Contributions of Watson, Hull, Tolman & Skinner to Understanding Human Behavior, Study notes of Psychology of Human Development

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Assignment Simranjit Kaur Department of Psychology, Kamala Nehru College C-PSY-05: Development of Psychological Thought Dr Itisha Nagar November 14, 2022

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With the help of suitable examples from real life, discuss the contributions of Watson, Hull, Tolman and Skinner in understanding human behaviour. (15 marks) Behaviorism theory gathers that human and animal behavior must made sense of by condition. Behaviorists believe that psychology should focus on quantifiable and observable physical behaviors and how changes in the external environment can control these ways of behaving. There is no room in behaviorist theory for considerations or feelings as opposed to different speculations of psychology. A basic understanding of behaviorism can be gained by examining the four most influential psychologists who contributed to the behaviorism: John B. Watson, hull, Tolman and B.F. Skinner. These four did not each develop principles of behaviorism in isolation, but rather built upon each other’s work. Contribution of John B. Watson John Broadus Watson was a pioneering psychologist who is generally considered to be the first to combine the multiple facets of the field under the umbrella of behaviorism. The foundation of Watson’s behaviorism is that consciousness — introspective thoughts and feelings — can neither be observed nor controlled via scientific methods and therefore should be ignored when analyzing behavior. He asserted that psychology should be purely objective, focusing solely on predicting and controlling observable behavior, thus removing any interpretation of conscious experience. The sole focus of Watson’s behaviorism is observing and predicting how subjects outwardly respond to external stimuli. John Watson is remembered as the first psychologist to use human test subjects in experiments on classical conditioning. He is famous for the Little Albert experiment, in which he applied Pavlov’s ideas of classical conditioning to teach an infant to be afraid of a rat. Prior to the experiment, the nine-month-old infant Albert was exposed to several unfamiliar stimuli: a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc. He showed no fear in response. Through some further experimentation, researchers discovered that Albert responded with fear when they struck a steel bar with a hammer to produce a sharp noise. During the experiment, Albert was presented with the white rat that had previously produced no fear response. Whenever Albert touched the rat, the steel bar was struck, and Albert fell forward and began to whimper. Albert learned to become hesitant around the rat and was afraid to touch it. Eventually, the sight of the rat caused Albert to whimper and crawl away. Watson concluded that Albert had learned to be afraid of the rat (Watson & Rayner, 1920). By today’s standards, the Little

response relationship is followed by a reduction in need, the probability increases that on subsequent occasions the same stimulus will evoke the same response. If the intensity of the stimulus is reduced because of a secondary drive, then that drive will act as a secondary reinforcement Stimulus-response connections are strengthened by the number of reinforcements that have occurred. Hull called the strength of the S-R connection habit strength. It is a function of reinforcement and refers to the persistence of the conditioning. Learning cannot take place in the absence of reinforcement, which is necessary to bring about a reduction of the drive. Edward Tolman Edward Tolman’s approach is called purposive behaviourism. According to Tolman, molar behaviour is a unified and complete act, which provides the proper unit for psychology. He suggested that underlying molecular elements like neural, muscular, or glandular processes are not good enough to be considered as a molar act. Tolman argued that explanations based on molecular components is following a reductionist approach, which becomes inadequate, because it results in the loss of the purely psychological level. It said that explanations based upon molecular components are not adequate. Therefore, according to Tolman, molar behaviour is more than the sum of the molecular elements. Tolman relies heavily on many of the premises of Gestalt psychology. He used the term Gestalt to describe holistic, insightful learning experiences. Further, he used the term mental isomorphism to describe the central product of learning in terms of the acquisition of field maps, which exist in the brain as cognitive representations of the learned environment. Tolman’s laws of acquisition mainly focused on practice that builds up sign Gestalts, or expectancies. For instance, in his maze learning experiments with rats, Tolman described the acquisition of place learning, which he inferred as the acquisition of relationships or cognitive maps in the subject. In the same way, he demonstrated expectancy of reinforcement, when he found that rats that were trained to one kind of reward switched to a more appealing food. Finally, he demonstrated the idea of latent learning in rats, which suggests different effects on performance levels can be exerted, depending on the quality of reinforcement. In all these experiments, Tolman clearly showed that organisms are guided by central, mediating processes that are beyond the environment. In doing so, he used cognitive explanations as intervening variables. The theoretical orientation of Tolman has not been to be very systematic, when compared to the approach of Hull. Despite the criticisms, Tolman is credited with bringing about a new perspective of behaviourism. He enabled behaviourism to move away from the

reductionist, molecular view of Watson. Additionally, his discovery of performance being different from learning, which he even repeatedly demonstrated, showed that learning is not something that can simply be reduced to elements of stimulus-response-reinforcement. He was able to firmly establish the notion of molar behaviour, and stimulated a great deal of research in it. B.F. Skinner Skinner remained uncontested champion of behavioural psychology. Skinner’s approach had more of a methodological emphasis. Skinner strongly believed that behaviour is only determined by the environment and, because of this, Skinner’s approach has been referred to as radical environmentalism. Due to his strong emphasis on environmental determinacy, Skinner believed that if the environment is controlled, then behaviour can also be controlled. He believed that organisms differ due to differences in the environment and nor individual differences inherent in them. The study of operant behaviour was the basis for Skinner’s research. To study operant behaviour, Skinner developed an environmental chamber in which birds could engage in pecking, or rats in bar pressing. Skinner felt that using such an apparatus makes it easier to control the environment enabling to record ongoing, operant rates of responses. According to Skinner, learning takes place when the operant behaviour is controlled by reinforcement from the environment. For example, bar pressing in a rat being defined as an operant can be increased if food is presented after the act of bar pressing. Therefore, for Skinner reinforcement is the probability of changes in the operant rate. This makes his idea of reinforcement to be different from that of Thorndike and Hull. Skinner avoided these two ways of defining reinforcement. Skinner showed that specific response rates can be obtained for particular schedules of reinforcement, demonstrating the power of reinforcement. In the same way, he translated conditioning processes such as generalization and discrimination to a reinforcement contingency framework. He also extended the principles of operant control to a consideration of verbal behaviour. Skinner used his experimental data for his argument that behaviour is controlled. Skinner has been heavily criticised for his approach. According to Skinner, to be truly human means to be in control, understanding and using the environment for benefitting the self.