Behaviourism is the theory that human and animal behaviour is conditioned – that is to say, learned from the environment. This contrasts with the idea that behaviour is fundamentally innate or inherited. Behaviourists say that we are born with a tabula rasa (a ‘blank slate’ mind) and it is environmental conditioning that moulds our behaviour and ways of thinking. By altering patterns of destructive behaviour, the theory goes, it thus becomes possible to address psychological disorders.
The behaviourist movement is generally considered to have begun in 1913 when the American psychologist John Watson published an influential paper entitled ‘Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It’. Among his many startling ideas was the notion that animals and humans essentially behave in the same way and so research may be carried out as effectively on animals as on humans. By measuring observable behaviour only, he suggested, the behaviourist may more accurately assess the effectiveness of a particular mode of treatment.
A major influence on Watson’s theories was the Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, who at the end of the 19th century had documented the famous case of his dogs. While carrying out experimentations into the role of saliva in a dog’s digestive processes, he noted that his dogs would salivate not only at the appearance of meat but also at the mere sound of a bell they had been conditioned to associate with the appearance of meat (even when the meat itself was absent). The dogs had been conditioned to respond to an entirely neutral stimulus.
Watson’s brand of behaviourism became known as methodological behaviourism, while B. F. Skinner (1904–90) evolved the alternative school of radical behaviourism. Although he agreed with Watson’s central tenet that the psychologist should look to predict and control behaviour, Skinner believed that we are born with some innate behaviours too. He also considered that the internal thought processes of an individual might be explained in the analysis of behaviour, if not used as an explanation of the behaviour itself. Behaviourism has proved an enduring if controversial idea, and continues to find practical applications today. Perhaps the most famous is cognitive behavioural therapy, in which negative patterns of thought are challenged in order to alter unwanted behavioural patterns or treat mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.
The Little Albert experiment
Intent on proving that a similar response to that of Pavlov’s dogs could be induced in humans, Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, undertook a notorious experiment, the results of which were reported in 1920. In what became known as the ‘Little Albert’ experiment, the scientists conditioned a nine-month-old child to develop a fear of a white rat (and assorted other furry creatures that initially induced no sign of fear in the boy) by striking a steel bar with a hammer behind him as he played with the animals. The boy’s fear of the loud noise conditioned him into a corresponding fear of the rat, which was merely another neutral stimulus.