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What Is Behaviorism
Richard W. Malott1
Behavior Analysis Program
Department of Psychology
Western Michigan University
Subject: 2 brief questions for a project on behaviorism
Dr. Malott,
My name is Chris Perrin and I currently am a doctoral student at OSU working with Nancy Neef.
I am writing because I was hoping that you would be interested in contributing to a project that I am doing for a behaviorism class I am taking with Bill Heward. The title of the project is "What's Behaviorism" and has its roots in several questions that were once posed to Don Baer and eventually ended up in Cooper, Heron, and Heward's Applied Behavior Analysis. Because I thought that the answers Dr. Baer gave were very insightful I decided it would be interesting to interview other prominent figures in behavior analysis to get their view points and compile them into a class presentation. Below are the two questions taken directly from page 15 of the second edition of the "white book".
1. If a person on the street approached you and asked, "What's behaviorism?" how would you reply?
Malott: Chris, your questions may be brief but it’s hard to make the replies brief and to do them in a brief amount of time. My first preferred reply would be to repeat your quote from Teller and say, “No.” But that’s rude. My second reply would be to refer them to Principles of Behavior, Chapter 26B @ http://old.dickmalott.com/booksarticles/pbe6/webchapters/. But even my grad students have a little trouble with the relevant last sections of that chapter. So here goes: Critics say, “Behaviorism has lost its mind.” And they’re right. I think the most important part of behaviorism is what it isn’t. It isn’t an attempt to explain what we do by inventing a mind that causes us to do those things. It’s an attempt to avoid circular reasoning: “Why did she do that?” “Her mind caused her to do that.” “How do you know she has a mind that caused her to do that?” “Because she did it.” “But why did she do it?” and around and around in the circle of false reasoning. Behaviorists generally try to explain why she did that in a less simplistic way, pointing to causes that can be experimentally proven. But if the person on the street really wants to understand, we’ll have to move off the street and settle into the neighborhood bar to discuss this for a few months. And now, on further reflection, I think we’d all be better off, if I’d stuck with Teller’s answer and refused to answer your seductive question.
2. An interviewer once asked Edward Teller, the physicist who helped develop the first atomic bomb, "Can you explain to a nonscientist what you find so fascinating about science, particularly physics?" Teller replied, "No." I sense that Teller was suggesting that a nonscientist would not be able to comprehend, understand, or appreciate physics and his fascination with it. If a nonscientist asked you, "What do you find so fascinating about science, particularly the science of human behavior? what would you say?
Malott: If the nonscientist were an intellectual, I’d say: Behavior analysis is an intellectually challenging, intellectually satisfying attempt to understand why we are as we are—why we do what we do, why we say what we say, why we think what we think, why we feel what we feel, why we want what we want—why we are as we are. Behavior analysis is intellectually satisfying in that it’s elegant; that is, it’s parsimonious; that is, behavior analysis gives us a framework within which we can explain the human mind, without the simplistic concept of mind, where we don’t have to invent a new circular explanation for each psychological phenomenon or event we’re trying to explain, within which we can explain the most complex aspects of the human condition with only a handful of basic concepts and principles. Behavior analysis is intellectually gratifying in its simple elegance and its universal power.
Malott: If the nonscientist weren’t an intellectual, or even if she were, I’d say: Behavior analysis is a set of tools that allows us to greatly improve the quality of life of our fellow human beings, that allows us to rescue cute little three-year-olds and their families from the tyranny of autism.
Malott: And to you, I’d say, behavior analysis allows us to understand and save the fucking world.
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