CHAPTER 13 – FOUR

NEOBEHAVIORIST

PSYCHOLOGISTS

Dr. Nancy Alvarado

Four Neobehaviorists

The four neobehaviorists described in this chapter

(Tolman, Guthrie, Hull, Skinner) accepted Watson’s:

Rejection of consciousness

His definition of psychology as the science of behavior

His insistence on objective, observational data.

These four had similarities but also many important

differences from each other.

As a result, the Behaviorist movement was extremely

productive in terms of theory and research.

Edward Chace Tolman (1886-1959)

Tolman grew up in Newton MA and went to MIT,

graduating with a degree in electrochemistry.

William James “Principles of Psychology” changed his

life – he went to Harvard & studied with Munsterberg.

Tolman was troubled by why introspection was so rarely

used in his lab, although taught as a methodology.

A class with Yerkes focused his attention on behavior.

He spent a month in Germany with Koffka & was

influenced strongly by Lewin.

He taught at Northwestern, then at UC Berkeley.

Edward Chace Tolman

Tolman Hall at UC Berkeley

Tolman’s Cognitive Behaviorism

At Berkeley, Tolman taught comparative psych using

Watson’s book as a text.

He disagreed that rat behavior was mechanistic,

considering rats intelligent and purposeful.

He believed rats learned the general layout of a maze,

forming a “cognitive map.”

He developed a “molar behaviorism” concerned with

purpose and cognition – both excluded by Watson.

However, his book “Purposive Behaviorism” began

with an attack on mentalistic psychology.

Rats Have Purpose

Tolman & his students showed that:

Rats have preferences and run fastest for rewards they

like better (bread and milk not sunflower seeds).

Rats are disappointed if they get a less valued reward

previously expected due to training.

Monkeys were similarly disappointed by a lettuce leaf

in place of a banana.

Rats use prior experience when unrewarded to

increase their behavior later when rewarded –

latent learning. What is a reward critics asked?

Latent Learning Results

Rats Have Insight

Tolman & Honzik gave unrewarded rats experience

with a complex maze, then found that they use the

shortest route when rewarded.

Law of least effort – given a choice of several paths,

rats use insight to find the one requiring least effort.

Rats remember where something is located, not a

series of turns (responses).

Two groups – one (Place) always found food in the

same place; the other (Response) always found food by

turning in the same direction. Place rats learned faster.

Tolman’s Mazes

S2

S1

F1F2

curtain

curtain

Tolman’s Theoretical Model

Tolman published over 100 papers and 2 books.

He proposed a model of independent, intervening

and dependent variables that is widely used in

experimental psychology.

IVs are manipulated by the experimenter and influence

intervening variables such as appetite or motor skill.

Subject IVs (age, heredity) are held constant.

DVs (running speed, number of errors) are measured by

the experimenter.

Tolman’s General Concerns

Tolman tried to relate his rat-runner’s psychology to

broader human problems such as aggression or war.

In 1949, he supported younger colleagues required to

take a loyalty oath, refusing to take it himself.

Tolman was APA President in 1937 and a member

of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tolman liberated Behaviorism from Watson’s

methodological and theoretical constraints.

Contemporary behaviorists no longer view animals as

passive, mechanical systems but active info processors.

Edwin Ray Guthrie (1886-1959)

McDougall classified Behaviorists as “strict, near or

purposive” types. Guthrie was “near.”

Guthrie graduated in math, then studied psychology

at Univ. of Nebraska with Wolfe. He finished his

Ph.D in philosophy with Singer at Univ. of Penn.

He doubted that deduction could lead to an

understanding of the human mind.

He taught math briefly then accepted a position at

Univ. of Washington, transferring to psychology in

1919 and becoming a professor in 1928.

Edwin Ray Guthrie

Learning Through Contiguity

Guthrie proposed that “Stimuli which accompany a

response tend, on their recurrence, to evoke that

response.”

The simplicity of this was appealing as the ideas of

other theorists became increasing complex.

Association through contiguity goes back to Aristotle,

Bain & Hartley (British Associationists).

Reward does not cause learning – it protects it

against unlearning because the situation changes.

Guthrie also proposed single-trial learning.

Guthrie’s Approach

Guthrie was able to provide clever explanations of

a variety of learning phenomena (effects of reward

and punishment, practice, trace conditioning).

Punishers elicit actions – these actions are learned.

Improved behavior occurs with practice because the

constituent movements become better with repetition.

“Learning does not disappear with lapses in time

but due to new learning which erases the old.”

Sleep prevents learning of new associations.

Pavlov’s Criticism of Guthrie

To explain delay & trace conditioning, Guthrie

suggested that the stimuli accompanying salivation

are not the CS (bell) but the orienting response

(listening, turning head, pricking up ears).

In reply, Pavlov wrote and angry response -- “The

Reply of a Physiologist to Psychologists,” his only paper

published in an American psychology journal.

He said the “listening” response was nonexistent

because dogs were not alert during the trace gap and

because the orienting response quickly disappears –

there are no mysterious latencies in the nervous system.

Guthrie’s Examples

Dogs encountering meat with embedded

mousetraps become suspicious of the meat because

of the almost perfect contiguity.

A daughter made to re-enter and hang up her coat

changes behavior because of the new association.

Other examples of pastor’s horse trained to lunge

when he said “whoa” (which means stop); breaking

horses with successive weight on its back (contiguity).

Signals to smoke (finishing a meal, starting work).

Cats in a Puzzle Box

Performing 800 escape responses, Guthrie

observed that cat responses were highly

stereotypical (the same each time).

He suggested that cats had learned

to associate that specific movement

with escape from the box.

Critics suggested the movement

was stereotypical because it was

instinctive (species typical) to greet

others by rubbing against them.

Guthrie’s Clinical Views

Guthrie published “The Psychology of Human

Conflict” in 1938.

He translated Pierre Janet’s “Principles of

Psychotherapy” and preferred Janet’s idea of force

mentale to Freud’s ideas about the subconscious.

Everyone has a certain amount of energy (force).

When it is depleted by crises, neuroses appear.

Mental health requires maintaining a balance of mental

energy.

Clark Leonard Hull (1884-1952)

Hull was born on a farm but worked hard to

become more than a “chore boy.” He was intensely

self-critical and had poor health (polio, typhus).

He originally studied mining engineering but a

paralyzed leg ruled that out.

He entered grad school at Univ. of Wisconsin,

working with Joseph Jastrow, who had studied with

G. Stanley Hall.

His dissertation taught subjects associations to Chinese

characters. He then became a lecturer at Wisconsin.

Clark L. Hull

Research on Aptitude Testing

Assigned to teach a class on psychological testing,

he became interested in validating existing tests.

His attempt to develop a universal aptitude test failed.

Hull built a correlation machine to avoid doing the

laborious calculations by hand.

His machine predated calculators and computers and is

now in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C.

Without access to sufficient subjects to validate his

tests, he abandoned aptitude testing as a research

interest.

Research on Hypnosis

Teaching classes to medical students, Hull became

interested in the role of suggestibility in medical

cures. Jastrow shared that interest – as a skeptic.

He attempted to improve the quality of experimental

work done to investigate hypnosis, wary of fraud.

He believed susceptibility to hypnosis was normally

distributed in the population with little correlation with

other traits or sex. Children slightly more susceptible.

He found that hypnosis did not improve memory. His

book Hypnosis & Suggestibility is still used as a text.

Hull’s Behavior System

Hull’s most significant contribution to psychology was

his development of a comprehensive behavior

system – a model of how behavior occurs.

At Yale, Hull intensively studied Newton’s Principia and

philosophers like Bertrand Russell and Alfred North

Whitehead, Hobbes, Lock, Hume, Kant & Leibnitz.

Spence (Hull’s student) described his system as “a

Herculean elaboration of [Woodworth’s] S-O-R

formula” (Stimulus – Organism – Response).

He conceptualized humans as elaborate machines.

Hull’s Drive Theory

He attempted to extend the principles of classical

conditioning to instrumental trial and error learning.

He accepted the idea of reinforcement based on drive

reduction. His theory was presented in “Principles of

Behavior.”

His theory had 17 postulates and 17 corollaries.

It included intervening variables for habit strength,

stimulus intensity, drive level, incentive value of the

reward to determine output latency, reaction amplitude.

He led an impressive program of experimentation.

Evaluating Hull’s Theory

It was successful at stimulating new research.

Some questioned whether the limited range of

experimental situations used in his research could

shed light on more generalized behavior.

Can a theory of behavior be developed without testing

humans? Hull hoped to go on to test humans later.

The theory was better at predicting group results

than individual rat behavior.

Hilgard said “For its time, Hull’s system was the best

there was.”

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990)

Between 1945 & 1975, B.F. Skinner was the best

known psychologist in the world.

12 major books, numerous papers, a multi-volume

autobiography, numerous works written about him.

3 journals are devoted to a Skinnerian approach to

psychology.

He was the modern spokesperson for radical

Behaviorism – articulate, effective, opinionated and

controversial.

He said he would burn his kids before his books.

B.F. (Fred) Skinner

Skinner’s Early Life

His father was a conservative, small town lawyer.

He started out to become a writer and poet but

changed his mind because he had nothing to say.

Pen name Sir Burrhus de Beerus

Watson’s “Behaviorism,” praised by his favorite

philosopher (Bertrand Russell) inspired him to study

behavior. He was accepted to Harvard.

Skinner heard Pavlov speak & was impressed.

He focused on reflex as the unit of behavioral analysis.

Operant Conditioning

Skinner developed the apparatus called an operant

chamber (Skinner box).

Operant = the animal operates on its environment.

In Skinner’s apparatus the animal controls the response

rate, not the experimenter. Response rate was his DV.

Behavior could be manipulated by changing reward.

This approach was an important step toward a

scientific way of experimentally studying behavior.

Animals learned right before his eyes.

Skinner’s Four Principles

Skinner proposed four principles of scientific

practice:

When you run into something interesting, drop

everything else and study it.

Some ways of doing research are easier than others.

Some people are lucky.

Apparatuses, especially complicated ones, break down.

Skinner disliked statistics and didn’t use many. He

focused on individual animals.

Schedules of Reinforcement

This approach was discovered accidentally because

he had only a few rat pellets left, so he could only

reinforce an occasional response.

Intermittent reinforcement maintained the frequency

of responding, and even increased it.

Research on schedules was a major contribution to

psychology and is the research Skinner was most

proud of.

Behavioral Control

Skinner described approaches to shaping behavior

in “How to Teach Animals” in 1951.

Shaping is a powerful procedure for establishing

and changing behavior.

He shaped a rat to drop a marble through a hole and

two pigeons to play ping pong.

His students Keller & Marian Breland formed a

company to train animals for entertainment &

commercial businesses.

Skinner’s Utopia

In 1945 Skinner wrote “Walden II,” a utopian novel

describing a community based on operant principles

of behavioral control.

He envisioned a happy, health, productive community.

Other utopias include Plato’s “Republic,” St.

Augustine’s “City of God,” Rousseau’s “The Social

Contract,” and Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

Huxley’s satire warns of the threat of psychology.

Skinner’s Applied Research

Skinner built a child compartment (early version of

the incubator) to provide warmth & keep out germs.

Called “air cribs” or “heir conditioners.”

Rumors that his daughter was harmed by her “baby in

a box” experiences are wrong.

Skinner developed token economies and “teaching

machines” to provide feedback, immediate

reinforcers & let kids to progress at their own rate.

Programmed instruction has worked for some subjects

(arithmetic and spelling) but not others.

Behavior Modification

Skinner explored possibilities for shaping psychotic

patients at Worcester State Hospital in MA.

His student, Fuller, trained a severely mentally disabled

man to make operant responses.

Skinner called Freud theories “explanatory fictions.”

Two students Lindsley & Azrin developed “behavior

modification” to change inmate behavior.

“The Token Economy” described their procedures.

Successful techniques now exist to change a wide

variety of behaviors (smoking, shyness, autism).