Structuralism: The Experimental Study of Human Consciousness
Functionalism: The Study of the Adaptive Mind
The Theory of Evolution: Humans as Animals
Learning Objectives
1-1 Define learning.
1-2 Create a simple diagram of a classical conditioning procedure.
1-3 Outline earlier philosophical and scientific approaches that influenced the development of behaviorism.
1-4 Define empiricism as a philosophical approach to knowledge.
1-5 Describe similarities and differences between the structuralist and functionalist approaches to the study of psychology.
1-6 Outline the process of evolution by natural selection, including three key features.
1-7 Identify the researchers most strongly associated with the five presented forms of behaviorism.
1-8 Describe similarities and differences among the five presented forms of behaviorism.
Relevance of Learning Principles
Improving self-control and productivity.
The book outlines principles by which our environment affects our behavior, including behaviors involved in self-control.
Chapter 10 provides a theoretical account of why self-control is often difficult.
Appendix A offers practical advice on how to improve self-control through behavior self-management.
Study Tips provide advice on improving study habits.
Understanding psychological disorders.
Principles of learning and behavior are crucial for understanding and treating various disorders.
Examples include anorexia nervosa, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and DID.
Behavioral therapies have proven useful for treating these disorders.
Overcoming fears.
The textbook provides insights into how fears develop through classical conditioning and negative reinforcement.
It suggests effective treatments for alleviating these symptoms.
Improving relationships with others.
Relationship issues are used to illustrate basic principles of learning and behavior.
The Advice for the Lovelorn column discusses relationship problems from a behavioral perspective.
Raising children.
An understanding of learning principles can provide insights into successful and less successful parenting strategies.
It helps interpret children's behavior in a new light.
Managing workers.
The principles outlined in the textbook are the basis for becoming an effective manager.
Chapter 9 explains why managers often use threats and punishment, undermining efficiency.
General Principles
A proper grounding in learning and behavior principles helps understand why we behave the way we do and how to change behavior for the better.
This knowledge can improve various aspects of life, even though derived from research with rats and pigeons.
Study Tip: Effective Textbook Study
Many students simply reread material, which is largely ineffective.
Better approaches involve the "testing effect," such as the 3R method.
The 3R Method (Read-Recite-Review)
Read a short section of material.
Recite the main points without looking at the material.
Review the material, paying attention to anything missed during recitation.
The 3R approach significantly enhances learning, although students avoid it because it's difficult and effortful.
Selective Underlining
Students often underline too much information, both important and unimportant.
Instead, read the paragraph first without underlining, searching for important points.
Then go back and underline just the important points, often only parts of sentences.
This process is slower but increases recall and provides an excellent chapter summary.
Combine selective underlining with the 3R approach for optimal results.
Be cautious of online how-to-study advice; find the combination of study tactics that works best for you.
Procrastination
If procrastination is an issue, consult the appendix at the end of the text for behavior self-management advice.
Core Concepts of Learning
Behavior: Any activity of an organism that can be observed or measured, internal or external, visible or not.
Learning: A relatively enduring change in behavior that results from experience (e.g., reading this text).
Change doesn't have to be immediate.
Sometimes learning involves persisting with a behavior.
Fundamental Forms of Learning
Classical Conditioning: Inborn behaviors come to be elicited in new circumstances.
Often involves reflexive or involuntary behaviors.
Example: Dog salivating to a bell paired with food.
Diagram:
Bell: Food → Salivation
Bell → Salivation
Operant Conditioning: Strengthening or weakening of a behavior due to its consequences.
Behaviors are often goal-directed or voluntary.
Example: Rat presses lever for food, increasing lever-pressing behavior.
Diagram:
Lever press → Food pellet
Result: Future likelihood of lever pressing increases
Conditioning Diagrams Notation
Colon: A: B indicates event A is followed by event B.
Arrow: X → Y indicates event X produces or causes event Y.
Importance of Conditioning
Classical conditioning underlies emotional responses, likes, dislikes, fears, and sexual attraction.
Operant conditioning motivates daily behaviors; consequences can be immediate or delayed.
Other Types of Learning
Observational Learning: Observing someone else’s behavior facilitates similar behavior in oneself.
Inherited Behavior Patterns: Fixed action patterns are discussed, as well as the effect of inherited dispositions.
Quick Quizzes
Fill-in-the-blank quizzes are integrated to assist with active learning and assessment of study techniques.
Uncertainty can actually facilitate learning.
Historical Background
Impossible to outline all contributing factors
Aristotle: Empiricism and the Laws of Association
Aristotle (384-322 BC): Knowledge acquired through experience, not inborn.
Disagreement with Plato (nativism vs. empiricism).
Empiricism: Abilities and tendencies are mostly learned; Nativism is the inverse.
Four Laws of Association:
Law of Similarity: Similar events are readily associated (e.g., cars and trucks).
Law of Contrast: Opposite events are readily associated (e.g., black and white).
Law of Contiguity: Events that occur close together are readily associated (e.g., thunder and lightning).
Law of Frequency: The more frequently two items occur together, the stronger the association.
Importance of Laws
Contiguity and frequency still considered important.
Example: Dog salivating to a bell requires close timing and repeated pairings.
Descartes: Mind–Body Dualism and the Reflex
René Descartes (1596–1650): Proposed mind-body dualism.
Body functions like a machine, producing involuntary, reflexive behaviors.
Mind has free will, producing voluntary behaviors.
Only humans possess free will; animal behavior is entirely reflexive.
Suggested that reflexive behaviors are mechanistic and scientifically investigable.
The British Empiricists
British Empiricists (e.g., John Locke): Knowledge primarily from experience.
John Locke: Newborn mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa).
The conscious mind consists of basic elements combined through association.
Structuralism: The Experimental Study of Human Consciousness
Wilhelm Wundt & Edward Titchener: Use scientific method to study the mind.
Structuralism: Studies basic elements of the conscious mind and how they combine.
Method of introspection: Accurately describe conscious thoughts, emotions, and sensations.
Emphasized systematic observation, establishing psychology as a scientific discipline
Led to the later establishment of a more objective approach to psychology, known as behaviorism.
Functionalism: The Study of the Adaptive Mind
William James: the founder of American psychology.
Functionalism:
Mind evolved to adapt.
Psychology should study adaptive processes.
Derived from Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Learning as an adaptive process.
Functionalists still used introspection, emphasized the analysis of conscious experience and were for the study of animal behavior.
E. L. Thorndike and John B. Watson were students of functionalist psychologists.
The Theory of Evolution: Humans as Animals
Charles Darwin: Species change across generations in response to environmental pressures.
Principle of natural selection.
Traits vary within and between species.
Many traits are heritable.
Organisms compete for limited resources.
Helpful genetic traits evolve as a result of natural selection.
Learning is a crucial evolutionary adaptation as it provides beneficial ways to adapt to its sorroundings.
Behaviorism: The Study of Observable Behavior
John B. Watson (1913): Psychology as a purely objective experimental branch of natural science.
Rejected the study of conscious experience and introspection.
Focused on prediction and control of behavior through observable actions.
Emphasized animal research due to evolutionary relevance to human behavior.
Five Schools of Behaviorism
Watson’s Methodological Behaviorism
Proposed by Watson.
Psychologists should study environmental influences only on directly observed behaviors.
Subjective activities too difficult to include in a scientific analysis.
Thinking involves minute movements of vocal cords.
Hull’s Neobehaviorism
Claimed Watson's rejection of unobservable events was scientifically unsound.
Physicists and chemists make inferences about events never observed.
Might be useful for psychologists to infer internal events.
Mediating events are intervening variables.
Tolman’s Cognitive Behaviorism
Hull’s Stimulus Response theory categorized as a“molecular” theory.
Edward Tolman believed it would be more useful to analyze behavior on a broader scale.
Disagreed with much of Hull’s theorizing, agreed on intervening variables.
Cognitive map:
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
Agreed with Tolman.
Emphasizes importance of observational learning and cognitive behavior in explaining human behavior.
Focuses on broad behavior patterns and emphasizes the distinction between learning and performance.
Reciprocal determinism.
Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism
Argued for a stricter form of behaviorism.
Behavior explained with the study of the environment on observable behavior.
He views thoughts and feelings as “private” behaviors that need to be explained just like any other behavior.
Final Note
Skinner believed that the processes of evolution and operant conditioning were quite similar in that both involved the selection of what was adaptive from what was not adaptive. But also heredity and environment