Behaviorism is another word for behavioral psychology. There are several branches of psychology, behavioral being one of the earlier ones. This branch of psychology deals with our response to our environment. It uses the scientific method to focus on learning, memory and conditioning. This shift from mind to behavior was revolutionary and was expressed in the behaviorist manifesto in 1913 by John B. Watson. He focused not on mental states, but on the prediction and control of behavior.

Watson believed that people had three fundamental emotions – fear, rage and love. He wondered if a person could be conditioned into feeling these in response to a stimulus. Could you teach fear of an animal by presenting a loud frightening noise each time the animal was presented to the person, who was an infant called Albert B (“Little Albert”). Today, those methods are considered to be cruel. Yes, it was shown that the child did make an association between the two objects. Human emotions are susceptible to classical conditioning. Watson took it a step further to say that “anyone, regardless of their nature can be trained to be anything.”

Watson was on the side of nurture in the nature versus nurture debate.

Edward Tolman also believed in behaviorism, but was more interested in mental processes including perception, cognition and motivation. He has studied Gestalt psychology in Germany, which later leads us into cognitive behaviorism. Tolman questioned the basic premise of conditional learning – that behavior was learned simply by an automatic response to a stimulus. Tolman believed that animals could learn about the world without reinforcement of a reward. That knowledge could be used later in decision making. He proved that was do in fact learn without rewards. The initial learning period of the rats in a maze is called “latent learning”. We learn these thing without really noticing that we’ve learned them.

There are many other behavioral psychologists, but perhaps the most widely known is B. F. Skinner. He was not a pioneer in the field, but his work helped to advance the field. His work is based on the work of Pavlov and Watson and others. Skinner felt that the consequences of an action were more important in shaping behavior than any stimulus that had preceded or coincided with it. He felt that the previous experiments were a special case involving the deliberate artificial introduction of a conditioning stimulus. Actions have consequences which change the probability of behavior being repeated.

A “Skinner box” is a small cage that contains a bar, that when pressed by the rat, delivers food. Skinner concludeed that animals are conditioned by the responses they receive from their actions and environment. This is called operant conditioning. The experiments by Pavlov and his dog are examples of classical conditioning.

Skinner’s research led him to question the teaching methods in schools in the 1950’s. At the time, students wer ofen give long tasks that had many stages. Students had to wait often until the end before getting graded. Skinner advocated for feedback at every stage of the project. This approach has been shown to boost the rate at which children learn.