PSY331 w3 assignment

RAYMOND, B. J., & UNOER, R. K. Effect of deviant and conventional attire on cooperation. Proceedings of the 79th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, 1971, 6, 357-358.

ROKEACH, M., & MEZEI, L. Race and shared belief as factors in social choice. Science, 1966, 51, 167-172.

ROSENTHAL, R., & ROSNOW, R. L. (Eds.) Artifact in be- havioral research. New York: Academic Press, 1969.

SPEER, D. C., & ZOLD, A. An example of self-selection bias in follow-up research. Journal of Clinical Psy- chology, 1971, 27, 64-68.

BETH RAYMOND RHODA UNGER SUSAN STONE Hojstra University

On Killing Humanism and Uniting Humaneness and Behaviorism

The idea that humanism and behaviorism are neces- sarily opposed to each other is rampant in psychological and educational circles. I believe this is a destructive and unnecessary situation. Before I explain my belief, however, I would like to comment on the term humanism itself.

It seems to me that humanism is a very unfortunate and misleading term. First, it is quite ambiguous. It is not clear what is meant when the term is used, for many diverse, and even sometimes polemic, persons are identified with the word. For example, one might ask such questions as, Do all humanists advocate the use of encounter groups? Is a self-theorist the same as an existentialist? Is A. Maslow's existential position the same as A. W. Comb's phenomenology? I believe the answer to all of these questions is no. The point is made clear by the fact that humanism does not appear as a heading of a valid psychological construct in Goldenson's recent encyclopedia of human behavior. Why? Because no one knows exactly what it means in relation to psychological positions.

However, there are some meaningful beliefs implied by the use of the term. Humanism is meant to refer to people who are vitally concerned with the present state of man, his problems, and how to improve his condition. This brings me to my second major criticism of the construct which is more important than the first. Use of the term immediately develops a good-guy-bad- guy categorization. The humanist, the one who cares, is the good guy and everyone else is a bad guy. This is especially painful since one of the other major forces in psychology and education, behaviorism, is not con- sidered as being in the humanist camp, and a be- haviorist, then, is automatically a bad guy.

It may have been true years ago that behaviorists were concerned only with the development of an amoral, asocial science. But it is certainly no longer true.

Since men like J. Wolpe and B. F. Skinner have moved behaviorism from the laboratory to therapeutical and educational settings, behaviorists have clearly demon- strated that they have exactly the same kinds of con- cerns as so-called humanists.

Behaviorists are quite concerned with the human con- dition and how to improve it. They have developed some of the most effective techniques available for making people more successful and healthier. For example, some of their approaches to learning have set up classroom conditions that can really for the first time guarantee that each individual in them will be successful.

We can no longer use a term which suggests that one group of persons has a deep human commitment while another does not, simply because some of the philoso- phies and approaches of the two groups differ. I submit that the term humaneness is much more appropriate for identifying the true state of affairs which exists in psychology and education today. Humanism and be- haviorism cannot live together in a peaceful and pro- ductive way because of the negative connotations that use of the first term casts upon the second, but humane- ness and behaviorism can.

If the use of the term humanism had not come to exclude behaviorists and others, the two could have be- come compatible, because the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, unless one demands that they be so.

Humanism, after all, is simply a philosophy of life, a conceptualization about the way things are and how they should be. Behaviorism, on the other hand, is an approach or method of dealing with human behavior. It can be more, but it need not be. This being the case, there is no reason why a person or group cannot reach the goal of improving the human condition by many routes, one of which is the behavioristic.

It is true that the behavioristic approach can become mechanistic and dehumanizing. But this is so only if it is employed without a guiding philosophy. When used in a humane context, behavioristic principles, tech- niques, and methods can help people be successful, lead to self-enhancement, and change self-concepts. It is long past time for us to begin talking about and developing a humane psychology and to stop wasting time and energy arguing about the differences between theoretical positions.

DONALD L. AVILA University of Florida

Quotes Sanford

The following quotation from Fillmore H. S. Sanford deserves real reflection in these days when psychology is so badly split—with each one of us "doing his own thing":

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST • JUNE 1972 • 579