Clark Hull’s Deductive Behaviorism

One of the main and historically most important theoretical currents in psychology is behaviorism. This current aims to explain human behavior and action based on the objective analysis of behavior, which is understood as the only evidential correlate of the psyche and generally ignoring mental processes due to the impossibility of observing them empirically.

Throughout history, multiple developments have emerged within behaviorism, which have varied the approach or way of understanding behavior. One of them was prepared by what would be the forty-fourth president of the APA, Clark Leonard Hull: We are talking about deductive behaviorism or deductive neobehaviorism.

Brief introduction to behaviorism

Behaviorism is based on the intention to make the study of the human psyche an objective and evidence-based science, moving away from hypothetical constructs that cannot be demonstrated. It is based on the premise that the only thing truly demonstrable is behavior based on the association between stimulus and response or between behavior and consequence to explain human behavior.

However, it does not initially consider the mind or mental processes as part of the equation that explains or influences behavior.

Furthermore, the fundamental passive subject is considered, a receptacle of information that simply reacts to stimulation. This would be the case until the arrival of neobehaviorism, in which the existence of demonstrable forces specific to the subject began to be proposed. And one of the best-known neobehaviorisms is Hull’s deductive behaviorism.

Hull and deductive behaviorism

Starting from the prevailing logical positivism of the time and the developments of Skinner regarding the reinforcement of behavior, Thorndike and Pavlov, Clark Hull would develop a new way of understanding behaviorism.

Methodologically, Hull considered that it is necessary for the science of behavior to start from deduction, proposing a hypothetico-deductive model in which, from initial premises based on observation, it is possible to extract, deduce and later verify different principles. and subtheories. The theory had to maintain coherence and be able to be developed based on logic and deduction, using models based on mathematics to be able to develop and demonstrate its theories.

Regarding behavior, Hull maintained a functional perspective: we act because we need to do so in order to survive, with behavior being the mechanism by which we manage to do so. The human being or the organism itself ceases to be a passive entity and becomes an active element that seeks survival and the reduction of needs.

This fact is a milestone that incorporates into the typical stimulus-response scheme a set of variables that mediate between the independent variable and the dependent variable in said relationship: the so-called intervening variables, the organism’s own variables like motivation. And although these variables are not directly visible, they can be deduced mathematically and verified experimentally.

From his observations, Hull establishes a series of postulates that try to explain behavior, with impulse and habit being the central components that allow us to understand phenomena such as learning and the emission of behaviors.

The drive or the impulse

One of the main theories arising from Hull’s deductive neobehaviorism is drive reduction theory.

The human being, like all creatures, has basic biological needs that need to be satisfied. The need causes a drive or impulse to arise in the organism, an emission of energy that causes us to seek to make up for our lack through behavior in order to guarantee or favor the possibility of adapting to the environment and surviving.

We act based on the attempt to reduce the impulses that our biological needs provoke in us. Needs are present regardless of the existence or not of stimulation and generate or drive the emission of behaviors. Thus, our needs are considered to motivate us for behavior.

The needs that lead us to impulse can be very variable, from the most biological ones such as hunger, thirst or reproduction to others derived from socialization or obtaining elements linked to the satisfaction of said needs (such as money).

Habit and learning

If our actions reduce these needs, we obtain reinforcement that will generate the behaviors that were carried out and allowed said reduction to have a greater probability of being replicated.

Thus, the organism learns by reinforcing the association between stimuli and responses and behavior and consequences based on the need to reduce needs. Repetition of reinforcing experiences They end up configuring habits that we replicate in those situations or stimuli that elicit the emission of the behavior by provoking the impulse. And in situations that have characteristics similar to those generated by a certain impulse, there will be a tendency to act in the same way, making the habit general.

It is important to keep in mind and emphasize that the impulse itself only provides us with energy and motivation to act, but does not generate the habit: it is derived from conditioning. That is, if we see something that seems edible, the impulse to eat may arise, but how to do it depends on the associations we have made between certain behaviors and their consequences in order to meet our needs.

The strength of the acquired habit depends on numerous factors as the contiguity and contingency between the emission of the behavior and its reinforcing consequence. It also depends on the intensity with which the impulse appears, the number of repetitions of the association and the incentive that the consequence provides by reducing the need to a greater or lesser extent. And as the strength of the habit increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to extinguish, to the point that even when it stops serving to reduce the impulse, it may persist.

Hull also worked and studied the accumulation of experience, the amount of behavioral learning that is carried out in the initial moments being greater than the one carried out later. Based on this, different learning curves have subsequently emerged. What remains to be learned from the behavior is less, so over time the amount of information learned is reduced.