Burrhus Frederic Skinner is not only one of the most important historical figures in psychology ; It is, in many aspects, responsible for the fact that this has been affirmed as a science.
His contributions to this area are not only methodological, but also philosophical, and his radical behaviorism, despite not being currently hegemonic, allowed, among other things, that in the second half of the 20th century, a tool as useful as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, highly inspired by this researcher. Let’s see what were the main keys to BF Skinner’s theory.
When BF Skinner began his studies, behaviorism was basically based on simple conditioning inherited from the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and popularized by John B. Watson.
Explained very briefly, this first approach to behavioral psychology proposed modifying behavior by causing pleasant or unpleasant stimuli to be presented at the same time as other stimuli to which the individual wanted to develop aversion or liking. I say “individuals” and not “people” because simple conditioning was so rudimentary that it worked even with life forms with a nervous system as simple as that of reptiles or mollusks.
For example, In Pavlov’s famous dog experiments, this physiologist made the animals begin to salivate when they heard a certain sound, since this had been associated with food in previous trials. The key to simple conditioning was associating stimuli with each other.
Skinner admitted that simple conditioning could be useful in certain cases, but he ruled out the possibility that behavior could be explained only through this mechanism, among other things because the conditions for it to occur rarely occur outside of a laboratory. However, yes believed that our behavior (and that of many other forms of life) can be understood as a process of adaptation to pleasant and unpleasant experiences useful and not useful.
The change that BF Skinner’s theory represented was in another sense: instead of focusing on the way in which the stimuli are associated with each other, it focused on the way in which the actions carried out and the actions that are carried out are associated. consequences of these actions. What happens to us because of something we have done is, in itself, a stimulus of which we take note. Thus, Skinner takes into account the perception-action-perception loop.
Operant conditioning
For Skinner, learning from the consequences of the way one interacts with the world was the main mechanism for modifying behavior. Both human beings and animals are always carrying out all kinds of actions, no matter how insignificant they may be, and these always have a consequence for us, which we receive in the form of stimuli. This association between what we do and what we notice to be the consequences of our actions is the foundation of operant conditioning, also known as instrumental conditioning, which according to Skinner it was the basic form of learning in many forms of life
But the fact that the mechanisms of operant conditioning were basically the same in many types of organisms does not mean that the contents on which they are produced would be the same regardless of whether we are a mouse or a human being. Members of our species have the ability to create abstract concepts and generate autobiographical memory, but for Skinner the appearance of these refined forms of thought were the tip of the pyramid of a process that began by learning from our successes and our mistakes in real time. .
Furthermore, the methodology that behavioral psychologists normally used was based on animal models (experimentation with rats, pigeons, etc.), which in some ways is a limitation.
The black box and Skinner
Behaviorists have always been well known for their conceptualization of mental processes as phenomena that occur within a “black box”, a metaphor that serves to indicate the impossibility of observing from the outside what happens in people’s minds. However, the black box of Skinner’s theory was not the same as that of the early behaviorists While psychologists such as John B. Watson denied the existence of a mental world, Skinner did believe that the study of mental processes could be useful in psychology.
Of course, for BF Skinner, in practice it was not necessary to do that, and it was enough to start from the analysis of the relationships between measurable and directly observable actions and the consequences of these actions. The reason for his position on this issue was that he did not consider our mind to be anything more than part of the path that goes from performing the action to registering the stimuli that are (or seem to be) a consequence of these actions, although with the added difficulty that it is practically impossible to study objectively.
In fact, the very concept of “the mind” was misleading for Skinner: it leads to thinking that there is something inside us that makes thoughts and action plans appear out of nowhere, as if our psychic life were disconnected from our environment. That is why In BF Skinner’s theory, the object of study of psychology is behavior, and not the mind or the mind and behavior at the same time
According to this behaviorist, everything that is usually called “mental process” was actually just another form of behavior, something that is put in place to make the adjustment between our actions and the expected consequences optimal.
The legacy of BF Skinner’s theory
The theoretical legacy of the father of radical behaviorism It represented a total rejection of the speculative research methods of psychoanalysis and a research proposal outside of introspection and focused only on objective and easy-to-measure variables.
Furthermore, he indicated the risk of transforming very abstract theoretical constructs (such as “mind” or “demotivation”) into causal elements that explain our behaviors. So to speak, for Skinner to say that someone has committed a crime because of his feeling of loneliness is like saying that a locomotive moves forward because of movement.
Being so supported by operant conditioning, Skinner’s work claimed animal testing as a useful source of knowledge, something that has been highly criticized both by psychologists of the cognitivist current and by several philosophers, according to whom there is a qualitative leap between the mental life of non-human animals and members of our species. However, animal models continue to be widely used in psychology to make approximations to types of behaviors present in our species.
