Behavior therapy/models human Behavior

SAGE Books

Psychology: Six Perspectives

Behaviorism

By: Dodge Fernald

Book Title: Psychology: Six Perspectives

Chapter Title: "Behaviorism"

Pub. Date: 2008

Access Date: November 3, 2022

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9781412938679

Online ISBN: 9781452224862

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452224862.n5

Print pages: 130-174

© 2008 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online

version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism

• Beginnings of Behaviorism ◦ Conditioning as Learning ◦ Respondent and Operant Behavior ◦ Skinner's Radical Behaviorism ◦ Behavioral Science and Society

• Classical Conditioning ◦ The Classical Process ◦ Classical Conditioning Principles

• Operant Conditioning ◦ The Operant Process ◦ Operant Conditioning Principles

• Two-Factor Theory • Behavior Modification

◦ Changing Respondent Behavior ◦ Modifying Operant Behavior ◦ Use of Observational Learning

• Commentary and Critique

Behaviorism investigates the ways in which events in the environment modify our behavior. We experience delight, become afraid, or feel sentimental at the sound of certain music, sight of some building, or odor of a particular perfume. The environment evokes these emotional reactions on the basis of an individual's prior experiences with these events.

Other environmental stimuli signal the occasion to emit a certain behavior. We await the WALK sign and cross a street, answer a ringing telephone and speak with a friend, or look away when our boss appears, perhaps avoiding a reprimand. When these events occur—the WALK sign, ringing phone, and the appearance of the boss—we generally behave in a manner that yields positive consequences. The environment influences our behavior in both these ways: through signals of impending events and through the consequences of our behavior.

This chapter concentrates on environmental influences known as classical and operant conditioning. It addresses them separately and then together in two-factor theory. As with all chapters on the perspectives, it includes a discussion of therapy and closes with commentary and a critique. The emphasis throughout all discussions is on environmental events.

The most important elements in our environment are other people. They influence our behavior in profound ways, especially early in life. This condition was true for Bertha Pappenheim, and it is true for the rest of us. Discouraged by her daughter's regular relapses, hopeful that another environment might prove beneficial, Recha Pappenheim decided they should move to Frankfurt, her childhood home and the birthplace of her parents and Goldschmidt grandparents. As the only person who regularly overruled Bertha, she insisted that they move. Once again, Bertha would be living among cousins. Wilhelm would stay in Vienna.

Bertha resisted, but Recha prevailed. They moved into a spacious apartment on Leerbachstrasse, bringing with them their cherished furniture and antiques, including a black Biedermeier cabinet and gold and silver goblets. Bertha had a special name for this expensive treasure, calling it her “comforter.” In its presence, she experienced an unusual sense of pleasure and contentment.

In another part of town, marginal members of society starved and shivered. Refugees from all over Europe, destitute and displaced, they needed food, shelter, and support. No welfare programs existed. These penniless souls depended entirely on contributions from private citizens and religious institutions.

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The Goldschmidts assisted in these altruistic endeavors. But like other members of the upper class, they did so by sitting on advisory boards, planning programs, or offering financial aid out of their own pockets. People from these circles never rubbed elbows with the downtrodden—serving soup, wrapping wounds, mending clothes, and so forth.

Among Bertha's cousins, Louise Goldschmidt was involved in this volunteer work and was more than a cousin to her. Six years older, she was also Bertha's aunt, for she had married her own uncle, a man who was Bertha's uncle too. Gradually, this double kinship developed into a friendship. Bertha began to learn some of Louise's ways, especially in volunteer work (Hirschmüller, 1989). And that became a healthy influence.

Beginnings of Behaviorism

Behaviorism focuses on learning—on creating and changing behaviors. As a system of psychology, the only appropriate aims in behaviorism are studies of overt behavior and environmental events; behaviorism investigates the ways they interact to produce learning. The concern lies with overt activities, rather than memory, thinking, and other mental processes, which cannot be observed directly.

In studying Bertha's adjustment to Frankfurt, behaviorists would not speculate about her mental states or hereditary influences. Instead, they would examine external, observable events—her overt behavior and relevant environmental factors. They do so because they place the highest value on objectivity. Influenced by this emphasis on objectivity, countless psychologists today study behavior, although they are not necessarily behaviorists.

One long line of pre-empirical thought influenced some American psychologists to adopt this perspective. Since René Descartes, philosophers and scientists had described the human body as a machine, though certainly an extraordinary one. This analogy facilitated explanations of human beings—up to a point—and it fostered a practical outlook compatible with behaviorism.

Two streams of later thought contributed markedly to the rise of behaviorism. Evolutionary theory in biology stressed the role of the environment in shaping the physical structure of organisms over the millennia. According to behaviorism, the environment plays a similar role in shaping the behavior of any species over the millennia, as well as the behavior of an individual over his or her lifetime. Behavior is selected or molded by its antecedents and consequences in the environment.

The other stream, operationism in philosophy, emphasizes that the only concepts suitable for scientific study are those defined by the operations for measuring them. The precision in operational definitions appealed to behaviorists, and their use spread throughout psychology, contributing to behaviorism's eminence in the field.

Conditioning as Learning

In some respects, behaviorism began in the United States in 1913 with a call to arms by the colorful and controversial John B. Watson, who published a paper entitled Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It. He rebelled against introspection and other studies of consciousness from Wundt's laboratory, arguing that psychology should abandon all introspective efforts to examine the mind, which is observable only by the experiencing individual. His approach, called methodological behaviorism, rejected the study of any events that could not be investigated by the more objective methods of the natural sciences. Like physics, physiology, and other natural sciences, Watson argued that psychology should study publicly observable events, not mental activities, whatever they may be. But not long after his dramatic protest, Watson left the field, his university, and academia altogether, all on a scandalous basis—at least in those days. He moved into the expanding field of advertising, where he again became prominent.

A number of different behavioristic approaches then emerged, collectively called neobehaviorism. The prefix neo means “new,” and some did not endure, including those with the cognitive underpinnings that Watson so vigorously spurned.

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On other bases, behaviorism's more enduring inaugural moments could be set later, somewhere between the 1927 publication of Ivan Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes and B.F. Skinner's first major work, in 1938, The Behavior of Organisms. These more fully developed approaches eventually dominated the field. With Watson's early departure, and especially with Skinner's later eminence, the more influential beginnings of current behaviorism can be assigned to the 1930s, when Skinner began to distinguish his work from that of Pavlov, thereby setting the major guidelines for behaviorism as it is known today.

In fact, as a young college graduate facing an uncertain future, Skinner turned to psychology and behaviorism after reading Watson's book. Later, as a graduate student, further reading prompted him to incorporate some of Pavlov's basic terms into his own work, although he pursued a different research goal, partly by using different equipment.

In his approach to behaviorism, called classical conditioning, Pavlov (1849–1936) examined the behavior of dogs by studying each experimental animal in a separate room, each restrained by a noninvasive harness limiting the animal's movement. In this way, he could study precisely the influence of a specific stimulus on the animal's response—typically salivation. A Russian physiologist who turned to psychology through this work, Pavlov's experimental principles and techniques became widely adopted by later behaviorists. In fact, the term classical means “in the established manner,” in this case the manner established by Pavlov. But his apparatus has been abandoned.

Quite the opposite has been true for the apparatus in operant conditioning, developed by B. F. Skinner (1904–1990). He constructed an enclosed space in which a rat, pigeon, or other small animal could roam freely. He studied animals because they were readily available, efficient to use, and, most important, could be examined in a controlled environment. Human beings would not participate in such experiments, which lasted for weeks, months, and even longer periods. When placed in this special space, a deprived animal, not restrained in any way, could gain access to food by pushing, pecking, or responding in some other fashion. This apparatus, which Skinner appropriately called an operant chamber, proved so popular in animal laboratories that it became known as a “Skinner box.”

This difference in apparatus reflects a profound difference in the conditioning processes investigated by Pavlov and Skinner. In studying freely emitted behavior, rather than the confined reflexes Pavlov examined, Skinner greatly broadened the scope of the behavioristic movement and became its undisputed leader.

All studies of conditioning involve stimuli and responses, and early investigators focused on highly specific responses, such as salivation, the eyeblink, knee jerk, and other largely reflexive reactions, prompting critics to call early behaviorism “muscle-twitch psychology.” Later investigators studied broader, more intentional behaviors, such as assertiveness, social skills, and school learning. Today the units of analysis in behaviorism range widely in scope.

These investigations have produced considerable information on the principles of learning, which is any change in behavior not due to maturation, illness, injury, or other disruptive factors. A relatively simple form of learning, conditioning occurs through associations among stimuli and responses, resulting in acquired behavior patterns of one form or another. Adopting Pavlov's expression, Skinner described his behavioral studies as investigations of conditioning, and the term refers to both approaches today. But the operant processes are also known as operant learning (Catania, 1998).

Respondent and Operant Behavior

Pavlov and his followers studied respondent behavior, meaning inborn behavior elicited by a specific stimulus; it occurs as an involuntary response to that stimulus. Thus, classical conditioning is also called respondent conditioning. The individual has little or no control over this reaction. A particular sound, sight, odor, or other stimulus automatically elicits a change in breathing, heart rate, salivation, or perspiration, or it produces a “lump in the throat.” These reactions are often emotional, involving reflex physiology. The response is extracted by the environment.

Skinner and his followers focused instead on operant behavior, which is emitted by the individual as a

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learned response, not as an automatic, involuntary reaction to some specific stimulus. It is sometimes called a free operant because the organism emits the behavior, which is guided but not automatically elicited by environmental factors. Typically mediated by the striped or skeletal muscles, operant responses are the ways people cope with their needs and environments: by catching frogs, dousing fires, attending meetings, and endless other overt reactions. Some are repeated and elaborated; others are discarded, chiefly on the basis of their consequences.

In other words, respondent and operant behaviors exist on a reflexive-nonreflexive continuum. They differ in the degree to which they are under external, environmental control. At the reflexive end, respondent behaviors are readily and immediately elicited by a given stimulus. At the non-reflexive end, operant behaviors are influenced by antecedent stimulation, but they are not inevitably elicited on that basis. This distinction indicates a difference in the degree of stimulus control.

Expressed differently, respondent conditioning emphasizes the antecedent stimulation, which automatically elicits the response. Operant conditioning emphasizes the consequences of the response, which support or disrupt the response. But antecedent conditions also play a role, signaling the occasion to emit that response.

In both instances, especially operant conditioning, reinforcement is a key concept. In fact, Pavlov brought the term “reinforcement” into behaviorism—well before it became widespread through Skinner's work in operant conditioning. For Pavlov, reinforcement occurred whenever an automatic stimulus, such as a loud clap of thunder, follows closely after a neutral stimulus, in this case lightning. As described shortly, the thunder reinforces the capacity of lightning to elicit a startle reaction (Pavlov, 1927). In operant conditioning, reinforcement designates any event following a response that increases the probability that the response will be repeated. A child who says “Please” and always receives a cookie is likely to keep asking with “Please.” Operant responses are supported, or reinforced, by their consequences (Skinner, 1953).

In operant conditioning, the reinforcement principle states that behaviors tend to appear, disappear, or become otherwise modified according to their consequences. Behaviors are commonly repeated and elaborated when followed by praise, freedom, sustenance, or other positive outcomes. They are likely to be discarded when ignored or followed by punishment. The reinforcement principle focuses on the consequences of a certain response in a particular environment, but antecedent events cannot be overlooked. They set the stage for responses.

Skinner's Radical Behaviorism

Skinner's interest in apparatus and animals emerged in his youth on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, where he caught and trained all kinds of creatures. There he also constructed all kinds of contraptions, including a steam cannon made out of a discarded water boiler. With it, he harassed the neighbors by shooting vegetables over the rooftops of their houses (Skinner, 1976).

At a county fair, a fire in a toy building left a deep impression on him. As smoke poured from the roof, a pigeon poked its head out a window, seemingly trapped on the second floor. Then a whole team of pigeons arrived for the rescue, some pulling a fire engine, others riding on it while wearing red hats and one, tugging on a string, ringing a bell. One of the fire pigeons ascended a ladder to the second-floor window, and then it descended, followed by the “rescued” pigeon, previously unwilling to leave the burning building (Skinner, 1967).

Hearty applause from the crowd strengthened Skinner's interest in this event, the memory of which lasted the rest of his life. Eventually, he and his followers completed extensive research projects and practical applications with animals, teaching them to work for their food, do tricks, play games, and perform labor- saving activities for human beings.

Behaviorism developed most rapidly in the United States, offering opportunities in basic research with animals and human beings; such research was eventually called the experimental analysis of behavior. In everyday life, it offered research with practical applications, later known as applied behavior analysis. It was not immediately off with an old love and on with the new, but behaviorism clearly adopted a position contrary to introspection and psychoanalysis. It examined observable behavior, not the unobservable recesses of the

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mind.

Today B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism, including operant conditioning, is virtually synonymous with modern behaviorism. Contrary to popular belief, it does not deny the mind or the existence of thoughts and feelings; rather, it denies the value of explaining behavior on these bases. As a philosophy of science, radical behaviorism advocates the study of behavior on its own, as a separate phenomenon, without regard for explanations based on internal factors, mental activities, or physiological events (Skinner, 1989). Thus, it does not study mental processes. Or it examines them only as behaviors to be explained. And it does not study bodily processes, except as behavior. Mental and bodily states certainly occur, but from this viewpoint they are more profitably regarded as behavior to be investigated, rather than as the explanations of behavior.

The term radical means extreme; it indicates a considerable departure from tradition. Skinner used it to distinguish his approach from the earlier neobehavioristic viewpoints, both in terms of research methods and goals.

Contrary to traditional experimental methods, Skinner sometimes conducted single-subject experiments, examining a number of individuals separately with respect to the same thin slices of behavior, such as lever pressing and disk pecking. Using only elementary statistics, he compared different subjects and even different species, leading to the discovery of such general principles as reinforcement, extinction, spontaneous recovery, and many others, all of which are considered later in this chapter. Skinner recognized the value of working with groups, but he remained concerned that group data obscured individual performances by combining them into averages, deviations, and probabilities.

As for his research goals, Skinner viewed mental activities as internal behaviors eventually to be studied by psychologists and others with more appropriate equipment than existed in his day, some of which has appeared in our times. He wanted to separate his approach from those of neobehaviorists who refused even to recognize internal states and activities unavailable to direct observation. But rather than calling his work radical behaviorism, using a less polarized expression, such as inclusive behaviorism, would have created a more user-friendly image, at the same time avoiding the separatist position of methodological behaviorism.

Radical behaviorists and others object to the basic assumption that the mind is composed of something other than physical entities. This approach, thinking of the mind as a phenomenon of a different order, at least partly non-physical, raises the question of a different reality. The mind becomes a mysterious agent of some sort, directing and controlling an individual throughout life, for better or worse. For radical behaviorists, this assumption produces an unnecessary detour, complicating our study of behavior.

In taking this position, Skinner pointed to a pair of unavoidable gaps in any account of human activity from the perspective of behaviorism. One lies between the stimulus conditions in the environment and the response of the individual. The other lies between the environmental consequences and the subsequent change in behavior. Only brain research, Skinner declared, can fill those gaps, thereby completing the account of behavior. The biological approach does not provide a new or different account. It simply adds to the explanation. Human behavior, according to Skinner, eventually will be explained by the collective action of brain science and behavior analysis, along with ethology (Skinner, 1989). Speculating about the mind as an overall controlling agent takes psychology in the wrong direction.

With regard to internal states, Skinner made a distinction between thoughts, which are imagined or simulated behaviors, and feelings, which are private behaviors with a physical basis. In particular, he did not view thoughts as causing an organism's response. They too are determined by interactions with the environment. An athlete explains that she performed well because she knew she was better than the competition. But radical behaviorism states that influential events in the environment preceded both her positive thoughts about herself and her successful performance. A depressed individual might go on a shopping spree and alleviate his feeling of depression. According to radical behaviorism these outcomes also have been precipitated by prior events, such as unkind remarks, which prompted both the depression and the shopping spree.

This position is at odds with the widespread view of the mind as the determinant of behavior. In fact, the public

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expects and seeks cognitive explanations. In opposition, radical behaviorism shuns mentalistic explanations, those that refer to the mind. It does not study people in terms of two separate systems—mental life and overt behavior. Thoughts and feelings are private behavior; actions of the muscles and glands are more public behavior. Both types of responses, mental and physical, need to be explained. Radical behaviorism approaches living organisms as indivisible wholes interacting with their environments (Chiesa, 1994). Internal events, to the extent that they can be studied, are simply part of the larger, unified system, yet to be understood.

Many people think that Skinner completely ignored the mind or said that private experience did not exist, neither of which is true. Instead he declared that the mind is not an agent causing behavior; there is no “little person” inside us dictating our ways. Rather, our mental activities, just like overt reactions, are behaviors to be explained, chiefly by studying the environment as well as human physiology.

In all instances, behavior is the fundamental unit of analysis, much as a specific physiological process becomes the basic unit of analysis in physiology. Both fields investigate human activity—physiology focusing on the smaller, underlying bodily responses and behaviorism on the larger, more overt reactions.

Behavioral Science and Society

Resisting the mind as the guiding force in human activity, Skinner instead described the environment as the influential agent. Through his science of human behavior, he wanted to discover and systematically apply these environmental principles for the benefit of society.

His convictions about the potential of these principles led him to write a controversial utopian fiction, known as Walden Two, which urged their use for developing a more communal, less competitive human society (Skinner, 1948). Years later, he restated this belief from a different perspective in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, describing how the major problems in modern societies arise through inappropriate use of these same principles (Skinner, 1971). Carrying on this tradition, followers today continue to view applied behaviorism as the most promising means for improving the human condition, whether through education, medicine, parenting, government, or other means (Cautela & Ishaq, 1996).

Skinner's interest in controlling human behavior through changes in the environment also raised opposition; the media sometimes portrayed him as tyrannical and manipulative, a threat to freedom in American life. In response, he pointed out that teachers, coaches, priests, politicians, parents, police, salespersons, supervisors, siblings, spouses, friends, neighbors, therapists, counselors, advertisers, and countless others constantly try to influence human behavior. And all of us do so whenever we ask for a favor, give advice, or vote for a candidate, just as cousin Louise encouraged Bertha to engage in volunteer work. Efforts to control others are everywhere, often applied in a haphazard fashion.

The Bellevue Sanatorium certainly controlled Bertha's behavior. She wanted to assist underprivileged people, but the staff prevented her attempts to do so. In Karlsruhe, she began a nursing program, but her mother moved her back to Vienna before she could finish the course. In Frankfurt, Bertha observed Louise's charity work. Later, she met some volunteer workers, listened to lectures, and then attended some meetings describing opportunities for serving the needy. With this stimulation, Bertha's efforts to enter the field became supported and augmented by their consequences in that environment. So sayeth the behaviorist.

One day she found herself in a soup kitchen, doling porridge to the destitute. No longer with privileged women in a drawing room, Bertha had entered the arena directly, assisting the downtrodden herself. That event became a notable achievement for her, and it also violated a social norm. People from her favored background did not associate with the impoverished population in any personal way.

In the absence of specific details, the behaviorist would employ a limited metaphor to account for any gradual change in behavior, such as Bertha's transition from sanctioned leisure to soup lines. The environment shapes behavior in much the same way a sculptor shapes clay. Beginning with a formless lump, the sculptor pushes and pulls, twists and squeezes, smoothes and wrinkles parts of the clay, advancing toward the final outcome. Sometimes the successive stages show little change; at other stages, the sculptor's work

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becomes more dramatic. In the same way, environmental events mold behavior. Antecedent stimuli and the consequences of behavior prompt and prod the individual in one direction or another. In small steps or large, through rules and accidents, prizes and punishments, the environment continuously shapes behavior into well-established patterns (Skinner, 1953).

But Skinner's metaphor has a major limitation. As the metaphorical sculptor in everyday life, the environment does not encounter each person as a completely new, untouched piece of “clay.” Each of us has a reinforcement history. Except for the newborn, the environment shapes used clay, which has already been bent, twisted, and otherwise molded in one way or another by earlier environments. In contrast, the sculptor sometimes works with fresh clay; it has not been shaped previously.

Nevertheless, the metaphor becomes useful in a more subtle, vital way. The behaviorist studies functional relations between environmental events and behavioral outcomes. The action occurs in both directions, from the sculptor to the clay and vice versa. In small ways, according to its consistency, temperature, color, and other characteristics, the clay requires the sculptor to respond in certain fashion. The clay exerts some control over the sculptor, just as the sculptor exerts control over the clay.

In other human endeavors, the mutual influences appear more clearly in both directions: back and forth between behaving individuals and environmental conditions. People do things to the environment—build bridges, pass laws, and plant corn—and the environment does things to people, prompting them to drive over bridges, obey laws, and eat corn. Thus, Skinner did not view the environment as an independent force or agent. Rather, his radical behaviorism focuses on the functional relations between behavioral and environmental events, meaning the tendency of one event to change in some consistent manner with changes in one or more other events. The interest lies with the interactions, the mutual influences, between behavior patterns and events in the environment.

The refugees—an important part of the environment for Bertha—influenced her behavior, just as she shaped their behavior. Each party, the server and served, became a prominent element in the other's environment.

A traditional behaviorist would not speculate about the thoughts or social conscience that brought Bertha back daily to the soup kitchen. Those mental events did not cause her behavior, and anyway they lie outside the domain of traditional behaviorism. The behaviorist would note instead that she arrived at the refugee camp with increasing frequency, an overt response, and would assume that something in that environment strengthened the probability of this behavior—perhaps the smiles, hugs, and words of gratitude from the ill and illiterate, old and weary, and other refugees. Then too, the food, instruction, clothing, and medicine Bertha gave to the refugees perhaps sustained their interest, bringing them back day after day. According to behaviorism, she and the refugees each supported one another's habit of returning to that kitchen. And Bertha found a place for herself.

Owing partly to its focus on the environment and partly to its explicit procedures, the behavioristic tradition continues to be a popular approach to solving everyday behavior problems, emphasizing the functional relations between behavior and environmental events. But especially with the development of electronic brain scanning devices, many behaviorists now take a less extreme position. Focusing on interactions with the environment, they may recognize or employ mental events, including self-observation. The concern, however, is not with judging, imagining, worrying, remembering, deciding, and other mental activities. It remains on the behavioral manifestations of these reactions—concepts and terms that refer to overt behavior and events in the environment (Skinner, 1971).

On this basis, research in operant and classical conditioning no longer maintains the premier status it held in the mid-20th century, but it does continue to influence research in the field, often by supporting research from other perspectives. In particular, it has provided unprecedented frameworks for studies of animals and human beings in biological and cognitive psychology.

Classical Conditioning

In Pavlov's early work as a physiologist, an unplanned event with dogs changed his whole research program.

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After many days in the laboratory, these animals salivated at the sound of the keeper's footsteps, even before the arrival of food. This sign of anticipation, already well known, disrupted his laboratory studies of digestion. So Pavlov redirected his research. He turned from the physiology of gastric secretions to the psychology of learning.

In controlled trials, he regularly sounded a buzzer just before serving his dogs their meal. Soon the dogs began to salivate when they heard the buzzer, before the food arrived (Pavlov, 1927). A buzzer, as opposed to a bell, gave Pavlov greater control over the sound—a buzzer stops abruptly; the sound of a bell fades away gradually. This approach gave greater precision to his studies. But the idea that he used a bell appears throughout psychological and lay thought, perhaps because a dinner bell for dogs makes a more compelling tale.

The Classical Process

In this process, food is an unconditioned stimulus, an event that automatically elicits the response in question; no learning is involved. Salivation to food is an unconditioned response, a relatively simple, automatic reaction to an unconditioned stimulus. Unconditioned means unlearned. The food-salivation association is inborn; no learning is required.

Learning occurs when a neutral stimulus becomes involved. A neutral stimulus has no capacity to evoke the response in question. But in classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus, after being paired with an unconditioned stimulus, develops the capacity alone to elicit a certain response, commonly with physiological or emotional components. The sound of a buzzer, a formerly neutral stimulus, evoked salivation after being paired regularly with food. The sound of the buzzer thereby became a conditioned stimulus. A conditioned stimulus is a previously neutral stimulus that has become capable by itself of eliciting a certain response. That reaction to a conditioned stimulus is known as a conditioned response, which is similar to the unconditioned response (Pavlov, 1927). The appearance of the involuntary conditioned response has led some people to refer to this classical process as respondent conditioning, emphasizing respondent behavior (Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Process of Classical Conditioning. Before conditioning, the sound of the buzzer, a neutral stimulus (NS), does not cause the dog to salivate; food, an unconditioned stimulus (US), automatically causes salivation, an unconditioned response (UR). During the conditioning process, the buzzer is paired with food. After conditioning, the formerly neutral stimulus, the buzzer, becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS), eliciting salivation, known as a conditioned response (CR)

At one point Pavlov called classical conditioning “stimulus substitution,” for a formerly neutral stimulus took the place of an unconditioned stimulus. In restricted ways, the buzzer does become a substitute for food, eliciting the response of salivation. But the buzzer is not food. So the subject simply develops an expectation about the presence of food. On this basis, the buzzer may elicit a conditioned response somewhat different from

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the unconditioned response. That conditioned response may include anticipatory reactions not elicited by the unconditioned stimulus alone, such as pricking up the ears, and abbreviated responses, such as weaker or less salivation (Rescorla, 1988). In other words, classical conditioning merely provides the organism with helpful information about the possible presence of some object or event.

Thus, the acquisition of a classically conditioned response can be viewed as a two-unit sequence: antecedent stimuli and a response. As a rule the neutral stimulus must be paired several times with the unconditioned stimulus before it alone acquires the capacity to elicit the conditioned response.

A child suffering a bladder ailment illustrates this process in everyday life. She received medical attention every three weeks. The doctors at the hospital wore long, white coats, and the little girl went through much discomfort. On each appointment, she saw those long, white coats and then experienced the painful examinations and treatments. On the first visit, the white coats had little meaning. The next time she went to the hospital she became fearful as soon as the doctors appeared wearing their coats. And on the third visit, she let out a loud scream as soon as she saw the long, white coats. Those coats signaled for her the start of a very painful experience. They became the stimulus for her response of screaming and crying (Fernald, 1997).

This circumstance depicts the sequence of events in classical conditioning. The neutral stimulus occurs first, followed by the unconditioned stimulus. The white coats, with no meaning on the first visit, appeared before the medical procedures. In this way, the white coats became the signal for a forthcoming event: the painful examination and treatment.

This sequence—first the signal, then the unconditioned stimulus—represents the usual sequence in classical conditioning. It is called delayed conditioning because the neutral stimulus, the white coats, appears before the onset of the unconditioned stimulus, the medical treatment. Then both stimuli continue to be present together for some period. Delayed conditioning is generally the most powerful form of classical conditioning. The neutral stimulus also appears first in trace conditioning, but it disappears after an interval, prior to the presence of the unconditioned stimulus. As a rule, the briefer the interval, the stronger is the conditioning, but there are exceptions, especially in the conditioning of food aversions. The term trace emphasizes a memory trace essential in the pairing of the neutral and unconditioned stimuli.

Sometimes the neutral and unconditioned stimulus occur together, a process known as simultaneous conditioning. In this case, the white coats would appear only when the physicians commenced their work. This pairing results in weaker conditioning because the signal does not appear in advance. And when the neutral stimulus occurs after the unconditioned stimulus, it cannot function as a signal at all. There is no substantial conditioning.

Classical conditioning enables an individual to learn the meaning of a particular stimulus. The individual develops an attitude or emotional reaction about some impending event (Kohn & Kalat, 1992).

Bertha developed a special affection for her father's Biedermeier cabinet, which she brought from Vienna. How did that happen? How did this furniture become her “comforter”?

We cannot know, but we can enumerate from psychological research three major possibilities, three ways in which people acquire attitudes and emotional reactions. First, they may do so through direct instruction. Told that a certain food causes cancer, a person may develop an aversion to that food. The instruction suffices. Bertha's father perhaps instructed her about the value of the cabinet, causing her to cherish it as a means of security.

Second, people develop emotional responses by observation, without any instruction. In this process, called modeling, or observational learning, a person may become fearful of a certain tool after watching someone else suffer an injury when using it. Intentional or otherwise, a demonstration sometimes can be sufficient. Without saying anything, Bertha's father perhaps behaved in ways that showed how much comfort he gained from that cabinet.

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Extensive research has supported instruction and observational learning as ways to develop and change attitudes. Both can be effective, separately or together.

A third way, viewing this outcome in the context of classical conditioning, has special appeal for the behaviorist. The behaviorist would note that the cabinet by itself—hard wood, painted black—did not have any natural features of an unconditioned “comforter.” It could not be mistaken for a child's soft security blanket, a mother's warm and tender hug, or even a father's lap. But this large piece of furniture in the drawing room certainly would have been noticed by anyone experiencing warmth, hugs, food, and other comforting events in that room.

In fact, Bertha suggested that this cabinet had been regularly associated with pleasurable stimuli in her early life—food, drink, rest, cuddling, and play with her father. Through these associations with these positive, unconditioned stimuli time and again, the cabinet perhaps became a conditioned stimulus for feeling comforted. This process would involve delayed or simultaneous conditioning. The cabinet would have gained its comforting qualities by its presence on these occasions with food and drink and hugs in the drawing room.

We cannot know for certain how that dark, hard piece of furniture became a comforter. There is no evidence that anyone used direct instruction for this purpose. Observational learning seems a better possibility, and it could have occurred amid a conditioning process. Both techniques are often used today in behavior therapy.

In any case, years later and miles away on Leerbachstrasse, that cabinet elicited in Bertha a strong, favorable reaction. Even after Willie took away the goblets, it remained her comforter (Edinger, 1968).

Classical Conditioning Principles

Principles of classical conditioning are widely used to explain the development of emotional reactions in everyday life. On passing a tree from which she fell as a youth and sustained serious injury, an elderly woman still shudders a bit. A man enjoys a slight flash of excitement on walking in a park where he encountered his first love on summer evenings. Someone who becomes violently nauseous while dining at a certain restaurant or using a certain medication tends to re-experience some of that illness on confronting the relevant stimulus again. Classically conditioned responses of this sort appear throughout daily life. Within psychology, no other theory or perspective offers an equally compelling explanation of unusual, individually acquired fears and preferences.

Sometimes a stimulus that is merely similar to the conditioned stimulus elicits the conditioned response, an outcome called stimulus generalization. The new stimulus is not the same as the conditioned stimulus—but is enough like it to call forth the response. A cabinet similar to Bertha's Biedermeier might evoke a positive emotional response in her. A setting similar to their soup kitchen might have elicited a positive emotional response among the refugees.

The little girl who became fearful of doctors' long, white coats one day was taken to a restaurant and observed the waiters wearing short, white coats. But the length did not matter. Immediately, she started crying and screaming. Stimulus generalization had occurred. The short, white coats were enough like long, white coats to elicit the fear reaction (Fernald, 1997). That was the long and short of it.

As a rule, the individual eventually learns the difference between relevant and irrelevant stimuli, such as long and short coats. The process of responding only to the correct stimulus, and not to others that appear similar, is called discrimination. In the early stages of classical conditioning, discrimination may not take place. The individual responds in a more random manner, suggesting stimulus generalization. But if the unconditioned stimulus is paired with the conditioned stimulus, and not other stimuli, then discrimination will appear at some point.

Classical conditioning, also called Pavlovian conditioning, produces both positive and negative emotional reactions. But the latter appear more frequently, owing to the numerous possibilities for stress in our lives. Breuer described Bertha's nervous coughing in this way. She could not understand how the sound of dance music made her cough, but she heard that music at an extremely stressful time in her life—when she was

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sitting by the bedside of her dying father, awaiting the arrival of the surgeon. The muscle tensions and twinges she experienced while waiting with him during that traumatic period were unconditioned stimuli for a cough, a normal muscle spasm of the glottis. By coincidence, she heard the dance music at just such a moment (Breuer, 1895). This reflexive cough, occurring at the same time she heard the music, apparently transformed that music into a conditioned stimulus for nervous coughing.

This outcome, one-trial conditioning, occurs through a single pairing of a neutral and unconditioned stimulus. It can be demonstrated in the laboratory, and it can occur spontaneously amid the events of everyday life, especially with strong stimuli.

But conditioning sometimes disappears. If the conditioned stimulus appears repeatedly without the unconditioned stimulus, eventually the conditioned response does not occur, an outcome known as extinction. The conditioned response becomes inhibited. If the little girl were regularly exposed to white coats in her everyday life, without any negative incidents, then her anxiety would gradually disappear.

The extinguished response may reappear, however. If the individual has not been in the original conditioning situation for some interval, and the conditioned stimulus has not been present during this period, the previously extinguished conditioned response may reappear on exposure to the conditioned stimulus. Without encountering white coats of any sort for some time, the little girl may experience a fear reaction on seeing them once again. The conditioned response may re-emerge. This phenomenon, called spontaneous recovery, becomes weaker and weaker with each subsequent presentation of the conditioned stimulus alone. In the long run, the conditioned response disappears completely.

One other principle deserves special mention because it has the potential to greatly expand the influence of classical conditioning. Known as higher-order conditioning, it occurs whenever a neutral stimulus becomes a conditioned stimulus without being paired previously with an unconditioned stimulus. It is paired instead with a conditioned stimulus. In Pavlov's laboratory, the sound of a buzzer became a conditioned stimulus through pairing with food, a procedure called normal or first-order conditioning. Then Pavlov several times paired a light, a neutral stimulus for salivation, with the buzzer eliciting salivation, and eventually the light became a conditioned stimulus—without the use of food or any other unconditioned stimulus—in a process called second-order conditioning. If a tap on the nose, regularly paired with the light but never with food, then alone elicited salivation, the result would be third-order conditioning, and so forth.

Investigators have experienced difficulties proceeding beyond second-order conditioning, especially with animals, because any conditioned stimulus can become extinguished after many presentations without an unconditioned stimulus. Moreover, a higher-order conditioned response is weaker and more readily extinguished than a first-order response. Pavlov believed higher levels are possible with human beings, and certainly advertisers, politicians, and many others today try to associate themselves or their products repeatedly with popular people, prestigious events, patriotic symbols, and other conditioned stimuli that elicit positive emotional reactions. In turn, they try to depict their rivals as associated instead with negatively conditioned stimuli.

From the behavioristic viewpoint, the environment shapes behavior—much as the sculptor shapes clay. The sound of dance music, the sight of an old cabinet, cooking odors, soup bowls—all can become conditioned stimuli through their associations with certain events. In this way, they acquire the capacity to elicit emotionally toned responses.

But these conditioned associations are not completely random, a point that needs emphasis in closing this discussion. Certain associations develop more rapidly than others, depending in part on the species involved. This phenomenon, called biologically prepared learning, means that an organism is biologically predisposed to develop conditioned reactions to certain stimuli and not to others, owing to “hard-wired” elements in its nervous system.

In a classic experiment, rats drank water paired with three simultaneous stimuli: bright light, a clicking noise, and a sweet flavor. Later, half the rats experienced an electric shock whenever they drank this water, and then the experimenters tested them for their response to the previously neutral stimuli, one by one: bright water,

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noisy water, and sweet water. What would the rats do? Had they developed a conditioned aversive reaction to one or more of these stimuli? As it turned out, they avoided the bright water and noisy water but not the sweet water. In other words, with electric shock as an unconditioned stimulus, the light and sounds became conditioned stimuli, but the flavor remained neutral. It did not become a negative conditioned stimulus.

The experimenters treated the other half of the group differently. While these rats were consuming the bright- noisy-sweet water, the experimenters exposed them not to electric shock but to radiation, an unconditioned stimulus for nausea. Then, when they tested this group for each stimulus separately, they found that these rats avoided the sweet water but not the bright or noisy water. In other words, with nausea-inducing radiation as an unconditioned stimulus, only the flavor of the water became a conditioned stimulus (Garcia & Koelling, 1966). Thus, flavors and odors tend to become conditioned cues when the unconditioned stimulus causes gastrointestinal discomfort. Sights and sounds become conditioned cues when the unconditioned stimulus causes externally experienced pain.

Apparently natural selection has prepared organisms for these adaptive associations. Animals and human beings with these adaptive tendencies are more likely to survive and reproduce. Among human beings, for example, stimuli associated with snakes and spiders elicit more fear reactions than those associated with flowers (Marks, 1969; McNally, 1987). In short, the associations in classical conditioning tend to be biologically based, especially in animals. In human beings, who have greater potential for learning, conditioned stimuli are more diverse.

Operant Conditioning

In a different type of conditioning, the responses are not elicited by conditioned and unconditioned stimuli in the environment. They are instead emitted by the individual. The metaphor of the sculptor applies to both types, but it is even more applicable in operant conditioning, as developed by B. F. Skinner.

The Operant Process

Behavior followed by positive consequences tends to be repeated and elaborated. Behavior followed by no obvious consequences or aversive outcomes tends to be discarded. In operant conditioning, or operant learning, responses emitted by the individual are developed, sustained, and elaborated by their consequences, as well as by the antecedent conditions in the environment.

Bertha's activities supported the behavior of some of the refugees. They came hungry to the kitchen, she doled out soup; they said they were cold, she gave them blankets; they tried to speak German, she assisted them with their new language. These consequences increased the probability that the refugees would repeat those behaviors. Prior to Skinner's work, this relationship was called the law of effect, indicating that the consequences of behavior strengthen or weaken its recurrence. As Skinner emphasized, the consequences strengthen or weaken the probability of the response occurring again, not the strength of the response.

Thus, the acquisition of an operantly conditioned response is not viewed as a two-unit sequence—stimuli and response. Rather, it involves a three-unit contingency: the antecedent stimulation, the response, and its consequences. These consequences, reinforcement or punishment, influence the relationship between the first two units—the antecedent stimulus and the response. They alter the significance of that stimulus, making it a signal that precedes and therefore guides the response (DeGrandpre & Buskist, 2000). In fact, reinforcement refers to the strengthening of that relationship.

In a laboratory demonstration, a food-deprived rat or other animal is placed in a Skinner box with a lever that, when pressed, dispenses food or water. The investigator has no special interest in lever pressing per se, just as Pavlov had no continuing interest in salivation. However, both behaviors are useful in studying conditioning processes. Free to move within the confined area, the rat engages in incidental behaviors, including intermittent lever pressing, obtaining food on each occasion. Eventually, the animal presses the lever regularly until it becomes satiated. This behavior, lever pressing, is called an operant response (RO), or operant behavior, because it is learned and merely guided by the stimulation. Unlike respondent behavior, it

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is not innate and automatically elicited by the environment.

Then the experimenter alters the apparatus, dispensing food only when a light is lit. Soon the rat presses the lever when the light appears and ignores the lever otherwise. When the light reappears, the rat returns to work. The light has thereby become a discriminative stimulus (SD), indicating that reinforcement is available if the proper response is emitted. And the food, appearing immediately following the correct response, serves as a reinforcing stimulus (SR), increasing the probability that this operant response will be repeated or modified in some way. This laboratory procedure illustrates the basic components of the operant model, used to investigate the numerous principles of operant conditioning (Figure 5.2)

Figure 5.2 Process of Operant Conditioning. Before conditioning, the initial stimulus is uncertain. During conditioning, pressing the lever, an operant response (RO), may result in food, a reinforcing stimulus (SR). The availability of food may be signaled by a discriminative stimulus (SD), such as a light. After this discrimination training, the rat presses the lever only when the light appears. The reversed order of the symbolic letters and the superscripts distinguish this notation from that used in classical conditioning

When the organism emits a response that is followed by the appearance of positive consequences, such as food or an increase in salary, the outcome is called positive reinforcement. These consequences increase the probability that the prior response will be repeated in the presence of that same stimulation. Similarly, when the response is followed by the disappearance of some aversive event, such as a bitter taste or potential loss of a job, that outcome is known as negative reinforcement. These consequences also increase the probability that the prior response will be repeated in those circumstances.

All reinforcers, positive and negative, increase the probability that the prior response will be repeated or elaborated. In positive reinforcement, a satisfying event appears; in negative reinforcement, an aversive event disappears. The vital point here is that negative reinforcement is not a bad outcome. It is instead a favorable event, the removal of a potentially disagreeable circumstance. Behaviorists use this term for this specific meaning. Contrary to popular speech, negative reinforcement does not mean punishment. All reinforcement increases the probability of a response, and the term reinforcement, when used alone, almost invariably indicates positive consequences.

But the acquisition of an operant response cannot be explained solely by its consequences. It must also be understood in terms of the antecedent stimulus, which exerts a measure of control over that response. The organism learns something about a stimulus in its environment; it makes an interpretation and then responds accordingly. If the contingency relationship is simple, such as the light in the Skinner box, the learning is simple. If it is more complex, involving comparisons and abstractions, the learning is more complex, involving more cognitive components (DeGrandpre & Buskist, 2000).

The first element in this three-unit contingency, the discriminative stimulus, becomes vital, for all behavior occurs in some context. In classical conditioning, the behavior is elicited solely by a conditioned or unconditioned stimulus. In operant conditioning, a certain stimulus alone is an insufficient context. The behavior is evoked by a combination of the antecedent stimulus and prior consequences of that behavior. The

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antecedent stimulation merely signals an occasion for the operant response; it does not elicit that behavior. Red traffic lights do not make motorists stop, but they do influence this response. Prior consequences, such as a previous accident or traffic ticket for running a red light, also increase the probability of stopping.

In operant conditioning, behaviorists refer to this combination of antecedent stimulation and prior consequences as stimulus control. The stimulus implies a specific context; the control refers to the likelihood that the response will appear in this context. When the light changes to red, motorists typically apply the brakes, but they are not compelled to do so in the way an odor makes us salivate and dust induces an eyeblink (Baum, 1994).

An operant response may come under stimulus control through trial-and-error behavior. A cook gradually discovers the oven temperatures that prove most successful for preparing a certain specialty. A child learns to whine for privileges from his parents but not from his teacher, who pays no attention. These responses are called contingency-shaped behavior because they emerge through their consequences, apart from direct instruction.

Other operant responses come under stimulus control on the basis of some instruction, law, advice, or other explicit statement about how to behave. In these instances, called rule-governed behavior, the response and its likely consequences are known in advance. The teacher has told a child: If you whine, you cannot go outside for recess. The child knows the probable reinforcing or punishing consequences of following or breaking the rule. In daily life, people learn by both means, moving back and forth between rule-governed and contingency-shaped behavior (Skinner, 1989).

In either case, stimulus control in operant conditioning is conceived and labeled differently from that in classical conditioning. In classical conditioning, the newly eliciting stimulus, formerly neutral, is called a conditioned stimulus. It has become capable of generating the response by itself. In operant conditioning, the capacity of the discriminative stimulus to evoke the response depends on the prior consequences of that response.

In other words, the first and third units in the operant process are stimuli, occurring before and after the response, respectively. When the first unit is present, a correct response yields reinforcing consequences, such as a smile, food, money, or other positive outcomes. Thus, the third unit, the consequences, is often called a reinforcing stimulus. But sometimes the operant response is not correct, and therefore does not yield a reinforcing stimulus. Instead, a punishing stimulus decreases the probability that the response will be repeated. It may be an illness, spanking, loss of money, or detention after school. In short, the consequences strengthen or weaken the potential of the discriminative stimulus to evoke the response.

For another reason too, the consequences may not be a reinforcing stimulus. Suppose, for example, that children are running wildly in the school building. In a program of behavioral modification, they can be instructed to sit quietly for just a few moments, and then, if they do so, they are rewarded with a legitimate opportunity to run freely around the gymnasium. In weekly or longer intervals, the length of the required quiet period is gradually increased, each time rewarded by a period for running. Thus, running—a behavior, not a stimulus—constitutes reinforcement for another behavior, sitting quietly. To be loosely consistent with the idea of a consequent stimulus, it might be claimed that the room with no rule against running temporarily becomes a reinforcing stimulus.

In any case, the fact that a high-frequency behavior can serve as reinforcement greatly extends the usefulness of operant conditioning (Premack, 1965). Thus, the terms reinforcing consequences and punishing consequences might serve better, avoiding perpetuation of the myth that some physical “prize” is essential as the third unit in operant conditioning. That misconception has become a substantial source of public resistance to operant conditioning.

In another misconception, the public often fails to understand that intentional reinforcers can be gradually reduced and eventually replaced by natural reinforcers. A child learning to write the alphabet or an adult learning ice skating may need consistent, extrinsic reinforcement at the outset simply to persist at the task. But once partial mastery is achieved, the intrinsic, natural reinforcers of writing one's own name or gliding

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across the ice begin to become ascendant, sustaining the behavior for its own sake, apart from prizes or other arbitrary consequences.

And in everyday life, discriminative stimuli are usually more complex than a green light for a pigeon to peck a disk, a red light for a motorist to press the brake, or a growling dog for a pedestrian to stand still. They may involve several elements, past and present. And again, when discriminative stimuli are combined with prior consequences, the result constitutes stimulus control. A woman invites a man to meet her for dinner at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday at Peter's Place, providing he can obtain theater tickets. For the man, the discriminative stimuli include the availability of tickets, Tuesday, 6:00 p.m., Peter's Place, and of course the original invitation (Baum, 1994). But the prior consequences also play a role. If the woman issued a previous invitation to this man and did not appear herself at the appointed time and place, the man may well stay home instead. Stimulus control would be weak in that instance.

For radical behaviorists, the individual's reactions to the discriminative stimulus pose no special concern. They are viewed as responses to the preceding stimuli. But for other psychologists, they raise questions about the cognitive bases of behavior (Rescorla, 1988, 1992).

In exploring these relationships, Skinner at times focused on a single participant because the significance of the discriminative and reinforcing stimuli may vary from one individual to another, depending on each individual's personal history and genetic background. In behaviorism, personal history refers to a person's history of reinforcement. Which behaviors have been most reinforced? By which consequences? Which discriminative stimuli have preceded these behaviors, signaling an occasion to emit the response? A behaviorist would ask such questions in attempting to understand any persistent behavior in any individual.

These questions can be extended to the soup kitchen where Bertha offered food, clothing, and other supplies to the refugees. Did their arrival become for Bertha discriminative stimuli to serve soup and provide other help? Did their smiles, thanks, and other reactions become important consequences for her? Later, she helped them learn basic expressions in German and find their way around Frankfurt. The details remain unknown, but from a behaviorist viewpoint, relevant stimuli and consequences played a fundamental role. Bertha returned to the soup kitchen again and again.

Operant Conditioning Principles

Thirty little girls lived in an orphanage attached to that soup kitchen; most were illegitimate and all were assigned to the state and in need of assistance. Occasionally Bertha observed them at play. At one point, she became more active, reading to them and telling stories from In the Junk Shop. Then she encouraged her little listeners to tell their own stories, which were often quite sad (Guttmann, 2001). Later, she served snacks to the children and learned the procedures for assisting them at mealtime, bedtime, and playtime. Eventually, she moved completely out of the kitchen and into the orphanage. There she fed toddlers, taught sewing, and organized a club for adolescents. In this environment, she acquired basic skills in what would be known today as child care and social work.

From the standpoint of operant conditioning, acquiring any skill occurs most rapidly with constant reinforcement. More precisely, it is called continuous reinforcement because every correct response is followed by an event, such as a child's hug or adult's gratitude, which increases the probability that the response will be repeated. Continuous reinforcement is most important in the early stages of learning. After the skill has been acquired, partial reinforcement may be equally or more effective. In partial reinforcement, only some correct responses are followed by consequences that increase the probability of repetition. Reinforcement does not occur after every correct response.

In one form of partial reinforcement, called a fixed-interval schedule, reinforcement becomes available only for the first correct response after a certain period of time, such as every 30 seconds, regardless of the number of correct responses. In laboratory studies of this schedule, an individual eventually emits a burst of responses toward the end of each 30-second interval. In daily life, with a statistics quiz every Friday morning, students are likely to ignore statistics during the week, engaging in a “cram session” every Thursday evening. In another fixed schedule, the fixed-ratio schedule, reinforcement becomes available only after a certain

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number of correct responses, such as every 3rd or 15th response, regardless of when they are emitted. Under this schedule, the individual eventually emits responses in clusters of 3 or 15, matching the ratio required to earn a reinforcer, a condition sometimes called piece work. People in rigorous routines of physical fitness give themselves a rest after a certain number of stretching exercises in each position or a certain number of repetitions lifting a particular weight.

In partial reinforcement on a variable-interval schedule, reinforcement becomes available at random, unpredictable times but reflects an overall average. In a variable-interval schedule of 10 seconds, reinforcement might become available for the first correct response after 4, 18, and 8 seconds, representing an overall average of 10 seconds. The bartender, reference librarian, and firefighter never know when the next patron or emergency call will appear. In another variable schedule, a variable-ratio schedule, reinforcement becomes available after an unpredictable number of correct responses, but again an average is involved. In a variable-ratio schedule of 7, reinforcement might become available after 3 correct responses, then 10, and then 8, representing an overall average of 7. Gambling activities illustrate the variable-ratio schedule. Variable schedules of either type generate high, steady rates of response because, with the occasion for reinforcement unknown, greater effort is expended for each reinforcement (Skinner, 1953).

In research and practice, behaviorists amplify or diminish reinforcement in subtle ways as well. In teaching self-control to hyperactive children, for example, they offered each child a choice between a small bit of cookie immediately or the whole cookie later. The children invariably chose the small, immediate reinforcer. But when the trainer, during the period between the response and the reinforcement, simply talked to the child about something else, the child showed increased self-control, choosing the whole cookie after the longer period of time (Binder, Dixon, & Ghezzi, 2000). Mentally disabled adults have shown similar self-control. Simply having a task to complete enabled them to accept delayed reinforcement (Dixon & Holcomb, 2000).

If reinforcement disappears entirely, eventually the response disappears too. This outcome is called extinction, meaning that the conditioned response has failed to occur. Extinction is commonly used in clinics to eliminate shouting, aggression, messiness, complaints, and other undesirable responses. A previous schedule of variable reinforcement, incidentally, makes any response resistant to extinction. The individual becomes accustomed to some or many non-reinforced responses and therefore continues responding for some time when no reinforcement is forthcoming at all.

But does the extinguished behavior disappear in a gentle fashion—going quietly into the night, so to speak? Does any other behavior emerge? Is there unfinished business? In research, there is always unfinished business, even with extinction.

Unwanted outcomes often accompany the extinguished response. One, called the extinction burst, involves a sharp increase in the response undergoing extinction. In another, extinction-induced aggression, the individual responds with hostile physical behavior.

Investigators have tried to eliminate these side effects, and in one instance they studied people receiving treatments for self-injurious behavior—scratching, hitting, and biting oneself. Their ages ranged from 18 to 54 years. They were treated in three groups: 10 people exposed to extinction alone, 9 exposed to extinction combined with reinforcement for unrelated desirable behaviors, and 11 exposed to extinction and reinforcement not directed toward any specific behavior. Analysis of the results showed that half of the participants displayed at least one side effect, with extinction-induced aggression more common than the extinction burst. However, both responses decreased substantially when extinction was combined with reinforcement for other behaviors. Moreover, the group that received reinforcement for unrelated desirable behaviors displayed the least disruption. Only 20% showed any side effects when extinction was supplemented in this way. When it remained the sole technique, 62% displayed side effects (Lerman, Iwata, & Wallace, 1999).

In addition to acquisition and extinction, classical and operant conditioning share other basic principles, notably spontaneous recovery, stimulus generalization, and discrimination. After extinction and a sufficient interval, a conditioned response may reappear without further training, an outcome known as spontaneous recovery. And a stimulus that is merely similar to the discriminative stimulus, but not identical, may evoke

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the conditioned response, demonstrating stimulus generalization. When the individual responds only to the original, discriminative stimulus and not to others that may be similar, the phenomenon is called discrimination, which is essentially the opposite of stimulus generalization.

These principles, common to classical and operant conditioning, sometimes obscure the difference between them. In classical conditioning, the reinforcer is paired with a neutral stimulus. Food and drink accompanied the Biedermeier cabinet in Vienna, and later Bertha felt comforted merely by the presence of that dark, wooden structure. In operant conditioning, the reinforcer is contingent on a certain response. When Bertha moved from Vienna, she brought that cabinet along; then she could enjoy it in Frankfurt too.

At the orphanage, the board of directors noticed Bertha's effectiveness in self-appointed managerial roles. She guided the children and also the staff—even without formal requests to do so. Some people described her as “bossy” because of her tendency to take control. But she managed the work well.

Searching for a new director, the board made a surprising decision, selecting a headstrong young woman relatively new to the institution. This choice surprised even Bertha herself, for she had no formal experience in administration and maintained meager relations with other staff members. Bertha was lonely and aloof, and the orphanage apparently served as a diversion in her otherwise privileged, reclusive life (Edinger, 1968). Apparently she found the work satisfying, for she certainly did not need the salary.

For the formerly ill daughter in an upper-class Viennese family, opportunity had knocked. This position offered an entirely new start for 36-year-old Bertha, but she kept one foot in her previous life. She rejected the third- floor bedroom occupied by her predecessor, staying instead with her mother in the center of Frankfurt, walking a half-hour each way from their elegant apartment to the modest, crowded orphanage on the outskirts of town (Freeman, 1972; Guttmann, 2001). In this way, she accepted the challenge.

She began her new role thinking well beyond the physical needs of her 30 children, aiming to foster their education and social development as well. These girls would be her “daughters.” She wanted them trained to take useful and satisfying places in society.

In training anyone for complex behavior, the skilled instructor begins with easy, small steps. In this operant method, known as shaping, each task or step is only slightly more difficult than its predecessor, and reinforcement is always available immediately after each success. Hence, the individual usually succeeds at each new step, gradually developing increased proficiency. Each of these steps, called a successive approximation, is just a bit closer than its predecessor to the final step, or goal, which may be quite different from the starting point.

In working with numbers, the child first learns to count, then add, later subtract, multiply, and other mathematical procedures. At each level, even smaller steps are established, moving from single digits, to double digits, to “carrying” remainders, to triple digits, and so forth, and in every instance, reinforcement is contingent on success. Gradually in this step-by-step fashion, the learner acquires full mastery of arithmetic or some other complex subject. Long division, fractions, and algebra, for example, require mastery of many responses at prior levels.

As Skinner pointed out, the fire-fighting pigeons learned their jobs through shaping. In teaching the bird to ring the bell, the first step, or approximation, was to bring the bird close to the string. To do so, the trainer presented a food pellet as reinforcement whenever the bird moved into that vicinity. After several reinforcements for this behavior, the bird remained near the string. Then the trainer moved to a second approximation. The pigeon received no further reinforcement until it touched the string, perhaps pecking it lightly. After sufficient reinforcement for touching the string, the next successive approximation was established. The bird was required to pick up the string in its beak in order to receive a reinforcer. After it did so regularly, it received no more food for merely taking the string in its beak. That criterion had been reached. For the fourth approximation, the bird had to pull on the string; only these responses were reinforced. And eventually the pigeon reached the final criterion, pulling on the string with sufficient strength to ring the bell, thereby earning a reinforcer.

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With animals and people, operant conditioning involves two types of reinforcement, primary and secondary. Any event that automatically satisfies some inborn, biological need is known as primary reinforcement. Food, drink, and fresh air serve as primary reinforcement; they satisfy bodily requirements. After the children showed the expected behavior on field trips, Bertha offered them tasty snacks. In contrast, secondary reinforcement is any event, not originally associated with biological needs, that satisfies an acquired motive, such as the desire for recognition. A colored sticker, a word of praise, a high grade—all serve as secondary reinforcement for success in education (Skinner, 1953).

The concept of secondary reinforcement occupies an important place in the behavioristic outlook. It offers some understanding of what keeps people at their tasks, hobbies, and other routines without the direct satisfaction of biological requirements. In many respects, it bridges the gap between the use of intentional, primary reinforcers, such as food, and the appearance of natural reinforcers inherent in successfully performing a certain task. When primary reinforcement is inconvenient, unavailable, or inappropriate, a smile or word of encouragement may sustain the response until sufficient mastery results in intrinsic reinforcement.

However, most responses do not occur in separate segments. Observe a child eating a snack, an adult balancing a checkbook, or even a pigeon dowsing a fire. The responses appear in a more or less continuous flow. The driver of an automobile emits a sequence of intricately connected behaviors that cannot occur in a random order. In fact, except for minor violations, only one sequence will achieve the goal. This sequence, in which each response is functionally connected to the prior and subsequent response, is known as chaining or a behavioral chain. In this chain, each response serves two purposes. It creates a condition that becomes secondary reinforcement for the preceding response and also a discriminative stimulus, or cue, for the next response in the chain.

The automobile driver reaches into her pocket and withdraws a key. Having the key in hand constitutes reinforcement for reaching into the pocket, and it serves as a discriminative stimulus for using the key to open the car door. Turning the key in the lock produces a click, which constitutes reinforcement because the door now can be opened, and it also becomes a cue to operate the door handle, the next important act in the chain. Opening the door is reinforced because the car can be entered, and it is a discriminative stimulus for climbing into the car. Entering the car is reinforced because the individual gains access to the ignition, and so forth through all the sequential behaviors in operating an automobile.

This analysis has obvious limitations, however. It might be used to explain why this sequence is emitted but not how it originated. Stepping on the gas pedal causes the car to move, the desired consequence, but how did having the key in a pocket, seeing the lock on the door, and so forth become discriminative stimuli for successive responses that did not immediately cause the car to move? For many behaviorists, the concept of chaining is useful only within a cognitive framework, emphasizing the role of thinking in the connections between links. This increasing recognition of cognitive processes is reflected in other behavioristic contexts.

In any case, chaining often occurs automatically, as small behavioral units become connected to one another, forming larger units. For example, children learn to dress themselves, recite numbers, and write the alphabet. After mastering the basic steps in each task, they no longer think about putting on socks, then shoes, then tying the shoes, but instead they simply think about getting dressed or doing arithmetic, spelling a word or, years later, writing an essay. The children's instructors, after years in the classroom and mastery of many specific tasks, approach their day in terms of even larger behavior units: setting the schedule, teaching Spanish, ordering books, and planning a health program, all connected parts of specific tasks in their morning at work.

Chaining involves the integration of small behavior units into larger ones. Shaping, in contrast, generates a gradual change in a unit of behavior, regardless of its size.

Finally, much human behavior occurs in a social context, creating the potential for mutual reinforcement. As Bertha instructed her “daughters,” directing their lives, they exerted some control over her in return. She kept them obedient, offering food and shelter as consequences, and they kept her working at the orphanage, providing reinforcement through their hugs and smiles. When two or more people are interacting regularly, the situation often involves reciprocal conditioning, meaning that each person's behavior is reinforcing to the

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other, influencing that person's response.

A widely circulated cartoon depicts reciprocal conditioning, showing a rat next to a lever in a Skinner box. Speaking about the experimenter, he says to another rat: “Wow! Have I got this guy conditioned. Every time I press this lever, he gives me something to eat.” But, in return, each time the rat pressed the lever, he gave the experimenter further data about operant conditioning.

Reciprocal conditioning sometimes appears suddenly between a parent and a child, especially about one year of age. By that time children have acquired likes and dislikes but remain unable to speak about them coherently. If their wishes are not met, they perhaps shriek and cry or run away. To stop this unwanted behavior quickly, the parent may consent to the child's demands, thereby increasing the probability that the child will cry out again. Each member of the pair keeps the other responding in these ways.

Bertha's relations with the staff also proved mutually reinforcing—for the most part. She gained their cooperation. They, in turn, learned from her, earned a salary, and enjoyed the children.

Two-Factor Theory

In many instances, behavior may be influenced by both classical and operant conditioning. In classical conditioning, the learned reactions are preferences, fears, and other emotional responses. In operant learning, the reactions are spontaneous, overt behaviors. Yet the two forms of learning complement one another.

This learning, called two-factor theory, involves a sequence of classical and operant conditioning. In the two- factor theory of conditioning, an emotional reaction or expectancy is learned through classical conditioning, the first factor, and the problem-solving behavior for dealing with this reaction is learned through operant conditioning, the second factor. Each type of conditioning makes its own contribution to the outcome (Stasiewicz & Maisto, 1993).

The classical factor is sometimes known as sign learning, for the individual learns the significance of something, such as a soup kitchen or white coat, often evaluating it in positive or negative terms. The operant factor is known as solution learning, for the individual learns how to cope with the positive or negative event, approaching or retreating in various ways.

A student reported that during her childhood years her mother always scowled at her just before administering some punishment. Eventually, through classical conditioning, she became anxious whenever her mother scowled. One day after her mother scowled, she suddenly found herself at the sink, washing dishes. Later she realized that she avoided anxiety and possible punishment if she promptly engaged in some helpful behavior, such as washing the dishes. Through the process of operant conditioning, she began to wash dishes whenever her mother started scowling (Fernald, 1997). Sometimes she even retreated to the sink when there were no dirty dishes.

Bertha often wondered why she collected antiques. “Maybe it's because life has left me so lonely,” she wrote in her journal. Two-factor conditioning perhaps occurred here too.

Again, this viewpoint would begin with classical conditioning. Bertha's affection for Viennese antiques arose through their association with happy events in her childhood, particularly mealtimes and cuddling with her father.

The Biedermeier cabinet may be an example. Then, through operant conditioning, she learned what to do about her affection. She purchased antiques, took great care of them, and brought them along whenever she moved to a new apartment. She could not bring her father, but with the antiques she could bring some of the feelings associated with him. Surrounded by the antiques, she felt less lonely.

Two-factor theory also applies in aversive circumstances. When children are punished physically, they experience anxiety and pain. Through classical conditioning, these negative emotional reactions extend to

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the people and objects associated with the punishment. Then, through operant conditioning, they try to do something about their negative feelings, as illustrated in the dish-washing behavior (Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3 Two-Factor Theory of Conditioning. In the first factor, the mother's scowl preceded a spanking, an unconditioned stimulus (US). For the daughter, the scowl thereby became a conditioned stimulus (CS), eliciting anxiety. In the second factor, the scowl served as a discriminative stimulus (SD) for washing the dishes. This operant response (RO) resulted in a reinforcing stimulus (SR), praise from her mother and diminished anxiety

Incidentally, reward and punishment, popular everyday expressions, are less frequently used terms in operant psychology. Behaviorists instead refer to responses as being reinforced; they speak of organisms, people, and animals as being rewarded. This distinction is useful because reinforcement, by definition, depends on the outcome. Reinforcement is any event that strengthens the probability of a specific response, regardless of any intention to do so. In contrast, a reward is something that seems desirable for most people, according to social norms. But for a specific individual, it may not be reinforcing, and it does not pertain to any specific behavior.

As already noted, behaviorists speak of reinforcement in two ways, thereby gaining precision. Positive reinforcement involves the appearance of some desirable event, such as a smile or high grade. And negative reinforcement involves the disappearance of some undesirable event, such as after-school detention or a traffic ticket.

Comparable categories have been established for punishment, which weakens the probability of a response, and again, positive does not necessarily imply something favorable. It simply means the presence of something, just as negative indicates its absence. Thus, positive punishment, which sounds like an impossibility, involves the appearance of some undesirable event, such as a spanking or reprimand from the boss. And negative punishment involves the disappearance of some desirable event, such as recess or a weekly allowance. But these distinctions for punishment have not been as widely adopted as those for reinforcement, partly because so many behaviorists avoid the use of punishment altogether.

Punishment produces several undesirable outcomes, apart from humanitarian concerns. Often, it results in negative attitudes toward the punitive agent—the school, parent, principal, or other authority. It can create anxiety, uncertainty, and sometimes passivity in the punished person. Moreover, it is often ineffective, for it does not indicate the desired behavior. By providing attention for misbehavior, it may even sustain that undesirable outcome. For such reasons, behaviorists using punishment aim to do so promptly, consistently, and mildly, at the same time informing the individual about more appropriate behavior.

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Well ahead of her time, Bertha prohibited physical punishment of any sort, and yet no one doubted that she ran the orphanage. She ran it completely her way, just as earlier she had controlled the nightly nursing of her father and her own brand of therapy with Josef Breuer. She expected confrontations; she even seemed to seek them. But she rarely fought with others. She simply vanquished them immediately. People who knew her, even relatives, described her as an active volcano, always on the verge of erupting, and totally unwilling to compromise even in casual conversation (Edinger, 1968).

“I think contact with adversaries,” she once explained, “gives more strength and energy than contact with congenial people.” So people simply avoided Bertha; she had no friends. She was too controlling, too full of fire.

Behavior Modification

Imagine that Bertha sought assistance in behavior therapy for her longstanding inability to work cooperatively with others, a difficulty dating back at least to her late-adolescent upheaval in Vienna. Behavior therapists today would not act in the manner of the gentle Josef Breuer. Instead, they would immediately consider the reinforcement principle, asking these questions: “How did this behavior arise? More importantly, what conditions sustain it?” For answers, behaviorists would study Bertha's environments.

If she had recently become self-centered and domineering, the behaviorist would look for some recent change in her current environment. Presumably this change signaled and reinforced her egocentric manner.

If, instead, this self-centered style had a long history, then the behaviorist might speculate that Bertha had never advanced beyond the self-centered stage early in life, a time when the child may gain control over her caretakers. Perhaps Bertha's parents “spoiled” her in this way in the early years, partly out of grief over the deaths of her two sisters. Even when her egocentric demands led her into difficulty later, Bertha continued to emit this behavior, presumably on the basis of partial reinforcement (Muroff, 1984). But the behaviorist would instead focus on her present behavior and current environment.

Through her long illness, Bertha gained a measure of control over her family. When she would not or could not eat, she regressed to the level of an infant, dependent on and yet demanding services from the family members. To change this response style, the behaviorist would focus on events in that particular environment.

The basic procedure would be to reinforce cooperative behaviors and to extinguish adversarial, controlling responses. Shaping would be employed, but the task would be prodigious owing to the partial reinforcement Bertha often received for competitive, controlling behaviors in everyday life.

The aim in behavior therapy is to remove an undesirable emotional response or behavioral problem by using the principles of classical and operant conditioning. A broader expression, behavior modification, has evolved to include two related methods, modeling and direct instruction aimed at changing behavior. Outside psychology, the term also refers to various non-psychological methods, such as surgery and drugs, prompting B. F. Skinner to avoid it altogether. Amid the wide-ranging practical uses of behaviorism in the workplace, school, home, or other context, behavior therapy is simply one instance of behavior modification.

A contemporary behavior therapist would treat one at a time the diverse symptoms Bertha experienced in Vienna—her fear of snakes, her eating disorder, her controlling personal style, and so forth. Unlike psychoanalysis, a symptom in behavior therapy is viewed as the problem, not as a symbol of some underlying problem. Removing the symptom removes the problem. Some symptoms are removed by classical conditioning, others through operant conditioning.

Changing Respondent Behavior

Many negative emotional responses, such as irrational fears, are acquired by classical conditioning, and they can be removed by classical counter-conditioning, which reverses the learning process. In the removal, a strong positive stimulus is paired with a weak version of the feared stimulus. The positive outweighs the

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negative. The fear reaction becomes an unlikely response through intentional classical conditioning.

One traditional method, known as systematic desensitization, proceeds in a step-by-step fashion, gradually exposing the patient to the feared stimulus, thereby making the patient less and less sensitive to it. As an aid in this process, it employs an anxiety hierarchy, which is an ordered list of the situations evoking tension in the patient. It is constructed by the patient and therapist together. The most-feared situations are at the top, and the least-feared are at the bottom, where the patient begins treatment. Before beginning, however, patients are trained in deep-muscle relaxation; they learn to relax readily in response to a signal from the therapist (Wolpe, 1961). This relaxation serves as a positive stimulus.

In treatment for her fear of black snakes, Bertha would sit in a comfortable chair, deeply relaxed; then she would imagine the item at the very bottom of her hierarchy. She might imagine a dark coiled rope looking somewhat like a black snake. If this scene prompted no anxiety, the therapist would proceed to the next item in the hierarchy, perhaps the word “snake” written on a piece of paper or a faded photo of a harmless snake. With no anxiety at this level, she next might imagine a more vivid photo of a snake, and so forth. In each instance, she would indicate an anxious state simply by pointing upward with an index finger.

Whenever a particular scene made Bertha anxious, the therapist would stop the progression and, if necessary, assist her in further relaxation or return to the next-lower item on the list. With further practice, and when she became fully relaxed once more, they would begin to move slowly up the list again, progressing in later sessions toward the entries at the top of the list, such as touching a live snake or holding a live snake.

This treatment has been effective in reducing irrational fears of all sorts, called phobias. These include fear of dentists, medical treatment, the opposite sex, schooling, and work, as well as the more traditional aversions to insects, heights, strangers, and enclosed spaces.

But many phobic people reject such treatments. They choose instead to avoid the feared object, never dealing with the irrationality of their fear. This avoidance behavior eventually becomes accepted as part of everyday living. They refuse therapy because they believe they would be confronted with the feared object—and they are right. But in systematic desensitization and similar procedures, the dosage would be carefully administered to match their tolerance.

In a more dramatic, extinction procedure called flooding, the therapist confronts the patient with the feared circumstance all at once, as fully as possible on the first trial. A young man afraid of anticipated loud noises avoided blown-up balloons because they might pop loudly at any moment. This fear became a social handicap, causing him to avoid birthday parties, weddings, and similar celebrations. The sound of a backfire from a car or a book dropped on the floor did not disturb him, for it had already happened. He became fearful in anticipation, and the problem dated back to his childhood. In his treatment, a pair of therapists escorted him into a room packed with 100 balloons. One therapist popped all of them as rapidly as possible while the other, as a gesture of support, stood calmly beside the tearful, visibly disturbed young man. During three such sessions, bursting more than 700 balloons altogether, the young man's response diminished steadily, and finally he tolerated the balloons with no significant fear (Houlihan, Schwartz, Miltenberger, & Heuton, 1993).

This procedure can involve a distinct risk for the person coming to therapy, for it begins with a high level of intensity of the very event that the individual fears most. If partial extinction does not occur in the first session, the person may become even more fearful, refusing all further attempts at therapy. Flooding raises the possibility of such unwanted outcomes, especially with children.

Modifying Operant Behavior

Other behavior disorders are not negative emotional responses but are more overt, voluntary reactions, such as eating problems, lack of exercise, tardiness, poor work habits, and temper tantrums. Principles of operant conditioning commonly form the basis of treatment for these problems. For each behavioral problem, therapy would begin with an analysis of the situation. To understand why Bertha did not eat, the therapist would observe her carefully before, during, and after the serving of food. What happened just before mealtime? Did she receive extra attention from family members? What happened when she refused to eat? Did someone

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give her a hug or make a sympathetic remark? Did someone become upset? In answering such questions, the therapist would try to discover what events signaled mealtime and what events supported, or reinforced, her resistance to food.

From the behavioristic perspective, the events that occurred immediately after she refused to eat somehow reinforced not eating. The behavior therapist would alter or eliminate these events, instructing the family members not to show any sympathy, pay any attention, or make any fuss if she refused to eat. They would be told to act normally and naturally instead, treating her no differently from any other family member who did not feel hungry at a particular meal.

At the same time, the therapist would note the objects and events that held her attention, such as music, conversation, flowers, or reading. Perhaps Bertha, at this point in her illness, spent time in conversation with visitors. That event, conversation, would have the potential to serve as reinforcement.

Then the procedure of contingency management might be implemented. In contingency management, a therapist and a team of people, such as family members or hospital staff, uses principles of operant conditioning in numerous ways to change the behavior of a specific individual. The behavior change occurs because the individual's entire environment, including all the people commonly in it, has been designed to bring about this change. These people provide reinforcement—in this case conversation—immediately after the desired response has been emitted.

Each day a family member or nurse would enter Bertha's room alone, only at mealtime, carrying a tray of food, the discriminative stimulus for eating. This visitor might smile at any greeting from her but would not speak until she began to eat. If she did not begin eating after a short predetermined period, perhaps one minute, the discriminative stimulus would be removed. The person would calmly pick up the tray, leave the room, and not return until the next meal.

If Bertha began to eat at a reasonable pace, the visitor would begin to converse with her. The visitor would continue the conversation in a normal fashion, listening carefully to Bertha's remarks and replying directly to them, as long as she continued eating. If she stopped eating, the visitor would cease her part in the conversation. If she soon resumed eating, the visitor would resume conversation, always in a gentle but firm manner.

Throughout this process, the family members or hospital team would keep detailed records. If Bertha ate more than on the previous day, or more promptly, then the visitor might leave some magazine or other object that she enjoyed. Gradually, through cooperation with everyone in contact with her, the criteria for the amount and rate of acceptable food intake would be raised. With this shaping procedure, eventually she would be required to consume in steady fashion everything on her plate in order to maintain the conversation, receive magazines, or gain some other positive outcome. If she proved resistant to meeting this final criterion, as sometimes happens with such eating disorders, a form of psychotherapy might be introduced, including cognitive behavioral therapy, described later.

If Bertha made adequate progress and then one day became resistant, a mildly aversive procedure might be employed in behavior therapy. In a gentle but firm manner, the visitor would leave the room immediately. Or the visitor might escort or wheel her into a vacant room, one without magazines or other objects that she enjoyed. In the latter procedure, called timeout, the undesirable behavior results in mild punishment through the absence of reinforcing stimuli. It becomes a form of negative punishment, for the person loses certain privileges. A timeout may last up to a half-hour or so, but even a minute or two can prove highly effective (Rachlin, 1991).

In dealing with Bertha's mute state, Breuer perhaps fostered an incidental version of shaping without any intention to do so. At first, Bertha spoke gibberish, but Breuer paid attention anyway. In later sessions, she began to utter words and short phrases. Breuer continued to listen, although she made little sense. Still later, she described tormenting hallucinations, and Breuer remained attentive. Some sessions after that, she told full tales about the onset of these hallucinations, including her visions emerging at her father's bedside, and here she captured Breuer's rapt attention.

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Finally, she described her feelings about these events and people in her life. She spoke passionately, with love and anger, remorse and frustration. By consistently giving his full attention, Breuer supported this progression. He did not require steady improvements through successive approximations, but he did encourage more and more openness, more complete disclosure on her part.

If behavior therapy had been available at the time and the family members had been cooperative, a contingency management program might have been developed, not only for eating and speaking but also for other desirable behaviors, such as showing interest in the environment and interacting cooperatively with other people. If Wilhelm proved inept or uncooperative as a team member, he would have been dismissed. Then he would have been charged with some other family responsibility. The behavior therapist would not let Wilhelm simply shirk his duty. That outcome would constitute reinforcement for undesirable behavior.

Bertha's temporary improvement during therapy with Breuer has been attributed to her catharsis—the release of emotional tension over the loss of her father and related problems—but Breuer's attention became a vital factor. When she sought assurance of his presence, he held her hand. When she needed assistance in eating, he fed her. When she spoke incoherently, he listened carefully. Her steady progress kept Breuer at his unusual task, and his steady efforts slowly but surely kept her on the mend. Her words kept him listening; his attention kept her talking, working at self-discovery.

The reinforcement principle became a controlling factor. It produced reciprocal conditioning. An element of behavior therapy apparently emerged in their talking cure.

Behaviorists would show no surprise. Conditioning is expected—at work, at play, and almost anywhere else. It occurs throughout our lives in a continuous, extensive, incidental fashion, and the social environment includes innumerable opportunities for reciprocal reinforcement. But just as the sculptor shapes the clay, that clay—an inanimate object—can influence the sculptor's responses. The bent nail requires the carpenter to hammer more carefully; an error on the computer screen signals the operator to press a button; a tasty dish prompts an apprentice chef to repeat the recipe. Environmental consequences influence behavior even in the absence of other people.

Use of Observational Learning

Finally, other people can play a role in a behavior-oriented therapy that does not directly employ principles of classical or operant conditioning. It was illustrated in the therapy for the young man fearful of balloons. That therapy involved extinction, a principle of conditioning, but it also demonstrated behavior change through observational learning.

This treatment represents a less-traditional approach to behavior therapy, for it includes a significant cognitive element. In observational learning, an individual acquires or modifies behavior simply by noting the performance of someone capable in that situation. The person demonstrating the proper response is known as a model, preferably someone admired by the observer. In the balloon therapy, the tranquil second therapist served as an appropriate model of adult behavior, showing no anxiety in this context.

With children, a peer model, approximately the same age as the learner, may serve more effectively than a mastery model, who performs the task at a high level but remains socially inaccessible to the learner. For a boy or girl with a dog phobia, for example, a competent child could serve well in this role, perhaps better than a fearless adult (Bandura, 1986; Bandura, Grusec, & Menlove, 1967). Adults often do things that children are not expected or permitted to do.

The premise here is that behavior change can occur on the basis of observation alone, apart from direct reinforcement. If the model has behaved effectively and received reinforcement, then the observer has experienced vicarious reinforcement. The observer has been exposed to this reinforcement through the imagined participation in some else's activity, learning to remain calm, operate a certain machine, or pronounce words in a foreign language simply by observation. On a later occasion, when the opportunity arises, the observer may emit this behavior, thereby gaining the actual reinforcement rather than an imagined outcome.

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Commentary and Critique

Behaviorism achieved prominence in American psychology through its elegant simplicity, clear philosophical position, and substantial research support, as well as its continuing success in numerous applied settings. In this context, B. F. Skinner was ranked first in eminence among 20th-century psychologists (Haggbloom, Warnick, Warnick, Jones, Yarbrough, Russell, et al., 2002).

Yet he and his work have been extensively criticized, especially in the public press. This resistance testifies partly to behaviorism's earlier prominence in the field, when it overshadowed rival viewpoints. In addition, Skinner's work with animals, lack of interest in human mental life, and disparaging views of human dignity and freedom created numerous opportunities for the mass media to attack his character rather than his ideas about psychology. Among psychologists, resistance has arisen over the relevance of his research for the human condition and over its inattention to the human mind.

A problem throughout psychological research, the generalizability issue concerns the extent to which the findings from a certain investigation can be appropriately applied in another context, apart from the original research setting. Are the results applicable elsewhere?

Skinner and colleagues conducted numerous experiments with animals because comparable research with people would have been impossible. On ethical grounds, they simply could not restrict human beings to highly controlled environments for extended periods, even apart from the prohibitive financial costs. So the generalizability question takes this broad form: To what degree are studies of lower animals in laboratories applicable to human beings in their complex, everyday environments?

Supporters point out that many investigators, using the principles of behaviorism, have performed highly successful single-participant experiments with human beings, relieving them of disorders of all sorts, ranging from problems in parenting, to bad habits at school and work, to performance enhancement in recreational activities. The evidence for individual gain from behavior therapy remains strong. Skinner's detractors reply that this research, confined to controlled environments with just one person at a time, does not make the full case. It stands at some distance from his long-range goals of making fundamental changes in our highly complex, steadily evolving culture. The problem here perhaps lies with Skinner's profound hopes for favorable social outcomes from applications of his work, generalizing from laboratory and clinical research to society at large without adequate evidence.

These hopes lay partly in a view of the human mind as infinitely malleable and therefore developed solely through learning. But research in modern biological, cognitive, and evolutionary psychology strongly suggests that the human mind, at birth, comes prepared to respond in certain “programmed” ways (Pinker, 2002). In fact, this resistance arose even in Skinner's day. Animals trained by behavioristic principles drifted instead into different behaviors, ones to which they had not been conditioned. They seemed to be restricted by inborn, instinctive tendencies (Breland & Breland, 1961).

Many psychologists and most of the general public also resist behaviorism's position on the role of mental life in behavior. A popular concept in everyday life, mentalism attributes human behavior to the operation of the mind. The mind exists as a separate part of reality, guiding and even energizing our behavior. Consciousness, in this view, is not completely reducible to physical phenomena. But behaviorism opposes this view. The unknown regions of the mind should not become the dominant explanation for what someone does.

A major tenet of radical behaviorism, anti-mentalism regards biological and other physical phenomena as the proper and eventually adequate explanation of mental activities. This idea, that all human activities can be explained on the basis of physical energy, becomes incompatible with everyday life, however. Instead, people experience mental processes as influencing their overt activity. In reading a book, attending a concert, or going to work, popular thought invokes the mind as the driving, controlling force.

Skinner renounced the mind as the locus of control for an individual's behavior. He viewed mental activities as secondary events, called epiphenomena, because they are incidental to more basic phenomena, such as behaviors. Moreover, they are not causal. Mental activities are the result of brain activity, but they do not

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influence brain activity. On this basis, they merit study only as incidental, internal behaviors, not as the causes of behavior. Radical behaviorism aims to explain human behavior without resorting to mentalism.

With ideas so contrary to popular thought, Skinner became a target for adverse reactions of all sorts. After his first daughter experienced painful mishaps in a conventional crib, and ever the inventor, he constructed a special crib for his second daughter, aimed at easing the burden of child care. This “baby tender” included mobiles, temperature controls, a transparent front, and a heavy cloth base that could be readily changed for cleanliness, all favorable innovations in the mid-20th century (Skinner, 1945). But because of Skinner's well- known experimental studies with animals in the “Skinner box,” a leading magazine, Ladies Home Journal, introduced the new crib under the title “Baby in a Box.” Then the mass media, much later, working from false assumptions, presented distortions and rumors that he imprisoned his daughter in that box, resulting in serious behavior disorders, including an alleged psychotic episode and suicide (Jordan, 1996). In fact, she lives in England today, pursuing a healthy, productive life.

Skinner's inventions extend beyond the baby tender, early teaching machines, and other labor-saving devices. His utopian fiction in Walden Two and philosophical treatise in Beyond Freedom and Dignity advocate the extensive use of behavioral technology for creating improvements throughout human society. But readers become concerned. How would someone establish this behavioral science and implement its practice? Who would take control? Many suspected Skinner of despotism, although he showed no interest in public office.

Perhaps Skinner overestimated his capacity to communicate successfully with the public. Or perhaps he underestimated the public's desire for quick and easy answers to complex questions. In any case, behaviorism is commonly misunderstood. Its basic tenets appear relatively straightforward, but its essential details are often ignored. Their useful application requires careful assessment, precise timing, steady monitoring, and patience. Without these qualities, the principles of behaviorism are unlikely to be used successfully, leading to the erroneous view that they do not work at all.

One misunderstanding concerns the use of rewards. In these demonstrations, critics establish two groups of participants who perform an interesting task, telling the members of one group that they will be paid or otherwise rewarded. After both groups perform the task, and after the payoff to one group, the investigators surreptitiously observe both groups again, finding that the rewarded group displays less interest in the task than does the group with no reward (Kohn, 1993). But these results do not show that rewards disrupt behavior, as the investigators suggest.

Instead, they show a misunderstanding of a behavioristic concept and misuse of a principle. Regarding the concept, the appropriate term here is reinforcement, which empirically has been found to increase the probability of a certain response in a certain individual. As indicated earlier, the proper term is not reward, which simply refers to anything that seems desirable to people in general. In other words, a reward is not necessarily rewarding, depending on how it is viewed by the recipient. Skinner made this distinction to avoid just such misunderstandings.

Regarding the principle, the aim in all practical applications of behaviorism is to enable natural reinforcers to support the desired behavior. Whenever a person performs a task well and enjoys the performance, there is absolutely no need for any contrived consequences. Supplying needless rewards often diminishes interest in the task, for the reward is then perceived as a bribe, thereby disrupting the individual's intrinsic satisfaction in that activity.

A further misunderstanding lies with the idea that behavior can be explained solely on the basis of its consequences. Antecedent conditions play a role too. The preceding stimuli exert control by signaling a time to emit the behavior, and their meaning can be understood only in terms of the individual's history of reinforcement (DeGrandpre & Buskist, 2000). By focusing only on the consequences, as in the example just cited, the public cannot comprehend the subtleties of the behaviorist position, especially the stimulus control involved in complex social environments.

Even the psychology literature contains misunderstandings. It has been stated, for example, that behaviorism

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rejects biological psychology as irrelevant (Eysenck, 1988). But Skinner explicitly stated that the gaps in any behavioral account must be filled by explanations from neuroscience (Skinner, 1989).

Studies of eminence in 20th-century psychology placed both B. F. Skinner and Sigmund Freud in foremost positions (Haggbloom et al., 2002). Yet Freud has been criticized because he did not do more. He developed fruitful hypotheses about the human mind but did not engage in empirical research to support his views. Skinner has been criticized because in the course of productive research on overt behavior, he did not study mental life at all. As both cases suggest, one price of prominence in behavioral studies may be the criticism that the individual did not make other advances as well.

In summary, behaviorism's contributions to modern psychology include its philosophical position, use of operational definitions, basic psychological principles, and practical applications. Moreover, the behaviorist heritage is still with us in the widespread emphasis on behavior as dependent variables throughout experimental psychology and the extensive use of conditioning techniques for investigating the physiological underpinnings of behavior (Elmes, 2000). These principles and practices are now so extensively incorporated into contemporary psychology that their origins in behaviorism have become obscured. The impact of this perspective remains firm in the field today.

Summary

Beginnings of Behaviorism

Behaviorism advanced largely through B. F. Skinner's experimental studies of learning in animals and human beings, controlled by the antecedent stimuli and also by the consequences of their behavior, called reinforcement. Skinner declared that, just as the sculptor shapes clay by pulling and pushing it in various directions, the environment shapes human and animal behavior by its consequences, colloquially known as reward and punishment.

Key Terms: behaviorism, learning, conditioning, respondent behavior, operant behavior, reinforcement, reinforcement principle, radical behaviorism

Classical Conditioning

As demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov, classical conditioning occurs when a previously neutral stimulus, through association with an unconditioned or automatic stimulus, thereby develops the capacity to elicit a certain emotional or physiological response. This formerly neutral stimulus is then called a conditioned stimulus. And the involuntary response, when elicited by the conditioned stimulus, is called a conditioned response. The focus in classical conditioning is on conditioned emotional responses, such as conditioned fears, happiness, and anger.

Key Terms: unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, classical conditioning, conditioned stimulus, conditioned response, delayed conditioning, trace conditioning, simultaneous conditioning, stimulus generalization, discrimination, one-trial conditioning, extinction, spontaneous recovery, higher-order conditioning, biologically prepared learning

Operant Conditioning

Operant conditioning, or operant learning, investigated and promoted by B. F. Skinner, involves the acquisition of voluntary responses according to their antecedent stimuli and consequences. Responses followed by positive consequences tend to become strengthened and elaborated; those followed by aversive or no consequences tend to become weakened. For precision, these consequences are described primarily in terms of reinforcement. In popular speech, the responses are called habits; they range from brushing one's teeth to operating a computer.

Key Terms: operant conditioning, operant response, discriminative stimulus, reinforcing stimulus, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, stimulus control, continuous reinforcement, partial reinforcement,

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1.

2.

3.

shaping, successive approximation, primary reinforcement, secondary reinforcement, chaining, reciprocal conditioning

Two-Factor Theory

Two-factor theory brings together the processes of classical and operant conditioning. Through classical conditioning, the individual learns the significance of events in the environment. The individual learns the meaning of a harsh expression, lightning, or a hypodermic needle. This outcome is sometimes called sign learning. Through operant conditioning, the individual learns ways of responding to these environmental events. This outcome has been called solution learning. The individual learns to cope with the problem: running away, blocking the ears, or avoiding the clinic.

Key Terms: two-factor theory, sign learning, solution learning

Behavior Modification

Behavior therapy aims to improve a person's adjustment, not by holding a dialogue with that person but by manipulating elements in the environment. Systematic desensitization is a prominent therapy based on classical conditioning, aimed at diminishing phobias through gradual exposure to the feared stimulus, which is paired with relaxation. Contingency management is a method of therapy based on operant conditioning, aimed at developing or changing a person's habits through principles of reinforcement; it is sometimes practiced by a whole team of therapists, including hospital staff, family members, and friends.

Key Terms: behavior therapy, behavior modification, systematic desensitization, flooding, contingency management, timeout, observational learning, model

Commentary and Critique

Resistance to behaviorism arises over the generalizability issue—the degree to which the results of laboratory and other investigations with animals apply to human life. Another major objection concerns behaviorism's anti-mentalism, stating that physical factors alone are adequate explanations of behavior. Mental activities are the result of brain processes, not their cause. Among the public, behaviorism has been criticized for its seeming disregard for human freedom and dignity.

Key Terms: generalizability issue, mentalism, anti-mentalism

Critical Thinking

Confronted with a cloud of dust, a driver pushes on the brake, blinks his eyes, and then wipes them with a tissue. Describe these reactions in terms of respondent or operant behavior. As a dinner guest, would B. F. Skinner be most compatible conversing with a biological psychologist or a psychoanalyst? Explain your reasoning. “I would do almost anything to avoid hurting my father's feelings. Upon seeing me, he often tells a joke. At an early age, I learned to laugh—or at least smile—at his poor jokes. And he still tells lousy jokes …” Explain the conditioning process for the father and for the daughter.

• behaviorism • stimuli • operant conditioning • reinforcement • classical conditioning • psychology • punishment • extinction • food • animals

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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452224862.n5

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