this scheme. Thus, not only the stimulus influenced human behavior, but also other components of his psyche and physiology.

Non-behaviorism set itself the task of "programming" human actions in order to achieve positive results. Here the upbringing of a person became unimportant. The main thing is to achieve the goal through the actions you take.

The behaviorist mistake was the exclusion of individual personality traits. It was not noticed that different people react differently to the same stimuli and situations. All people can be grouped according to their actions, but not to say that everyone acts in the same way.

Behavioral theory

The classical teachings were based on the theory of behaviorism by Pavlov and Bekhterev. Pavlov studied the reflexes of living beings, and Bekhterev introduced the concept of "collective reflexology". A person who is in a group merges with it, forming a single organism, while practically not participating in the choice of actions. He does the things that the whole group does.

Eysenck considered human behavior depending on the situation in which he is. There is a constant model of behavior, which is characterized by the constancy of the individual to be in certain conditions, and isolated actions that are performed in extraordinary situations.

Pathopsychology is the science of abnormal behavior and abnormal mental processes. Introducing such a definition, the problem of the relationship between norm (normality) and deviation from it (abnormality) is raised.

Abnormal means abnormal - that which is beyond the ordinary and generally accepted. Society has its own standards of behavior and stereotypes of behavior that establish what is acceptable and what is not. For individuals, families, as well as for other groups of the population, their own norms, or standards, of behavior are determined. If people violate these standards, society assigns the label "abnormality" to such behavior or a person acting outside the established patterns.

Abnormal behavior is defined as such low-adaptive behavior and such mental processes that are capable of causing physical and psychological harm to anyone.

The concept of mental illness comes from psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to mental disorders. Since the 19th century, doctors have been treating people with abnormal behavior. At the same time, they viewed the "madmen" precisely as sick, and not as morally incapable or possessed. Thus, abnormal behavior was elevated to the rank of one of the medical problems and began to be viewed as a disease that can be diagnosed and treated. This view is known as the medical model of mental illness. When they began to think about the existence of other ways of rendering assistance to mentally ill people, different from the medical model, they joined the search process.

Representatives of behaviorism

The main difference between behaviorism is the study of the behavior of a living creature, not its consciousness. The main thing here was that which could be changed or touched, and everything that did not lend itself to sensory study was rejected. The representatives of behaviorism were:

John Watson is the founder.
Edward Thorndike.
I. Pavlov.
W. Hunter.
L. Karl.
E. Tolman.
B. Skinner.

Each has contributed to this science, basing his experiments only on the reactions of living beings. Thanks to them, there are many theories about how actions are formed, how they are motivated, how they can be influenced and even programmed.

Films, programs, serials, cartoons and other television programs that a person constantly watches program him. The behavior demonstrated by the heroes is deposited in the subconscious, which then affects how he himself acts in real life. This is why many people are predictable and monotonous: they behave like those characters or their acquaintances, whom they constantly observe. From childhood, every person has been given the quality - to repeat, like a monkey, everything that you see in other people. People behave in the same way, because they observe the same characters (especially on TV), who program them for certain behaviors.

If all the people at the funeral cry, then you yourself will soon start crying, although at first you may not understand why you should do this. If men beat their wives, then you yourself begin to beat your wife, although at first you were against violence. By constantly observing the behavior of the people around you or your favorite characters on TV, you train yourself to do the same. And this law applies whether you like it or not.

However, you can apply this knowledge and for good purposes. For example, you can develop in yourself the qualities and properties that attract you to other people. Watch them more often, communicate, pay attention to those manifestations of personality that attract you, and soon you will notice these same qualities. After all, you can develop not only the bad, but also the good in yourself, constantly contacting people who, by their own example, demonstrate positive models of behavior. Learn from them using a simple monkey law: get better just by observing those whose qualities and behaviors you like.

Outcome

Man is a complex being, whose life in all aspects still needs to be studied. Behaviorism only partially reveals the veil. If you reinforce your knowledge with information from other areas, you can get a more complete picture. The result of cognition of behavioral teachings is an understanding of one's own and other people's behavior, as well as the ability to create circumstances that will induce others to take the necessary actions.

If a person has problems with knowing their own actions, then it is recommended to seek the help of a psychologist on the site. Experts will consider the motives, incentives, and other factors that are involved in the formation of a particular behavior.

When a person learns to control his own behavior, he can change his life. After all, the people around them see only what the person is doing. They cannot read minds and do not have the psychological knowledge to understand the motives of others. A person must understand that his actions are the stimuli that cause others to commit certain actions. If the actions of other people do not like it, then you need to reconsider first your own behavior.

Sometimes it is necessary to proceed not from the concepts, “I am doing right or wrong”, which means the morality of actions, but from the categories “how my actions are interpreted by another person”. Your actions are an incentive for another person, which completely depends on the attitude towards them and the emotions generated. Even the most correct actions can be perceived negatively, which leads to unpredictable reactions.

Behaviorism

The most important categories of behaviorism are stimulus, which is understood as any impact on the body from the environment, including this, the current situation, reaction and reinforcement, which for a person can also be a verbal or emotional reaction of the people around. At the same time, subjective experiences are not denied in modern behaviorism, but are placed in a position subject to these influences.

In the second half of the 20th century, behaviorism was replaced by cognitive psychology, which has since dominated psychological science. However, many of the ideas of behaviorism are still used in certain areas of psychology and psychotherapy.

History

One of the pioneers of the behaviorist movement was Edward Thorndike. He himself did not call himself a behaviorist, but a "connectionist" (from the English. "Connection" - connection).

The fact that intelligence is of an associative nature has been known since the days of Hobbes. It was generally accepted after Spencer that intelligence enables an animal to successfully adapt to its environment. But for the first time, it was Thorndike's experiments that showed that the nature of intelligence and its function can be studied and evaluated without resorting to ideas or other phenomena of consciousness. Association no longer signified a connection not between ideas or between ideas and movements, as in previous associative theories, but between movements and situations.

The entire learning process was described in objective terms. Thorndike used Wen's idea of \u200b\u200b"trial and error" as the regulating beginning of behavior. The choice of this beginning had deep methodological grounds. It marked the reorientation of psychological thought to a new way of deterministic explanation of its objects. Although Darwin did not specifically emphasize the role of "trial and error", this concept was undoubtedly one of the premises of his evolutionary teaching. Since the possible ways of responding to the constantly changing conditions of the external environment cannot be foreseen in the structure and methods of behavior of the organism, the coordination of this behavior with the environment is realized only on a probabilistic basis.

Evolutionary doctrine demanded the introduction of a probabilistic factor that acts with the same immutability as mechanical causality. Probability could no longer be viewed as a subjective concept (the result of ignorance of the reasons, according to Spinoza). The principle of "trial, error and accidental success" explains, according to Thorndike, the acquisition of new forms of behavior by living things at all levels of development. The advantage of this principle is quite obvious when compared with the traditional (mechanical) reflex scheme. A reflex (in his pre-Sechenov understanding) meant a fixed action, the course of which is determined by methods that are also strictly fixed in the nervous system. It was impossible to explain by this concept the adaptability of the organism's reactions and its learning ability.

Thorndike took as the initial moment of the motor act not an external impulse that launches a bodily machine with pre-prepared response methods, but a problem situation, that is, such external conditions for adaptation to which the body does not have a ready-made formula for a motor response, but is forced to build it by its own efforts. So, the connection "situation - reaction", in contrast to the reflex (in its only mechanistic interpretation known to Thorndike), was characterized by the following features: 1) the starting point - a problem situation; 2) the body opposes it as a whole; 3) he is active in seeking a choice; and 4) is learned by exercise.

Thorndike's works would not have pioneering significance for psychology if they had not discovered new, psychological laws proper. But no less clearly is the limitation of behaviorist schemes in terms of explaining human behavior. The regulation of human behavior is carried out according to a different type than it was represented by Thorndike and all subsequent supporters of the so-called objective psychology, who considered the laws of learning to be the same for humans and other living beings. This approach gave rise to a new form of reductionism. The patterns of behavior inherent in humans, having social and historical grounds, were reduced to the biological level of determination, and thus the opportunity to study these patterns in adequate scientific terms was lost.

Thorndike, more than anyone else, prepared the way for behaviorism. At the same time, as noted, he did not consider himself a behaviorist; in his explanations of learning processes, he used concepts that later emerged behaviorism demanded to be expelled from psychology. These were concepts related, firstly, to the mental sphere in its traditional understanding (in particular, the concepts of the states of satisfaction and discomfort experienced by the body during the formation of connections between motor reactions and external situations), and secondly, to neurophysiology (in particular, "Law of readiness", which, according to Thorndike, involves a change in the ability to conduct impulses). Behavioral theory forbade the behavioral researcher to refer to both the subject's experience and physiological factors.

The theoretical leader of behaviorism is John Brodes Watson. His scientific biography is instructive in the sense that it shows how the influences that determined the development of the main ideas of the direction as a whole are reflected in the formation of an individual researcher.

The motto of behaviorism has become the concept of behavior as an objectively observable system of body responses to external and internal stimuli. This concept originated in Russian science in the works of I. M. Sechenov, I. P. Pavlov and V. M. Bekhterev. They proved that the field of mental activity is not limited to the phenomena of the subject's consciousness, cognizable by internal observation of them (introspection), because with such an interpretation of the psyche, the splitting of the organism into a soul (consciousness) and a body (an organism as a material system) is inevitable. As a result, consciousness was disconnected from external reality, closed in a circle of its own phenomena (experiences), placing it outside the real connection of earthly things and involvement in the course of bodily processes. Rejecting this point of view, Russian researchers came up with an innovative method of studying the relationship of an integral organism with the environment, relying on objective methods, treating the organism itself in the unity of its external (including motor) and internal (including subjective) manifestations. This approach outlined the prospect for disclosing the factors of interaction of the whole organism with the environment and the reasons on which the dynamics of this interaction depends. It was assumed that knowledge of the causes would allow psychology to realize the ideal of other exact sciences with their motto "prediction and control".

This fundamentally new view met the needs of the time. The old subjective psychology everywhere laid bare its inadequacy. This was clearly demonstrated by experiments on animals, which were the main object of research of American psychologists. Reasoning about what happens in the minds of animals when they perform various experimental tasks turned out to be fruitless. Watson became convinced that observations of states of consciousness are as little needed by the psychologist as by the physicist. Only by abandoning these internal observations, he insisted, would psychology become an accurate and objective science. In Watson's understanding, thinking is nothing more than mental speech.

Influenced by positivism, Watson argued that only what can be directly observed is real. Therefore, according to his plan, all behavior must be explained from the relationship between the directly observable effects of physical stimuli on the body and its directly observable responses (reactions). Hence the main formula of Watson, perceived by behaviorism: "stimulus-response" (S-R). From this it was clear that the processes that occur between the members of this formula - whether physiological (nervous), whether mental, psychology should eliminate from its hypotheses and explanations. Since various forms of bodily reactions were recognized as the only real ones in behavior, Watson replaced all traditional ideas about mental phenomena with their motor equivalents.

Watson used these facts as evidence that objective muscular processes can be a worthy substitute for subjective mental acts. Based on this premise, he explained the development of mental activity. It was argued that a person thinks with muscles. A child's speech arises from disordered sounds. When adults connect a certain object with a sound, that object becomes the meaning of the word. Gradually, the child's outer speech turns into a whisper, and then he begins to pronounce the word to himself. Such inner speech (inaudible vocalization) is nothing more than thinking.

All reactions, both intellectual and emotional, can, according to Watson, be controlled. Mental development is reduced to learning, that is, to any acquisition of knowledge, skills, skills - not only specially formed, but also arising spontaneously. From this point of view, learning is a broader concept than learning, since it also includes knowledge purposefully formed during learning. Thus, the study of the development of the psyche is reduced to the study of the formation of behavior, the connections between stimuli and the reactions arising on their basis (S-R).

The principle of behavioral control gained wide popularity in American psychology after Watson's works. Watson's concept (like all behaviorism) came to be called "psychology without a psyche." This assessment was based on the opinion that mental phenomena include only the testimony of the subject himself about what he considers to be happening in his consciousness during "internal observation". However, the area of \u200b\u200bthe psyche is much wider and deeper than the directly conscious. It also includes the actions of a person, his behavioral acts, his actions. Watson's merit is that he expanded the scope of the mental to include bodily actions of animals and humans. But he achieved this at a high price, rejecting as a subject of science the enormous wealth of the psyche, which cannot be reduced to outwardly observable behavior.

Behaviorism inadequately reflected the need to expand the subject of psychological research, put forward by the logic of the development of scientific knowledge. Behaviorism acted as the antipode of the subjective (introspective) concept, which reduced mental life to "facts of consciousness" and believed that beyond these facts lies a world alien to psychology. Critics of behaviorism later accused its adherents of being influenced by their own version of consciousness in their statements against introspective psychology. Taking this version as unshakable, they believed that it could either be accepted or rejected, but not transformed. Instead of looking at consciousness in a new way, they chose to do away with it altogether.

This criticism is valid, but insufficient for understanding the epistemological roots of behaviorism. Even if consciousness is returned to its objective-figurative content, which has turned into ghostly “subjective phenomena” in introspectionism, then neither the structure of real action, nor its determination can be explained. No matter how closely the action and the image are linked, they cannot be reduced to one another. The irreducibility of an action to its object-like components was that real feature of behavior that exaggeratedly appeared in the behaviorist scheme.

Watson became the most popular leader of the behaviorist movement. But one researcher, no matter how brilliant he may be, is powerless to create a scientific direction.

Among Watson's companions in the crusade against consciousness, prominent experimenters William Hunter (1886-1954) and Carl Spencer Lashley (1890-1958) stood out. The first invented in 1914 an experimental scheme for studying the reaction, which he called delayed. The monkey, for example, was given the opportunity to see which of the two boxes the banana was in. Then a screen was placed between it and the boxes, which was removed after a few seconds. She successfully solved this problem, proving that animals are already capable of a delayed, and not just a direct response to a stimulus.

Watson's student was Carl Lashley, who worked at the Universities of Chicago and Harvard, and then at Yerkes' primate laboratory. He, like other behaviorists, believed that consciousness is redundantly reduced to the bodily activity of the organism. Lashley's well-known experiments on the study of brain mechanisms of behavior were built according to the following scheme: an animal developed a skill, and then various parts of the brain were removed in order to find out whether this skill depended on them. As a result, Lashley came to the conclusion that the brain functions as a whole and its various parts are equipotential, that is, they are equivalent, and therefore can successfully replace each other.

All behaviorists were united by the belief in the futility of the concept of consciousness, in the need to do away with "mentalism." But unity in front of a common enemy - an introspective concept - was lost when solving specific scientific problems.

The disintegration of the original behaviorist program showed the weakness of its categorical “core”. The category of action, one-sidedly interpreted in this program, could not be successfully developed when the image and motive were reduced. Without them, the action itself lost its real flesh. The image of events and situations, on which action is always oriented, turned out to be reduced to the level of physical stimuli by Watson. The motivation factor was either rejected altogether or appeared in the form of several primitive affects (such as fear), to which Watson had to turn to in order to explain the conditioned reflex regulation of emotional behavior. Attempts to include the categories of image, motive, and psychosocial relation in the original behaviorist program led to its new version - non-behaviorism.

1960s

The development of behaviorism in the 60s of the 20th century is associated with the name of Skinner. The American researcher can be attributed to the current of radical behaviorism. Skinner rejected thinking mechanisms and believed that the technique of developing a conditioned reflex, which consists in fixing or weakening behavior in connection with the presence or absence of reward or punishment, can explain all forms of human behavior. This approach was applied by the American researcher to explain the most diverse in complexity forms of behavior, from the learning process to social behavior.

Methods

Behaviorists have used two main methodological approaches to study behavior: observation in laboratory, artificially created and controlled conditions, and observation in natural habitat.

Most of the experiments were carried out by the behaviorists on animals, then the establishment of patterns of reactions in response to environmental influences was transferred to humans. Behaviorism has shifted the emphasis of experimental psychology practice from the study of human behavior to the study of animal behavior. Experiments with animals made it possible to better carry out research control over the connections of the environment with the behavioral response to it. The simpler the psychological and emotional makeup of the observed being, the greater the guarantee that the investigated connections will not be distorted by accompanying psychological and emotional components. It is impossible to provide such a degree of purity in an experiment with humans.

Later, this technique was criticized, mainly for ethical reasons (see, for example, the humanistic approach). Behaviorists also believed that through manipulation of external stimuli, different behavioral traits can be formed in a person.

IN USSR

Development

Behaviorism laid the foundation for the emergence and development of various psychological and psychotherapeutic schools, such as non-behaviorism, cognitive psychology, behavioral psychotherapy, rational-emotional-behavioral therapy. There are many practical applications of behavioral psychological theory, including in areas far from psychology.

Now such studies are continued by the science of animal and human behavior - ethology, which uses other methods (for example, ethology attaches much less importance to reflexes, considering innate behavior more important for study).

Notes

Psychology
Sections	General psychology Acmeology Differential psychology Psychogenetics Psychodiagnostics Psycholinguistics Psychology of perception (smell, color, sound, taste, tactile perception) Personality psychology Developmental psychology Psychophysiology Social psychology Special psychology Comparative psychology Evolutionary psychology Experimental psychology Gender psychology
Applied	Engineering psychology Clinical psychology Neuropsychology Pathopsychology Psychological assistance Health psychology Psychosomatics Psychotherapy Pedagogical psychology Sports psychology Labor psychology Management psychology Family psychology Economic psychology Legal psychology Parenthood psychology
Destinations (schools)	Associationism Behaviorism Functionalism Structuralism Psychoanalysis Analytical psychology Gestalt psychology Cultural-historical psychology Activity theory Cognitive psychology Humanistic psychology Existential psychotherapy Rational-emotional-behavioral therapy Transpersonal psychology Transactional analysis
Outstanding psychologists	Alfred Adler Gordon Allport Albert Bandura George Kelly Raymond Cattell Eric Erickson Hans Eysenck Leon Festinger Victor Frankl Sigmund Freud Donald Hebb William James Carl Jung Kurt Levin Abraham Maslow Stanley Milgram George Miller Ivan Pavlov Edward Lev Alexander Vygotskiy Ugott Lucifer Berres Skinner Wilhelm Wundt Max Wertheimer Wolfgang Köhler Kurt Koffka Frederick Perls Eric Berne

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Behaviorism - This is a psychological doctrine, in exact translation means the study of the behavioral response of individuals. The adherents of this doctrine argued that the study from the standpoint of science, consciousness is available only through objectively observed behavioral acts. The formation of behaviorism was accomplished under the auspices of I. Pavlov's postulates and his experimental methods of studying the behavioral reactions of animals.

The concept of behaviorism was first put forward in 1913 by a psychologist from the United States, J. Watson. He set himself the goal of reorganizing psychology into a fairly accurate science based on the properties observed exclusively in an objective way and noted in the characteristics of human activity.

The leading adherent of the behaviouristic theory was B. Skinner, who developed a set of experimental methods to compare behavioral acts with the concepts usually used to describe mental states. Skinner referred to scientific terms exclusively those that outline only physical phenomena and objects. And he interpreted concepts of a mental nature as "explanatory fictions" from which it is necessary to free psychology as a science. Along with his own psychological doctrine of behaviorism, Skinner actively promoted its social aspects, cultural aspects and results. He rejected moral responsibility, free will, personal independence and contrasted all such mentalist "fables" with the structure of the transformation of society on the basis of the development of various techniques for manipulating and controlling human behavior.

Behaviorism in psychology

Behaviorism defined the outward character of twentieth century American psychology. The founder of the behaviorist doctrine, John Watson, formulated its basic principles.

Behaviorism Watson's research subject studies the behavior of subjects. It is from here that the name of this trend of psychology (behavior means behavior) originated.

Behaviorism in psychology is briefly a study of behavior, the analysis of which is exclusively objective and is limited to externally noted reactions. Watson believed that everything that happens in the inner world of the individual is impossible to study. And only reactions, external activity of a person and stimuli that are caused by such reactions can be objectively subjected to study, as well as fixation. He considered the task of psychology to be the determination of a potential stimulus by reactions, and the prediction of a certain reaction by urge.

Behaviorism the subject of research is human behavior from its birth to the natural completion of a life path. Behavioral acts can be viewed similarly to the objects of study of other natural sciences. In behavioral psychology, the same general techniques that are used in natural sciences can be applied. And since in an objective study of the personality, the adherent of the behavioristic theory does not observe anything that could be correlated with consciousness, sensation, will, imagination, he can no longer believe that the listed terms indicate real phenomena of psychology. Hence, the behaviorists hypothesized that all of the above concepts must be excluded from the description of the activity of the individual. These concepts continued to be used by the "old" psychology due to the fact that it began with Wundt and grew out of philosophical science, which, in its turn, grew out of religion. Thus, this terminology was used because all psychological science at the time of the emergence of behaviorism was considered vitalistic.

The study of behaviorism has its own task, which lies in the accumulation of observations of human behavior in order that the behaviorist in each specific situation with a certain stimulus could anticipate the individual's response or, conversely, determine the situation if the reaction to it is known. Therefore, with such a wide range of tasks posed, behaviorism is still quite far from the goal. However, although the task is quite difficult, it is real. Although by many scientists this task was considered insoluble and even absurd. Meanwhile, society is based on a total confidence that the behavioral acts of individuals can be anticipated in advance, as a result of which circumstances can be created that will provoke certain types of behavioral reactions.

The temple of God, school, marriage - all these are social institutions that arose in the process of evolutionary-historical development, but they could not exist if it was impossible to anticipate human behavior. Society would not exist if it were not able to form such circumstances that would influence certain subjects and direct their actions along strictly established paths. Until now, the generalizations of behaviorists have relied mainly on haphazard means of social influence.

Proponents of behaviorism hope to conquer this area, and then subject them to scientifically experimental, reliable study of individual individuals and social groups.

The school of behaviorism, in other words, strives to become a laboratory of society. The conditions that make it difficult for the behaviorist to investigate are that impulses that did not initially provoke any response may later trigger it. This process is called conditioning (previously this process was called habit formation). Because of these complexities, behaviorists have had to resort to genetic techniques. In a newborn baby, the so-called physiological system of innate reactions or reflexes is noted.

Behaviorists, based on the multitude of unconditioned, unlearned reactions, try to transform them into conditioned ones. At the same time, it is found that the number of complex unconditioned reactions that occur at birth or shortly after it is relatively small, which refutes the theory of instinct. Most of the complex acts that old school psychologists called instincts, such as climbing or fighting, are now considered conditional. In other words, behaviorists do not look for more information confirming the existence of hereditary types of behavioral reactions, as well as the presence of hereditary special abilities (for example, musical). They believe that with the existence of a relatively small number of congenital actions, which are approximately the same in all babies, and in the conditions of comprehending the external and internal environment, it becomes possible to direct the development of any crumbs along a strictly defined path.

The concepts of behaviorism considered the personality of individuals as a set of behavioral responses characteristic of a particular subject. Hence, the leading scheme in the concept of behaviorism was the "stimulus S (urge) - reaction R" scheme. Thorndike even deduced a law of effect, which states that the connection between impulse and response is strengthened in the presence of a reinforcing stimulus. A reinforcing incentive can be positive, such as praise or money, a bonus, or negative, such as punishment. Often human behavior is driven by an expectation of positive reinforcement, however, sometimes the desire to avoid exposure to a negative reinforcing stimulus may prevail.

Behavioral concepts thus argue that personality is all that the subject has and its potential to react in order to adapt to the environment. In other words, personality is an organized structure and a relatively stable system of all kinds of skills.

Behaviorism in psychology can be summarized using Tolman's theory. in the concept of behaviorism, first of all, it is considered as a reactive, functioning, learning creature, programmed to produce a different nature of actions, reactions and behavior. By modifying incentives and reinforcing impulses, individuals can be programmed for desired behavior.

The psychologist Tolman proposed cognitive behaviorism, thereby criticizing the S-\u003e R formula. He considered this scheme too simplified, as a result of which he added to the formula between stimulus and reaction the most important variable - I, which denotes the mental processes of a particular subject, depending on his physical state, experience, heredity and the nature of the stimulus. He presented the circuit as follows: S-\u003e I-\u003e R.

Later, Skinner, continuing to develop learning behaviorism, provided evidence that any behavioral reactions of an individual are determined by consequences, as a result of which he derived the concept of operant behavior, which was based on the fact that the reactions of living organisms are entirely predetermined by the results to which they lead. A living creature tends to repeat a certain behavioral act or not assigning absolutely no meaning to it, or even avoiding its reproduction in the future, depending on the pleasant, unpleasant or indifferent sensation of the consequences. Consequently, the individual is entirely dependent on the circumstances, and any freedom of maneuver that he can have is sheer illusion.

The trend of social behaviorism emerged in the early seventies. Bandura believed that the key factor that influenced the individual and made him what he is today is related to the tendency of subjects to copy the behavior of others. At the same time, they evaluate and take into account how favorable the consequences of such imitation will be for them. Thus, a person is influenced not only by external circumstances, but also by the consequences of his own behavior, which he independently evaluates.

In accordance with D. Rotter's theory, social behavioral reactions can be displayed using the concepts:

- behavioral potential, that is, each individual has a certain set of functions, behavioral acts that have been formed throughout life;

- the behavior of individuals is affected by subjective probability (in other words, what, in their opinion, will be a certain reinforcing stimulus after a certain behavioral act in certain circumstances);

- the behavior of individuals is influenced by the nature of the reinforcing stimulus, its significance for a person (for example, for someone, praise is more valuable, and for another - material reward);

- the behavior of individuals is influenced by him, that is, he feels himself a so-called "puppet" in someone else's performance or believes that the achievement of his own goals is dependent only on his own efforts.

According to Rotter, behavioral potential contains five core blocks of behavioral response:

- behavioral acts are aimed at achieving success;

- adaptive behavioral acts;

- protective behavioral acts (for example, denial, suppression of desires, depreciation);

- avoidance (eg, leaving);

- aggressive behavioral acts - either real physical, or its symbolic forms, such as mockery directed against the interests of the interlocutor.

Behaviorism, despite the many shortcomings of this concept, continues to occupy an essential place in psychological science.

Behavioral theory

By the end of the nineteenth century, many flaws were found in the core way of exploring the human psyche of introspection. The main one of these shortcomings was the lack of objective measurements, as a result of which the information received was fragmented. Therefore, against the background of the formed situation, a school of behaviorism is emerging, aimed at studying behavioral reactions as an objective mental phenomenon.

American supporters of behaviorism built their works based on the ideas of the study of behavioral acts by the Russian researchers I. Pavlov and V. Bekhterev. They took their views as a model for accurate natural science information. Such fundamental views, under the influence of the ideas of positivism, were modified into a different line of study of behavioral acts, which was expressed in the extreme concepts of behaviorism:

- reducing behavioral acts to a strictly deterministic connection of external impulses recorded at the "input" with the observed response, recorded at the "output";

- proving that such an attitude is a single, equivalent object of scientific psychology;

- additional intermediate variables that do not need.

Particular merit in this direction belongs to V. Bekhterev, who put forward the concept of "collective reflexology", which includes behavioral acts of groups, behavioral reactions of an individual in a group, the conditions for the emergence of social groups, the specificity of their activities and the relationship of their members. He portrayed such an understanding of the concept of collective reflexology as overcoming subjective social psychology, since all problems of groups are understood as the correlation of external influences with mimic-somatic acts and motor reactions of their participants. Such a socio-psychological approach must be provided with a combination of the principles of reflexology (tools for uniting individuals into groups) and sociology (the specificity of groups and their relationship with society). Bekhterev insisted on the concept of "collective reflexology" instead of the habitually used concept of social psychology.

Bekhterev's theory in behaviorism contained an extremely useful idea - a group is a whole in which new properties arise, which are possible exclusively through the interaction of individuals. However, such interactions were interpreted rather mechanically, that is, the personality was proclaimed a product of society, but biological characteristics and, mainly, social instincts were put at the core of its formation, and the norms of the inorganic world (for example, the law of gravitation) were used to interpret the social ties of individuals. However, the very idea of \u200b\u200bbiological reduction was criticized. Despite this, the merit of V. Bekhterev was enormous for the further formation of social psychology.

British psychologist Eysenck in behaviorism is the creator of the factorial personality theory. He began his research on basic personality traits by examining the results of psychiatric examination of a contingent of healthy individuals and recognized as neurotics, which include delineations of psychiatric symptoms. As a result of this analysis, Eysenck identified 39 variables for which these groups differed strikingly, and the factorial study of which made it possible to obtain four criteria, including the criterion of stability, extraversion-introversion and neuroticism. Eysenck gave a different meaning to the terms introvert and extrovert, proposed by C. Jung.

The result of further study through factor analysis by Eysenck was the development of a "three factor concept of personality".

This concept is based on the establishment of personality traits as an instrument of behavior in certain areas of life. Isolated actions in extraordinary situations are considered at the lowest level of analysis, at the next level - often reproducible, habitual behavioral reactions in meaningfully similar situations in life, these are typical reactions diagnosed as superficial features. At the next third level of analysis, it is found that often reproducible forms of behavioral response can be combined into certain content-rich, unambiguously definable sets, factors of the first order. At the next level of analysis, meaningfully defined aggregates themselves combine into the second order factors, or types, which do not have explicit behavioral expression, but are based on biological parameters. At the stage of the second order of factors, Eysenck identified three dimensions of personality traits: extraversion, psychotism and neuroticism, which he considers as genetically determined by the activity of the nervous system, which demonstrates them as traits.

Directions of behaviorism

Classical behaviorism is D. Watson's behaviorism, which examines exclusively externally manifested behavioral reactions and does not see the difference between the behavioral acts of individuals and other living creatures. In classical behaviorism, all phenomena of the psyche are reduced to the response of the organism, mainly to the motor. Thus, in behaviorism, thinking was identified with speech-motor actions, emotions - with transformations within the organism. Consciousness in this concept has not been studied in principle, due to the fact that it does not have behavioral indicators. The main tool of behavioral reactions in the concept is the interconnection of an incentive and response.

The main methods of behaviorism are observation and experimental study of the body's response to the effects of surrounding circumstances to detect correlations between these variables that can be mathematically displayed. The mission of behaviorism was to translate the abstract fantasies of the followers of humanitarian theories into the style of scientific observation.

The behavioristic trend was born as a result of the protest of its supporters against the arbitrary abstract speculations of scientists who do not determine the terms in a clear way, and interpret behavioral acts exclusively metaphorically, without translating colorful explanations into the syllable of clear prescriptions - what exactly needs to be done in order to get the necessary modification in behavior from others or themselves ...

In practical psychology, the behavioristic direction became the founder of the behavioral approach, in which the focus of the specialist is on the behavioral acts of individuals. More specifically - “what is in behavior”, “what the individual wants to change in behavior” and “what specifically needs to be done for this purpose”. After a certain amount of time, it became necessary to distinguish between the behavioral approach and the behavioral direction.

In practical psychology, the behavioral direction is an approach that implements the ideas of classical behaviorism, in other words, it works, in the first turn, with outwardly manifested, observable behavioral reactions of the individual and considers the personality only as an object of influences in perfect analogy with the scientific-natural approach. Still, the behavioral approach has a much wider range. It covers not only the behavioral direction, but also cognitive behaviorism, and the personality-behavioral direction, where a specialist considers a person as the author of external and internal behavioral acts (thoughts, emotions, choosing a life role or choosing a certain position), that is, any actions, the manufacturer of which is she and for which she will be responsible. The weakness of behaviorism lies in the reduction of multidimensional processes and phenomena to human activity.

The crisis of behaviorism was resolved by introducing an additional variable into the classical scheme. Thanks to this, the supporters of the concept began to believe that not everything can be fixed by objectivist methods. Motivation only functions with an intermediate variable.

Like any theory, behaviorism has undergone modifications in the process of its own development. Thus, new directions emerged: neobehaviorism and social behaviorism. The latter studies the aggression of individuals. Supporters of social behaviorism believe that a person makes a lot of efforts in order to achieve a certain status in society. The concept of behaviorism in this direction is a mechanism of socialization, providing not only the acquisition of experience based on one's own mistakes, but also on the mistakes of others. The foundations of cooperative and aggressive behavioral acts are formed on this mechanism.

Non-behaviorism does not set itself the task of personal education, but directs its efforts to "programming" the individual's behavioral acts in order to achieve the most effective result for the client. The importance of a positive incentive has been confirmed in studies using the carrot method. When exposed to a positive incentive stimulus, the greatest results can be achieved. While conducting his own research, Skinner got into trouble many times, but at the same time he believed that if behavioral science could not find an answer to any question, then there simply was no such answer at all.

Behaviorism Skinner considered human behavior to be determined by external conditions of influence (, experience, observation), as a result of which he excluded the ability to self-rule.

The central mistakes of the followers of behavioral learning are the complete ignorance of the personality. They did not understand that the study of any action without reference to a specific personality is impossible. They also did not take into account that different personalities under equal conditions may have several reactions, and the choice of the optimal one will always remain with the individual.

Proponents of behaviorism argued that in psychology, any "respect" is built only on fear, which is very far from the truth.

Despite the fact that over the past 60 years there has been a serious modification of the ideas of behaviorism proposed by Watson, the basic principles of this school have remained unchanged. These include the idea of \u200b\u200ba predominantly non-congenital nature of the psyche (however, today the presence of congenital components is recognized), the idea of \u200b\u200bthe need to study, mainly, available for analysis and observation of behavioral reactions (despite the fact that the meaning of internal variables and their content is not denied) and confidence in the ability to influence the development of the psyche with a number of developed technologies. The conviction in the need and possibility of purposeful learning, which forms a certain personality type and methods that carry out the learning process, are considered to be one of the most significant advantages of this direction. Various learning theories and trainings to correct behavioral responses ensured the vitality of behaviorism not only in the United States, but also its spread throughout the rest of the world, but this school has not received wide recognition in Europe.

Behaviorism representatives

In simple terms, behaviorism considers human behavior as the central driving force of personality development. Thus, learning behaviorism is the science of the behavioral response of individuals and their cited reflexes. Its difference from other areas of psychology lies in the subject of study. In the behavioristic direction, it is not the consciousness of the individual that is studied, but its behavior or the behavioral reactions of animals.

Behaviorism representatives and basic ideas.

D. Watson, the founder of the principles of behaviorism, identified four classes of behavioral acts in his own research:

- experimentation or visible reactions (for example, reading a book or playing football);

- impilitite or latent reactions (for example, inner thinking or talking to oneself);

- instinctive and emotional acts or visible hereditary reactions (for example, sneezing or yawning);

- hidden hereditary acts (for example, the vital activity of the organism).

In accordance with Watson's beliefs, only that which can be observed is real. His main scheme, which guided him in his writings, was the equality between the incentive and the reaction.

E. Thorndike formed behavior in networks from simple components welded together. For the first time, it was thanks to Thorndike's experiments that it was demonstrated that his essence and functions can be comprehended and evaluated without resorting to principles or other phenomena of consciousness. He suggested that if an individual comprehends something or utters any word "to himself", the facial muscles (that is, the muscles of the vocal apparatus) unconsciously produce subtle movements, which, in the main, remain invisible to others. Thorndike put forward the idea that the behavioral responses of any living creature are determined by three components:

- conditions that cover external processes and internal phenomena that affect the subject;

- the reaction or internal acts resulting from such an impact;

- a subtle link between conditions and reactions, that is, an association.

Based on his own research, Thorndike developed several laws of the concept of behaviorism:

- the law of exercise, which is a proportional relationship between conditions and acts in response to them in relation to the number of their reproductions;

- the law of readiness, which consists in transforming the readiness of the body to conduct nerve impulses;

- the law of associative shift, which manifests itself when responding to one specific stimulus from a complex acting simultaneously, and the rest of the stimuli that participated in this event will further cause a similar reaction;

- the law of effect.

The fourth law provoked a lot of discussions, as it contained a motivational factor (that is, a factor with a psychological orientation). The fourth law states that any action that provokes the appearance of pleasure under certain conditions correlates with them and subsequently increases the likelihood of reproducing this action in similar conditions, displeasure or discomfort in actions related to certain conditions leads to a decrease in the likelihood of repetition of such an act in similar circumstances. This principle implies that the basis of learning is also separate opposite states inside the body.

Speaking about behaviorism, one cannot fail to note the significant contribution to this direction of I. Pavlov. Since initially all the principles of behaviorism in psychological science are based on his research. He revealed that in animals, on the basis of unconditioned reflexes, corresponding behavioral reactions develop. However, with the help of external stimuli, it is possible to form acquired, that is, conditioned reflexes, and thereby develop new behavioral models.

W. Hunter in 1914 developed a scheme for the study of behavioral acts. He called this scheme delayed. Hunter showed the monkey a banana, which he then hid in one of the boxes, then covered them with a screen from her and after a couple of seconds removed the screen. The monkey unmistakably found the banana after that. This proves that animals are initially capable of not only only a direct response to an impulse, but also a delayed one.

L. Karl decided to go even further. With the help of experimental experiments, he developed a skill in different animals, after which he removed various parts of the brain for them, to find out whether or not there was a dependence on the remote parts of the brain of the developed reflex. He concluded that absolutely all parts of the brain are equivalent and can successfully mutually replace each other.

However, attempts to reduce consciousness to a complex of standard behavioral acts were not crowned with success. Supporters of behaviorism needed to expand the boundaries of understanding psychology and introduce into it the concepts of motivation (motive) and image reduction. As a result, several new directions were formed in the 60s. One of them is cognitive behaviorism, proposed by E. Tolman. This course is based on the fact that the processes of the psyche during learning cannot be limited solely to the connection between the stimulating stimulus and the reaction. Therefore, Tolman found an intermediate component located between these events, and called the cognitive representation. Tolman argued his ideas with the help of various experiments. He forced animals to find food in the maze. Animals found food regardless of which path they were previously accustomed to. Therefore, it became obvious that for animals the goal is more important than the model of behavior. From here Tolman's system of views got its name - "target behaviorism".

Thus, the main methods of behaviorism consisted in conducting a laboratory experiment, which became the foundation of psychological research and on which all the derived principles of the supporters of behaviorism were based, but at the same time they did not notice the qualitative difference between the behavioral responses of humans and animals. Also, when determining the mechanism for the formation of skills, they noted the most important components, such as the mental model of action as the foundation of its implementation.

A serious disadvantage of the theory of behaviorism can be considered its confidence that human behavior can be manipulated depending on the practical needs of researchers, however, due to the mechanical approach to the study of the behavioral response of an individual, it was reduced to a complex of simple reactions. At the same time, the entire active active essence of the personality was ignored.

Behaviorism shaped 20th century American psychology. Its founder, John Watson (1878 - 1958) formulated the credo of behaviorism: "The subject of psychology is behavior." Hence the name - from English behavior - behavior (behaviorism can be translated as behavioral psychology). Analysis of behavior should be strictly objective and limited to externally observable reactions. Everything that happens inside a person is impossible to study, i.e. a person acts as a "black box". Objectively, it is possible to study, register only the reactions, external actions of a person and those stimuli, situations that these reactions cause. And the task of psychology is to determine the probable stimulus by the reaction, and to predict a certain reaction by the stimulus.

And a person's personality, from the point of view of behaviorism, is nothing more than a set of behavioral reactions inherent in a given person. Stimulus-response formula S-> R was the leading one in behaviorism. The Thorndike effect law clarifies: the relationship between S and R is enhanced if there is reinforcement. Reinforcement can be positive (praise, material reward, etc.) or negative (pain, punishment, etc.). Human behavior most often stems from the expectation of positive reinforcement, but sometimes the predominant desire is to avoid negative reinforcement in the first place.

Thus, from the standpoint of behaviorism, personality is everything that an individual possesses and his capabilities in relation to reactions (skills, socially regulated instincts, socialized emotions + the ability of plasticity to form new skills + the ability to retain, retain skills) to adapt to the environment, those. personality is an organized and relatively stable system of skills.

A person in the concept of behaviorism is understood primarily as a reacting, acting, learning being, programmed for certain reactions, actions, behavior. By changing incentives and reinforcements, you can program a person for the required behavior.

In the depths of behaviorism itself, psychologist Tolman (1948) questioned the scheme S-> R as too simplistic and introduced an important variable between these members I - mental processes of a given individual, depending on his heredity, physiological state, past experience and the nature of the stimulus, S-> I-> R.

Later, one of Watson's followers, Skinner, developing the concept of behaviorism, proved that any behavior is determined by its consequences, formulated the principle of operant training - “the behavior of living organisms is completely determined by the consequences to which it leads. Depending on whether these consequences are pleasant, indifferent or unpleasant, the living organism will show a tendency to repeat the given behavioral act, not attach any importance to it, or avoid repeating it in the future. " Thus, it turns out that a person is completely dependent on his environment, and any freedom of action, which, as it seems to him, he can use, is pure illusion.

In the 70s, behaviorism presented its concepts in a new light - in the theory of social learning. According to Bandura (1965), the main reason that made us who we are has to do with our tendency to imitate the behavior of others, given how favorable the results of such imitation can be for us. Thus, a person is influenced not only by external conditions: he must also constantly anticipate the consequences of his behavior through his self-assessment.

According to D. Rotter's theory of social learning, social behavior can be described using the following concepts:
1) behavioral potential - each person has a certain set of actions, behavioral reactions that have been formed during life;
2) a person's behavior is influenced by the subjective probability with which, in the person's opinion, a certain reinforcement will be after a certain behavior in a certain situation;
3) the nature of reinforcement, its value for a person affects a person's behavior (someone appreciates praise more, someone - money, or is more sensitive to punishment);
4) a person's behavior is influenced by his "locus" of control: whether he feels himself a "pawn" or believes that the achievement of his goals depends on his own efforts.

Behavioral potential, according to Rotter, includes 5 main blocks of behavioral responses:
1) behavioral responses aimed at achieving success;
2) behavioral reactions of adaptation, adaptation;
3) defensive behavioral reactions (these are reactions such as denial, suppression of desires, depreciation, etc.);
4) techniques of avoidance - escape, flight, rest, etc .;
5) aggressive behavioral reactions - both real physical aggression and symbolic forms of aggression: a mockery directed against the interests of another person.

According to the concept of the American psychologist McGwire, the classification of human behavior and actions should be carried out depending on goals, needs, situations. A need is an experienced and realized state of a person's need for something. The goal shows what a person is striving for, what result he wants to get. The same goal can be set based on different needs (for example, three students set the goal to study at 5, but one - from the need for new knowledge, the other - from ambitious needs to make a career, the third - because of the material need: father promised him to buy a motorcycle in case of excellent studies).

Based on this approach, 16 types of behavior can be distinguished.
1. Perceptual behavior - the desire to cope with information overload through categorization, as a result of which the diversity of information is classified, simplified and can lead to both a clearer understanding of the assessed and the loss of meaningful information.
2. Defensive behavior - any real or imagined actions of psychological protection that allow you to maintain a positive opinion of a person about himself. Defensive behavior allows a person to protect themselves from those problems that he cannot yet solve. But if time passes, and the person does not solve the problem, then this protective mechanism can be an obstacle to personal growth - the person hides his real problem, replacing it with new "pseudo-problems". Freud identified 7 defense mechanisms:
1) suppression of desires - removal of desires from consciousness, since it cannot be satisfied; suppression is not final, it is often a source of bodily diseases of a psychogenic nature (headaches, arthritis, ulcers, asthma, heart disease, hypertension, etc.);
2) denial - withdrawal into fantasy, denial of any event as "untruth";
3) rationalization - the construction of acceptable moral, logical justifications, arguments to explain and justify unacceptable forms of behavior, desires;
4) inversion - the substitution of an action, a thought that meets a genuine desire, with a diametrically opposite behavior, thought (the child wants to get his mother's love for himself, but, not receiving this love, he begins to feel the opposite desire to annoy, anger the mother);
5) projection - ascribing to another person his own qualities, thoughts - "distancing the threat from himself";
6) isolation - the separation of the threatening part of the situation from the rest of the mental sphere, which can lead to a split personality, to an incomplete "I";
7) regression - a return to an earlier, primitive way of responding, stable regressions are manifested in the fact that a person justifies his actions from the perspective of a child's thinking, does not recognize logic.
The manifestation of defense mechanisms from time to time is inherent in every person, but the abundance of stable defense mechanisms, stable isolation from reality are most typical for neurotic individuals.
3. Inductive behavior - people's perception and assessment of themselves based on the interpretation of the meaning of their own actions.
4. Habitual behavior Satisfaction with positive reinforcement creates a greater likelihood of reproducing familiar behaviors in appropriate situations.
5. Utilitarian behavior - the desire of a person to solve a practical problem with the maximum achievement of success.
6. Role behavior in accordance with role requirements, circumstances that force a person to take some action.
7. Scenario behavior - a person is an executor of many rules of acceptable "decent" behavior, corresponding to his status in a given culture and society.
8. Modeling behavior - options for the behavior of people in small and large groups (imitation, suggestion), but difficult to control both by the person himself and by other people.
9. Balancing behavior - when a person has simultaneously conflicting opinions, assessments and tries to "reconcile" them, reconcile them by changing their assessments, claims, memories.
10. Liberating behavior - a person seeks to "protect himself" from real or seeming "negative conditions of existence" (avoid possible failures, rejection of average attractive goals, compliance).
11. Attributive behavior - active elimination of contradictions between real behavior and the subjective system of opinions, elimination of dissonance between desires and real actions, bringing them to mutual correspondence.
12. Expressive behavior - in those areas where a person has achieved a high level of skill and satisfaction, while maintaining a consistently high self-esteem, the constant reproduction of which is the main regulator of everyday social behavior.
13. Autonomous behavior - when the feeling of freedom of choice (even the illusion of such a choice) creates a person's readiness to overcome any barriers to achieving the goal (the idea of \u200b\u200boneself as an active “doer”, and not an executor of someone’s orders, someone’s will).
14. Assertive behavior - the experience of their actions as the fulfillment of their plans with the maximum use of internal conditions.
15. Exploratory behavior - striving for the novelty of the physical and social environment, readiness to "endure" information uncertainty, to which the previously mastered methods of processing it are applicable.
16. Empathic behavior - accounting, a large coverage of sensory information underlying the interpersonal interaction of people, the ability to understand the emotional and mental state of another person.
Psychoanalytic theories based on Freudianism describe and predict human behavior belonging to the categories 2,6,10. Behavioral theories describe the categories of behavior 2,4,10,12. Cognitive theories - categories 1,3,9,11. Humanistic theories predict behavior 7,13,14. All theories are correct to the extent of their applicability.