Handbook Of Behaviorism

Handbook of Behaviorism provides a comprehensive single source that summarizes what behaviorism is, how the various "flavors" of behaviorism have differed between major theorists both in psychology and philosophy, and what aspects of those theories have been borne out in research findings and continue to be of use in understanding human behavior.

Handbook of Behaviorism provides a comprehensive single source that summarizes what behaviorism is, how the various "flavors" of behaviorism have differed between major theorists both in psychology and philosophy, and what aspects of those theories have been borne out in research findings and continue to be of use in understanding human behavior.

Watson was the father of behaviorism. His now-revered lectures on the subject defined behaviorism as a natural science that takes the whole field of human adjustment as its own. It is the business of behaviorist psychology to predict and control human activity. The field has as its aim to be able, given the stimulus, to predict the response, or seeing the reaction, to know the stimulus that produced it. Watson argued that psychology is as good as its observations: what the organism does or says in the general environment. Watson identified "laws" of learning, including frequency and recency. Kimble makes it perfectly clear that Watson's behaviorism, while deeply indebted to Ivan Pavlov, went beyond the Russian master in his treatment of cognition, language, and emotion. It becomes clear that Behaviorism is anything but the reductionist caricature it is often made out to be in the critical literature. For that reason alone, the work merits a wide reading. Behaviorism, as was typical of the psychology of the time, offered a wide array of applications all of which can be said to fall on the enlightened side of the ledger. At a time of mixed messages, Watson argued against child beating and abuse, for patterns of enlightened techniques of factory management, and for curing the sick and isolating the small cadre of criminals not subject to correction. And anticipating Thomas Szasz, he argued against a doctrine of strictly mental diseases, and for a close scrutiny of behavioral illness and disturbances. Kimble's brilliant introduction to Watson ends with a challenge to subjectivism to provide evidence that Watson's behaviorism cannot explain human actions without introspective notions of the mind. This genuine classic of social science hi our century remains relevant not just for the conduct of psychological research, but for studies in the philosophy of science and the sociology of knowledge.

Understanding Behaviorism is a classic textbook that explains the basis of behavior analysis and its application to human problems in a scholarly but accessible manner. Now in its third edition, the text has been substantially updated to include the latest developments over the last decade in behaviour analysis, evolutionary theory, and cultural evolution theory The only book available that explains behavior analysis and applies it to philosophical and practical problems, written by one of today’s best-known and most highly respected behaviorists Explores ancient concepts such as purpose, language, knowledge, and thought, as well as applying behavioural thinking to contemporary social issues like freedom, democracy, and culture Part of the new evolutionary perspective for understanding individual behavior in general and culture in particular – culminates with practical approaches to improving the lives of all humanity

This classic edition of the Handbook of Operant Behavior presents seminal work in the field of learning and behavior, foreshadowing a new direction for learning research, and presenting many questions that remain unanswered. Featuring impressive contributions from leading figures across the field—ranging from N. J. Mackintosh from what was to become the cognitive school through Morse, Kelleher, Hutchinson, and Hineline on the neglected topic of aversive control to Blough and Blough on psychophysics to Philip Teitelbaum on behavioral physiology—the book is a must-read for anyone interested in human and animal learning. In a newly written introduction, J. E. R. Staddon highlights several issues that deserve more attention: how language is learned and syntax evolves, how animals choose, and a new paradigm for the study of learning in general. The book is essential reading for all students and researchers of learning and behavior, and aims to encourage researchers to revisit some of the fascinating behavioral questions raised by the original book.

While this volume is written as a series of lectures and in a somewhat free and easy style, every effort has been made to present facts in unmutilated form and to state theoretical positions with accuracy. In approaching subjective psychology for the first time, the reader meets with one great difficulty. He comes in from the world of things-a world which he can manipulate, hold up, examine and change about. When he comes to subjective psychology, he leaves all this behind he has to face a world of intangibles, a world of definitions, and it takes him weeks to find out what this kind of psychology is about. Rare indeed is the individual who ever thoroughly awakens to the problems discussed in the general text books of introspective psychologies current today. . Because behavioristic psychology deals with tangibles, the reader sees no break between his physical, chemical, and biological world and his newly-faced behavioristic world. He may not like the simplicity and severity of behaviorism, but he cannot fail to understand Behaviorism if he but gives it a little honest reading. Therefore, the author hopes that this book will offer a happy approach to the whole field of psychology.....

This groundbreaking book presents a brief history of behaviorism, the dominant movement in American psychology in the first half of the 20th Century. It then analyzes and criticizes radical behaviorism, as pioneered by B.F. Skinner, and its philosophy and applications to social issues. This second edition is a completely rewritten and much expanded version of the first edition, published nearly 15 years earlier. It surveys what changes have occurred within behaviorism and whether it has maintained its influence on experimental cognitive psychology or other fields. The mission of the book is to help steer experimental psychology away from its current undisciplined indulgence in "mental life" toward the core of science, which is an economical description of nature. The author argues that parsimony -- the elementary philosophical distinction between private and public events, even biology, evolution and animal psychology -- all are ignored by much contemporary cognitive psychology. The failings of radical behaviorism as well as a philosophically defective cognitive psychology point to the need for a new theoretical behaviorism, which can deal with problems such as "consciousness" that have been either ignored, evaded or muddled by existing approaches. This new behaviorism provides a unified framework for the science of behavior that can be applied both to the laboratory and to broader practical issues such as law and punishment, the health-care system, and teaching.

The basic book about the controversial philosophy known as behaviorism, written by its leading exponent.