Download 9. Skinner - Behavioral Analysis

Assist. Prof. Merve Topcu
PSY335
Department of Psychology, Çankaya University
2016-2017, Fall
 Behaviorism emerged from laboratory studies of animals and humans
 focused almost entirely on observable behavior.
 thinking, remembering, and anticipating are all observable - by the
person experiencing them
 Skinner's strict adherence to observable behavior earned his approach
the label radical behaviorism, a doctrine that avoids all hypothetical
constructs, such as ego, traits, drives, needs, hunger, and so forth.
 determinist and environmentalist
 Human behavior does not stem from an act of the will, but like any
observable phenomenon, it is lawfully determined and can be studied
scientifically.
 Psychology must not explain behavior on the basis of the physiological or
constitutional components of the organism but rather on the basis of
environmental stimuli.
 The history of the individual, rather than anatomy, provides the most
useful data for predicting and controlling behavior.
 Project Pigeon
 Skinner's Scientific Behaviorism
 People generally do those things that have pleasurable consequences and
avoid doing those things that have punitive consequences
1. law of effect by Thorndike
 learning takes place mostly because of the effects that follow a response
 Skinner (1954) acknowledged that the law of effect was crucial to the control
of behavior
2. Watson (1913) argued that human behavior, like the behavior of animals and
machines, can be studied objectively
 The goal of psychology is the prediction and control of behavior and that
goal could best be reached by limiting psychology to an objective study of
habits formed through stimulus-response connections.
 Skinner's Scientific Behaviorism (cont’d)
 human behavior should be studied scientifically.
 cosmology, or the concern with causation
 To be scientific, Skinner (1953, 1987a) insisted, psychology must avoid
internal mental factors and confine itself to observable physical events
 he did not deny internal states, but they are not explanations for behavior
 Scientific behaviorism allows for an interpretation of behavior but not
an explanation of its causes.
 Generalize from a simple learning condition to a more complex one
 According to Skinner (1953), science has three main characteristics
1. Science is cumulative
2. It is an attitude that values empirical observation
 Rejects authority
 Demands intellectual honesty
 Suspends judgment
3. Science is a search for order and lawful relationships
 Skinner's Scientific Behaviorism (cont’d)
 prediction, control, and description are possible in scientific
behaviorism because behavior is both determined and lawful
 Conditioning
1. Classical conditioning (respondent conditioning)
2. Operant conditioning (Skinnerian conditioning)
 In classical conditioning, behavior is elicited from the organism,
whereas in operant conditioning, behavior is emitted.
 A neutral (then conditioned) stimulus is paired with-that is,
immediately precedes-an unconditioned stimulus a number of times
until it is capable of bringing about a previously unconditioned
response, now called the conditioned response.
 The simplest examples include reflexive behavior.
 Light shined in the eye stimulates the pupil to contract
 also be responsible for more complex human learning like phobias,
fears, and anxieties
 Little Albert
 Discrimination
 Generalization
 The immediate reinforcement of a response
 Reinforcement, in turn, increases the probability that the same
behavior will occur again
 The reinforcement does not cause the behavior, but it increases the
likelihood that it will be repeated.
 Shaping
 a procedure in which the experimenter or the environment first rewards
gross approximations of the behavior, then closer approximations, and
finally the desired behavior itself.
 reinforcing successive approximations
 Antecedent (A)
 the environment or setting in which the behavior takes place
 Behavior (B)
 This response must be within the individual’s repertoire and must not be
interfered with by competing or antagonistic behaviors
 Consequence (C)
 Reward or desired outcome
 Behavior is continuous, the organism moves slightly beyond the
previously reinforced response, and this slightly exceptional value can
then be used as the new minimum standard for reinforcement.
 Operant discrimination
 Environmental differences and the individual's history of reinforcement
 Stimulus generalization
 React to a new situation in the same manner that they reacted to an earlier
one because the two situations possess some identical elements
 Strengthens the behavior & rewards the person
 E.g., Food is not reinforcing because it tastes good; rather, it tastes good
because it is reinforcing
 Produces a beneficial environmental condition & avoids a detrimental
ones
 Positive reinforcement
 Any stimulus that, when added to a situation, increases the probability that a
given behavior will occur
 Negative reinforcement
 The removal of an aversive stimulus from a situation increases the
probability that the preceding behavior will occur
 Conditioned and Generalized Reinforcers
 Secondary reinforcers
 E.g., attention, approval, affection, submission of others, and
tokens (money
 Generalized bc associated with more than one primary reinforcer
 Schedules of Reinforcement
 With a continuous schedule, the organism is reinforced for every
response
 Intermittent schedules are based either on the behavior of the
organism or on elapsed time
 the four basic intermittent schedules:
 Fixed-ratio
 FR#, the organism is reinforced intermittently according to the number of
responses it makes
 Variable-ratio
 VR#, The organism is reinforced after every #th response
 Fixed interval
 FI#, the organism is reinforced for the first response following a designated
period of time.
 Variable-interval
 VI#, the organism is reinforced after the lapse of random or varied periods of
time
 Weakens target behaviour
 The effects of punishment are not opposite those of reinforcement
 Punishment somestimes does not work
 Suppress behavior
 Conditioning of a negative feeling
 Associating a strong aversive stimulus with the behavior being punished
 Spread of its effects
 Any stimulus associated with the punishment may be suppressed or
avoided.
 Skinner recognized the classical Freudian defense mechanisms as effective
means of avoiding pain and its attendant anxiety.
 Positive punishment
 presentation of an aversive stimulus
 Negative punishment
 the removal of a positive reinforcer
 Once learned, responses can be lost for at least four reasons
 they can simply be forgotten during the passage of time.
 they can be lost due to the interference of preceding or subsequent
learning
 they can disappear due to punishment
 Due to extinction
 the tendency of a previously acquired response to become progressively
weakened upon nonreinforcement.
 Operant extinction
 an experimenter systematically withholds reinforcement of a previously
learned response until the probability of that response diminishes to zero.
 behavior trained on an intermittent schedule is much more resistant to
extinction
 The behavior of laboratory animals can generalize to human behavior,
just as physics can be used to interpret what is observed in outer
space and just as an understanding of basic genetics can help in
interpreting complex evolutionary concepts.
 human behavior and human personality is shaped by three forces:
1. natural selection
2. cultural practices
3. the individual's history of reinforcement
 Human personality is the product of a long evolutionary history
 Our behavior is determined by genetic composition and especially by
our personal histories of reinforcement
 Individual behavior that is reinforcing tends to be repeated
 Those behaviors that were beneficial to the species tended to survive,
whereas those that were only idiosyncratically reinforcing tended to
drop out
 The contingencies of reinforcement, especially those that have shaped
human culture, account for most of human behavior
 “the very complex social contingencies we call cultures”
 Selection is responsible for those cultural practices that have
survived
 Humans do not make a cooperative decision to do what is best
for the society, but those societies whose members behaved
cooperatively tended to survive.
 Skinner (1989b) did not deny the existence of internal states, such as
feelings of love, anxiety, or fear.
 What, then, is the role of such inner states as self-awareness, drives,
emotions, and purpose?
 Self-Awareness
 Behavior is a function of the environment, and part of that environment
is within one's skin
 This portion of the universe is peculiarly one's own and is therefore
private
 Humans not only have consciousness but are also aware of their
consciousness
 They are not only aware of their environment but are also aware of
themselves as part of their environment;
 They not only observe external stimuli but are also aware of
themselves observing that stimuli
 Drives
 To Skinner (1953), drives simply refer to the effects of deprivation and
satiation and to the corresponding probability that the organism will
respond
 Emotions
 Skinner (1974) recognized the subjective existence of emotions, of
course, but he insisted that behavior must not be attributed to them
 For survival, fear or anger were those escaped from
 On an individual level, behaviors followed by delight, joy, pleasure, and
other pleasant emotions tend to be reinforced
 Purpose and Intention
 exist within the skin, but they are not subject to direct outside scrutiny
 A felt, ongoing purpose may itself be reinforcing.
 Intention is physically felt stimuli within the organism and not mentalistic
events responsible for behavior
 Skinner believed that even the most abstract and complex
behavior is shaped by natural selection, cultural evolution, or
the individual's history of reinforcement
 Accepts the existence of higher mental processes such as
cognition, reason, and recall and complex human endeavors
like creativity, unconscious behavior, dreams, and social
behavior
 Human thought is the most difficult of all behaviors to analyze
 Thinking, problem solving, and reminiscing are covert behaviors that
take place within the skin but not inside the mind
 “Techniques of recall are not concerned with searching a storehouse of
memory but with increasing the probability of responses“
 Problem solving also involves covert behavior and often requires the
person to covertly manipulate the relevant variables until the correct
solution is found
 Creativity is simply the result of random or accidental behaviors
(overt or covert) that happen to be rewarded
 "As accidental traits, arising from mutations, are selected by their
contribution to survival, so accidental variations in behavior are
selected by their reinforcing consequences“
 The concept of mutation is crucial to both natural selection and
creative behavior.
 Random or accidental conditions are produced that have some possibility
of survival
 accept the idea of unconscious behavior
 because people rarely observe the relationship between genetic
and environmental variables and their own behavior, nearly all our
behavior is unconsciously motivated
 behavior is labeled unconscious when people no longer think about
it because it has been suppressed through punishment
 Behavior that has aversive consequences has a tendency to be
ignored or not thought about
 Supression, repression & denial
 Dreams
 Dreams as covert and symbolic forms of behavior that are subject to the
same contingencies of reinforcement as other behaviors are
 Dream behavior is reinforcing for repressed stimuli are allowed
expression without any accompanying punishment
 Social Behavior
 Being in a group is reinforcing bc survival
 An individual's behavior is controlled by environmental contingencies
 the environment, not free will, is responsible for behavior
 Social Control
 Each of us is controlled by social forces and techniques
1. Operant conditioning
2. Describing contingencies
 Language
3. Deprivation and satiation
 even though deprivation and satiation are internal states, the control
originates with the environment
4. Physical restraint
 acts to counter the effects of conditioning
 Self-Control
 manipulate the variables within our own environment
 use physical aids such as tools, machines, and financial resources to
alter their environment
 Using drugs
 do something else in order to avoid behaving in an undesirable
fashion
 substitute behaviors are negatively reinforcing
 The techniques of social control and self-control sometimes
produce detrimental effects, which result in inappropriate
behavior and unhealthy personality development.
1.
Counteracting Strategies
2.
Inappropriate Behaviors
1.
Counteracting Strategies
 When social control is excessive, three basic strategies for counteracting
 Escape
 withdraw from the controlling agent either physically or psychologically.
 Those find difficult to become involved in intimate personal relationships, tend to
be mistrusthl of people, and prefer to live lonely lives of noninvolvement.
 Revolt
 against society's controls behave more actively, counterattacking the controlling
agent.
 vandalizing public property, tormenting teachers, verbally abusing other people,
pilfering equipment from employers, provoking the police, or overthrowing
established organizations such as religions or governments
 Passive resistance
 more subtle
 most likely to be used where escape and revolt have failed
 Finding excuses
2. Inappropriate Behaviors
 Derived from self-defeating techniques of counteracting social control
or from unsuccessful attempts at self-control, especially when either of
these failures is accompanied by strong emotion.
 Learned
 Especially by the effects of punishment
 Excessively vigorous behavior and excessively restrained behavior
 No sense in terms of the contemporary situation
 Avoiding the aversive stimuli associated with punishment
 Blocking out reality by simply paying no attention to aversive stimuli
 Defective self-knowledge & self-deluding responses
 E.g., Prophet
 Self-punishment
 To be punished by others
 Psychotherapy is one of the chief obstacles blocking psychology's
attempt to become scientific
 Regardless of theoretical orientation, a therapist is a controlling
agent
 The shaping of any behavior takes time
 Traditional therapists generally explain behaviors by resorting to a
variety of fictional constructs such as defense mechanisms, striving
for superiority, collective unconscious, and self-actualization needs.
 Skinner reasoned that if behavior is shaped by inner causes, then some
force must be responsible for the inner cause.
 Using conditioning techniques in therapy sessions for behavioral
change
 Therapists play an active role in the treatment process, pointing out the
positive consequences of certain behaviors and the aversive effects of
others and also suggesting behaviors that, over the long haul, will
result in positive reinforcement.