One thing I appreciate about behaviorism is the insistence on returning to what can actually be observed instead of immediately layering interpretation onto everything. A lot of modern discussions about behavior become so abstract that people stop paying attention to the conditions, consequences, and patterns happening directly in front of them.
Was the title inspired by Henry Roediger's article on behaviourism? From Roediger's article:
"In a very real sense, all psychologists today (at least those doing empirical research) are behaviorists. Even the most cognitively oriented experimentalists study behavior of some sort."
While I'm sympathetic to the message, I would like to offer a few counterarguments (not refutations), using memory as an example:
1. Memory is a useful descriptive shorthand for a process. Alzheimer's disease causes memory loss rolls off the tongue much more easily than Alzheimer's disease reduces one's ability to tact past events. We behaviour analysts are not entirely opposed to using descriptive shorthands ourselves - we use the term reinforcement to describe a process which we don't fully understand either. We even engage in circularity. Behaviour X increases after contacting outcome Y, therefore outcome Y reinforced behaviour X.
2. The concept of memory serves one or more important functions, most importantly, it draws researchers and funding to a particular area of work. Under the common umbrella of memory research, we find diverse scholarship on how individuals process stimuli (under the sub-area of encoding), and reconstruct events (under the sub-area of retrieval) over temporally extended periods (under the sub-area of storage). Yes, encoding, storage, and retrieval, are imperfect concepts, but they are useful rallying points for good work to be done.
3. Most contentious of all, memory is real. Events in our phylogeny and ontogeny shape current and future behaviour. There must be that something more - a process or set of processes by which this is possible, whether we call it memory or by any other name. One might say, reinforcement is memory. Perhaps the question is about whether invoking/studying these processes is useful.
Enjoyed this! In 2020 I interviewed the libertarian candidate for president who was an organizational psychologist. When pushed, she told me she was “a closet behaviorist.” No “real” psychologist would label themselves a true behaviorist, she said. 🤣
One thing I appreciate about behaviorism is the insistence on returning to what can actually be observed instead of immediately layering interpretation onto everything. A lot of modern discussions about behavior become so abstract that people stop paying attention to the conditions, consequences, and patterns happening directly in front of them.
Oh that last paragraph…. Just beautiful vb.
So true - well written, Dr. Normand!
Was the title inspired by Henry Roediger's article on behaviourism? From Roediger's article:
"In a very real sense, all psychologists today (at least those doing empirical research) are behaviorists. Even the most cognitively oriented experimentalists study behavior of some sort."
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/what-happened-to-behaviorism
While I'm sympathetic to the message, I would like to offer a few counterarguments (not refutations), using memory as an example:
1. Memory is a useful descriptive shorthand for a process. Alzheimer's disease causes memory loss rolls off the tongue much more easily than Alzheimer's disease reduces one's ability to tact past events. We behaviour analysts are not entirely opposed to using descriptive shorthands ourselves - we use the term reinforcement to describe a process which we don't fully understand either. We even engage in circularity. Behaviour X increases after contacting outcome Y, therefore outcome Y reinforced behaviour X.
2. The concept of memory serves one or more important functions, most importantly, it draws researchers and funding to a particular area of work. Under the common umbrella of memory research, we find diverse scholarship on how individuals process stimuli (under the sub-area of encoding), and reconstruct events (under the sub-area of retrieval) over temporally extended periods (under the sub-area of storage). Yes, encoding, storage, and retrieval, are imperfect concepts, but they are useful rallying points for good work to be done.
3. Most contentious of all, memory is real. Events in our phylogeny and ontogeny shape current and future behaviour. There must be that something more - a process or set of processes by which this is possible, whether we call it memory or by any other name. One might say, reinforcement is memory. Perhaps the question is about whether invoking/studying these processes is useful.
Enjoyed this! In 2020 I interviewed the libertarian candidate for president who was an organizational psychologist. When pushed, she told me she was “a closet behaviorist.” No “real” psychologist would label themselves a true behaviorist, she said. 🤣