research article about behaviorism

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Perspect Behav Sci
• v.43(1); 2020 Mar

Current Diversification of Behaviorism

Positive Behavior Supports Corporation, 1645 Ala Wai Blvd, Apt 508, Honolulu, HI 96815 USA

Over the last few decades, behaviorism as a philosophy of the science of psychology, especially in the field of behavior analysis and related areas, has diversified to the point that scholars from inside and outside the field are often confused about what exactly behaviorism is. The aim of this study is to analyze how such diversification of behaviorism has arisen over time and what factors might have contributed to it using evolutionary biology’s concept of adaptive radiation as an analogical process. Diversification of behaviorism has occurred in many areas over time as behaviorism has extended its field of practice. Although some characteristics of behaviorism remained, other characteristics were modified. One such characteristic that went through extensive modification is the agent-free approach to the analysis of behavior: the agent problem. This approach has met criticism from inside and outside the field and has been under a strong selective pressure. The present article discusses how the agent problem in a different niche has shaped behaviorism into new forms that we see today.

Over the last few decades, behaviorism as a philosophy of science of psychology, especially in the field of behavior analysis and related areas, has diversified to the point that scholars from inside and outside the field are often confused about what exactly behaviorism is. For example, Foxall ( 2008 ), reviewing comments from fellow behaviorists on his paper on intentional behaviorism, wrote, “A difficulty that arises in discussing radical behaviorism is that its adherents claim that it exists in more than one form and these forms are incommensurable. . . .” (p. 114) and suggests a review of such differences. The aim of the present study is not to discuss the similarities and differences of various forms of behaviorism proposed by contemporary behaviorists, but rather to analyze what factors might have contributed to such diversification of behaviorism we see today.

Table ​ Table1 1 shows a list of major behaviorisms proposed in recent decades after B. F. Skinner’s radical behaviorism in 1945. It is safe to say that these current versions of behaviorism have developed as a reaction to radical behaviorism in one way or another. The focus of the present article is to understand how these reactions reached the point at which they became their own versions of behaviorism. In order to investigate the factors that might have contributed to the diversification of behaviorism in recent decades, this article uses evolutionary biology’s concept of adaptive radiation as an analogical process. Adaptive radiation refers to an emergence of different species from one ancestry species over time and place (diversification) due to a selection process based on differences in environment (niches/geographical isolation), the availability of resources, and competition for the resources against other species, among other factors (Schluter, 2000 ). Simply put, one species diverges into a different species as it migrates from its original niche to a new niche, where the nature of the resources and the competition for resources among species of different ancestry origins differ from its original niche. When this selection process is repeated over time, many new species emerge from the single ancestry species: the process of adaptive radiation. A famous example is Darwin’s finches. The ancestral finch built a nest on the ground and ate seeds on one of the Galapagos Islands. As it migrated to other islands, it diverged into 13 different species with different sizes and shapes of the beaks. Some nested in cactuses and ate seeds. Some nested in trees and ate insects. It is a tradition in behavior analysis to use biological evolution as an analogical process to understand the social dynamics of behavior analysts (e.g., Rider, 1991 ).

List of Behaviorisms and Their Characteristics

Behaviorism can be seen as a species: a field of practice (Skinner calls this a verbal community) is a niche, other professionals in the same field are the competitors, and the reinforcing consequences of their behavior in their verbal community are the resources. For example, radical behaviorism is the species, experimental psychology (and its journals and academia) is the niche, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and neuropsychology are the competitors, and the resources are financial rewards, reputation, career rewards, social interaction, scientific discovery, and knowledge (e.g., on the rewards for scientists’ activities, see Lam, 2011 ). Suppose that radical behaviorism is the ancestral species, adaptive radiation occurs as it migrates to other niches. As it migrates to other niches, it undergoes different selective pressures to the point that it diverges into a new form of behaviorism. Thus, we see the current diversification of behaviorism.

Niches and Their Resources

At present, behaviorists are in the fields of experimental psychology, experimental analysis of behavior, applied behavior analysis, comparative psychology, clinical psychology/psychotherapy, education, behavioral economics, and philosophy of science, to name a few. A variety of resources and competition in each niche might have been contributing factors in the diversification of behaviorism that we see today. Behaviorists themselves often discuss their niches and resources to encourage this point of view. For example, Hayes and Hayes ( 1992 ) described their clinical psychology niche as:

The context of emotional control is a core issue for many clients. It is common for clients to come into therapy with a list of undesirable thoughts, feelings, memories, and bodily sensations that seemingly need to be removed, altered, or avoided, and indeed we as therapists name most of the disorders we treat and the treatments themselves in the same way. (p. 244)

That is, in the field of psychotherapy, the ones who address subjective experiences obtain the resources. The resources, in this case, can be the increase in client referrals, financial success, treatment success, fame, and so on. Because both the therapists and the clients in this verbal community expect therapy to reflect on such issues as thought, feeling, and other cognitive processes, naturally a therapist of any kind adapts to such demands in order to obtain resources. Hayes and Hayes continued:

A few early behavior therapists encouraged a focus on overt behavior only, on the assumption that thoughts (and feelings, etc.) would change on their own. The current mainstream position in behavior therapy is that a change in thoughts will produce changes in overt activity. Traditional associationistic forms of behavior therapy and cognitive therapy do not differ in this regard. (p. 239)

An interesting point is that behavior therapists have adapted and behaved like cognitive therapists in this community due to its selective pressure. Thus, when radical behaviorism, one of which characteristics is to disregard subjective experiences as a controlling variable of behavior, entered in this community it faced the same selective pressure to adopt the niche’s need of addressing subjective experience, and the outcome was contextualistic behaviorism (Hayes & Hayes, 1992 ). This niche’s selective pressures were twofold. One was that the niche rewarded a cognitive approach. The other was that there were already behavior therapists in the niche as a competitor. It is possible to see contextualistic behaviorism as a result of these two selective pressures. To distinguish itself from other behavior therapists as well as from cognitive therapists, contextualistic behaviorism adopts radical behaviorism’s functional approach that behavior is an outcome of the interaction with the environment (context). The authors wrote, “Skinner defined behavior both mechanically and interactively. . . . As a result, some Skinnernians have defined behavior . . . as movement in a frame of reference. . . . Conversely, some radical behaviorists view behavior as an event of a whole organism interacting in and with a context. . . .” (p. 228), and declares to adopt the latter interpretation. They criticize cognitive therapy and other behavior therapy as mechanistic and only focusing on a part of the organism such as cognition, thought, and feeling and not the organism as a whole. They suggest that this distinction from other forms of therapy would enable contextualistic behaviorisms to obtain resources in this niche. They wrote, “We suspect that contextualism represents a more palatable philosophical position for clinical workers than did traditional mechanistic behaviorism” (p. 234). At the same time, contextualistic behaviorism must adapt to this community’s preference for subjective experience. To do so, the authors place emphasis on the stimulus equivalence phenomenon as a behavioristic way to understand cognition and psychological disorders, and spend the majority of time discussing its implications in psychotherapy to appeal to the traditional audience in this field. Contextualistic behaviorism can be seen as a result of radical behaviorism migrating to the field of psychotherapy.

Another example can be observed in Rachlin ( 2011 ). In this paper, Rachlin discusses how both Baum’s molar multiscale view (Baum, 2002 ) and his teleological behaviorism (Rachlin, 1994 ) came about in the field of behavior analysis, how they were similar to each other, and how they differed from radical behaviorism. Rachlin attributes the causes of their similarities to their shared past as the graduate students, the professors they had studied under, the experiments they had conducted together, and a success they had entertained. Unlike Catania, who studied under Skinner at Harvard University and remained a radical behaviorist throughout his career (Baum, 2011b ), Rachlin and Baum were under the influence of Skinner, Stevens, and Herrnstein. Rachlin discusses how all three professors specified the nature of the resources in this particular niche and shaped Raclin and Baum’s scientific activities. Rachlin, describing the successful experiments he had conducted with Baum under Herrnstein, wrote, “these experiments made us dedicated molarists” (p. 210) and indicates that their works afterwards were largely an extension of those early experiments. Thus, came teleological behaviorism and the molar multiscale view, two modern versions of behaviorism.

These adaptations have occurred in many areas over time as behaviorism, especially radical behaviorism in recent years, has expanded its niches. Although some characteristics of behaviorism such as the emphasis on behavior, scientific approach, and pragmatism worked favorably for its survival in new niches, other characteristics faced challenges. One such characteristic that went through extensive selective pressure is what this article calls the agent problem.

The Agent Problem

In this article, the agent is defined as a hypothetical entity that is present across time and environments and changes behavior according to the differences in time and environments. A typical psychology-related niche demands its inhabitants to be interested in dealing with some form of an agent such as the mind, cognition, personality, perception, sensation, emotion, physiology, and the like. Kantor ( 1963 ) showed that, for the last 2,000 years, the subject matter of psychology has mainly been the mind, and the behavior was seen as a result of the working of the mind. In other words, there is a general demand in the field of psychology and, at least in Western culture, that psychologists be interested in studying some aspect of the agent that is responsible for the occurrence of behavior. Most fields of psychology today still carry this tradition. Moreover, almost all the fields beyond psychology such as education, economics, and entertainment take such a view for granted. On the other hand, behaviorism traditionally has either negated or downplayed the role of the agent. Baum ( 2013 ) described:

In commonsense folk psychology, behavior is done by an agent, and behavioral events or actions seem to be a different category. . . . [To the behaviorists, however,] The organism . . . is only the medium of the behavior as water may be the medium of a chemical reaction. . . . This aspect of behavior analysis puts it at odds with common sense and most philosophy of mind. (p. 284)

This behaviorist approach has met criticism wherever behaviorism went, and the handling of the agent problem is a crucial selective pressure that determines behaviorism’s survival not only in the field of psychology but also in every other field of practice. Thus, the current diversification of behaviorism can be seen mainly as a result of facing the agent problem as they migrated to different niches.

When Watson first introduced behaviorism in the field of experimental psychology in 1913 , it was a success largely due to the community’s preference for scientific methodology. At the time, there was an increasing demand and aspiration to a “hard” science such as physics and chemistry, and the competitors in the field such as mentalism, functionalism, and structuralism failed to provide a satisfactory answer to the community’s demand. Behaviorism, as a new species in psychology based partly on the works of Ivan Pavlov, who applied a rigorous scientific method of physiology to study the phenomenon he called conditioned reflexes (Pavlov, 1927/ 1960 ), became a dominant force in the field (Day, 1980 ; Kantor, 1963 ). With its rigorous scientific methodology, behaviorism at the time introduced the idea that any event that was not directly observable was not an appropriate subject matter of psychological investigation, rejecting the studies of the mind. Watson’s interest was the reaction of the whole animal in its relation to a given stimulus (Watson, 1930/ 1957 , p. 11). That is, Watson considered the relationship between a stimulus and a response as a complete and independent phenomenon of itself and did not take it as a manifestation of the mind as the structuralists or the mentalists did or of brain activity as Pavlov did (Pavlov, 1927/ 1960 , p. 7). Likewise, Kantor ( 1933 ) viewed behavior as a “complete body action . . . a total neuro-musculo-glandular configuration” (p. 331) and wrote that behaviorism’s S-R formulation rejects the existence of an agent as an isolated, independent factor that can be a cause of its action or a subject matter of its study. This rejection of the agent as an independent causal factor and the subject matter of psychology has remained one of the defining characteristics of behaviorism to this day. Skinner’s radical behaviorism and its three-term contingency also maintained behaviorism’s agent-free characteristic.

Mainstream Experimental Psychology and Behaviorism

Behaviorism was largely successful in scientific psychology at the time and influenced the fields of experimental psychology, learning, psychophysics, and comparative psychology, among other fields, and demanded other disciplines to adopt a behavioristic approach to the study of their interests (Day, 1980 ). However, as other disciplines had begun embracing the scientific methodology and regained popularity (e.g., the cognitive revolution), behaviorism had begun losing the favor of the niche and left with the criticism that behaviorists did not pay attention to the agent. Behaviorists were well aware that such an agent-free view was not a mainstream view of their culture. In fact, opposition to behaviorism’s agent-free approach has been loud and continuous since behaviorism was first introduced. Kantor ( 1933 ) described scholars’ oppositions to the S-R conceptualization: the S-R formulation paid no attention to “the dynamic character of the organism” (p. 325) and psychological phenomena were not reducible to or to be ignored by studying a physiological stimulus and response relationship. When scholars had adapted behaviorism’s scientific approach in the field of experimental psychology, Hull, Spence, and Tolman had all begun studying the intervening variable or an organismic variable, O, in their S-O-R formulation (Smith, 1986, as cited in Moore, 2001 ), whose activities led to the cognitive revolution and brought the agent back as the main subject of study in psychology. These cognitivists, also called neobehaviorists and methodological behaviorists, had adapted the scientific rigor of behaviorism to the study of their subject matter, cognition, using a hypothetico-deductive approach, and became the mainstream approach of scientific psychology we see today. Cognitivists had an evolutionary advantage over behaviorism such that their interest in the working of the mind met the demand of the niche.

Many behaviorists have adapted to the change in trend and embraced cognitivism. A recent exemplary adaptation of behaviorism to cognitivism is Killeen’s emergent behaviorism (Killeen, 1984 ) and Staddon’s theoretical behaviorism (Staddon, 2001 , 2017 ). Emergent behaviorism suggests that cognitive processes are not the same as behavioral processes as Skinner suggested and advocates that they are a proper subject of scientific psychology. It views cognitive processes as a part of a causal chain between a stimulus and a response and can be studied scientifically using a hypothetico-deductive method. By doing so, emergent behaviorism rejects several characteristics of radical behaviorism such as atheoretical approach, the exclusion of the agent, and positivism, while maintaining its anti-dualistic stance, empiricism, and pragmatism. Likewise, Staddon ( 2017 ) stated that radical behaviorism was not successful in explaining experimental phenomena due to its atheoretical approach. He suggests adding a “state,” a construct that includes behavioral repertoire of the organism, a motivational state, and a species type to the three-term contingency as stimulus, state, response, and consequence in order to accurately depict changes in behavior of one organism across different conditions, much like the S-O-R formula of early scholars. And the way in which to study this “state” is through a hypothetico-deductive method. Both emergent behaviorism and theoretical behaviorism assume the presence of the agent, a theoretical construct such as memory or a state, that produces different responses given different experimental conditions. For them, Skinner’s three-term contingency is not an independent, isolated phenomenon but a part of a larger system, the agent. Staddon ( 2017 ) wrote, “As the organism learns, behavior adapts, reinforcement rate increases, and the repertoire shrinks to a class of responses defined by their consequences and controlled by a class of stimuli that are a reliable signal of the contingencies. This is Skinner’s three-term operant” (p. 42). For theoretical behaviorism, the organism carries many sets of three-term contingencies across environments and time, and some sets are called upon given a situation and others are latent. This is different from Skinner’s approach to three-term contingency, which does not assume an agent that stores multiple three-term contingencies.

It is a reasonable accommodation given the present state of mainstream experimental psychology that emergent behaviorism and theoretical behaviorism include an agent. Experimental psychologists today are rewarded by building a system (whether it is a hypothetical nervous system, neurological system, or a mathematical model) that can account for behavior change across different situations and time. Both emergent behaviorism and theoretical behaviorism criticized radical behaviorism’s atheoretical and agent-free approaches as a product of the time where data collection and mathematical methods were not as precise as those of today. In addition, Malone ( 2004 ) pointed out that these behaviorists’ emphasis on a theory building comes from the growing demand of the field of experimental psychology to predict proximal causes of behavior in different environments. A subtle, but statistically significant, difference in behavior across different experimental conditions is an important indicator of whether their theories are sound or not. For example, in the field of temporal perception, scholars are interested in whether the point of subjective equality is at 4 or 5 s because such a difference would determine the fate of some major theories (e.g., Gibbon, 1981 ; Killeen, Fetterman, & Bizo, 1997 ). In this field, the survival of a theory, the agent, is directly related to the survival in the niche.

Radical Behaviorism

Away from the mainstream experimental psychology, Skinner established a new niche, the experimental analysis of behavior (the field and its journal), in which radical behaviorism thrived without competitors. In this analogy, a paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1970 ) can be seen as an establishment of a new niche and the domination of resources. Although radical behaviorism maintained the agent-free approach to the analysis of behavior, its version was different from those of Watson and Kantor. For Watson and Kantor, the functioning of the agent was manifested in the observed behavior but not isolated as a controlling variable of behavior. They viewed behavior as the working of a whole organism of which the agent is a part. On the other hand, Skinner’s radical behaviorism treated behavior as an independent and stand-alone phenomenon emerging as a consequence of manipulating the environmental variables. Baum ( 2013 ) wrote, “Skinner . . . implicitly assume that even though function or outcome defines an activity, agency plays no part. . .” (p. 284). This is similar to a chemist observing an emergence of water by mixing hydrogen gas and oxygen gas together in high temperature or a meteorologist creating a tornado in a lab. In both cases, a phenomenon arises as a result of environmental manipulations and a resulting phenomenon is not seen as an act of some mediating agent. In behavioral research, this view can be employed to explain a phenomenon completely agent-free. For example, a researcher can place a pigeon, a keylight, and food in an operant box in a specific order and produce a keypeck (e.g., Brown & Jenkins, 1968 ). In this view, one does not interpret that the pigeon “understands” that when the keylight is lit, food follows. Instead, the pigeon is not the center of interest nor a mediating whole between a keylight, food, and a keypeck, but simply one of the factors necessary to produce a keypeck. That is, the pigeon is a variable that is equally important as a keylight, food, and an operant box, but no more than them. Just like behaviorists do not study physics of the keylight or computer chips that operate the operant box, they do not study biology/physiology of the pigeon. By removing the agent from his equation, Skinner successfully established the principles of behavior. Baum stated, “Behavior analysis is the science of behavior; it is about behavior and not about organisms. It views behavioral events as natural events to be explained by other natural events” (Baum, 2007 , abstract).

Radical behaviorism and private events

Radical behaviorism was not immune to criticism on the agent-free approach from outside its niche. Criticism from nonbehaviorists on this issue abounds. For example, Bandura ( 1986 ) wrote that the three-term contingency cannot accommodate observational learning without referring to cognitive processes and advocated for the study of such a process. Chomsky (1959, as cited in MacCorquodale, 1970 ) indicated that Skinner’s treatment of language was too simple and urged analysis of complex cognitive and neurological processes in order to understand human linguistic behavior. These criticisms stemmed from the assumption that there is an agent that governs social and linguistic activities, something Skinner’s agent-free approach did not assume.

Nevertheless, radical behaviorism’s treatment of private events is clearly a response to such criticisms. Skinner’s antecedent to write a book Verbal Behavior was Professor Whitehead’s comment that Skinner’s analysis of behavior was plausible for all human behavior except human language (Claus, 2007 ). In addition, Skinner wrote:

Methodological behaviorism and certain versions of logical positivism could be said to ignore consciousness, feelings, and states of mind, but radical behaviorism does not thus “behead the organism”; it does not “sweep the problem of subjectivity under the rug”; it does not “maintain a strictly behavioristic methodology by treating reports of introspection merely as verbal behavior”; and it was not designed to “permit consciousness to atrophy.” (Skinner, 1974, quoted in Day, 1983 , p. 219

Skinner’s willingness to address the agent problem led to one of the most heated discussions in radical behaviorism: the status of private events. In this article, the private event can be seen as a subcategory of the agent problem.

Although maintaining the position that radical behaviorism is interested in dealing with private events and strictly adhering to the three-term contingency analysis of behavior, Skinner’s approach to this issue had changed over time (Day, 1980 ). In the early phase of his career, Skinner had used the operational definition approach to tackle this problem. For example, Estes and Skinner ( 1941 ) operationally defined anxiety as an observable behavior, a decrease in the rat’s lever-pressing behavior, and studied its occurrence while presenting a shock-paired light. The operational definition approach to the agent problem is to identify an observable behavior that causes an experimenter to infer a supposed inner state (or an intervening variable) and reveals the behavior’s function in its relation to environmental events. In the folk psychological view, anxiety would “cause” a decrease in lever-pressing, but the operational definition approach indicates that anxiety was inferred from the observation of a decrease in behavior. Private events are revealed as a tautological label of the observed behavior and not an explanation (or a cause) of the observed behavior, thus eliminating the agent. Later in his career, Skinner used the functional/contingency analysis of verbal behavior (Moore, 2007 ; Skinner, 1945 ) as well as the analysis of the history of reinforcement of such verbal operants in a given verbal community (Catania, 2011 ; Skinner, 1957 ). That is, the use of a word that is associated with private events such as “I have a toothache” is a) a function of contingency such as getting attention from others and b) taught by other members of the community who did not have direct access to the person’s private event. Thus, analyzing these two aspects of verbal behavior would reveal the controlling variables of the verbal report of a toothache in the environment and eliminate the agent. Skinner and other radical behaviorists argue that these approaches to private events are the heart of radical behaviorism, and some scholars indicate these approaches to private events make radical behaviorism comprehensive against criticism from others (e.g., Moore, 2001 ).

It is noted that some scholars’ differences in the interpretations of Skinner’s radical behaviorism might partly stem from Skinner’s changing attitude toward private events over time (see Foxall, 2008 ). Behaviorists such as Baum and Staddon often cite Skinner’s early works such as Behavior of Organisms (Skinner, 1938/ 1990 ) as a reference, whereas Catania, Moore, and others usually resort to his later works such as Verbal Behavior (Skinner, 1957 ). At one point, Day ( 1969 ) suggested distinguishing these as “early” Skinner and “late” Skinner to clarify the confusion as philosophers do with “early” and “late” Wittgenstein.

Experimental Analysis of Behavior after Radical Behaviorism

In the field of experimental analysis of behavior, new behaviorisms have emerged after radical behaviorism. Although the niche is relatively stable and without competitors from outside (but see the cultural pressure of the agent problem among behavior analysts in Branch & Malagodi, 1980 ), behaviorists are still competing for resources: scientific discoveries. As new behavioral phenomena were discovered, such as matching law, free-operant avoidance behavior, and reconceptualization of contingency (as opposed to contiguity), scholars were forced to see operant behavior in different ways, which led to an update of radical behaviorism. These include multiscale behaviorism (Hineline, 2001 ; Shimp, 2013 ), teleological behaviorism (Rachlin, 1994 ), and the molar multiscale view (Baum, 2002 ). What they have in common is that they maintained the basic characteristics of radical behaviorism such as the atheoretical approach, anti-dualism, and the agent-free approach, while updating the scale of operant behavior to embrace a broader framework. They call a radical behaviorist a molecular behaviorist because radical behaviorism’s unit of analysis of behavior is the three-term contingency and distinguish themselves as molar behaviorists, whose analysis of behavior includes multiple sets of three-term contingencies across time and environments. Shimp ( 2013 ) wrote:

A molecular analysis describes how reinforcement shapes and organizes continuous, moment-to-moment behaving into new higher order patterns, and a molar analysis describes how reinforcement affects averages of aggregates of different instances of the same behaviors that occurred at different times. (p. 295)

The molar behaviorists are facing the same challenge as emergent and theoretical behaviorisms: how to account for a change in behavior that is not directly a function of the immediate antecedent and contingent stimuli, such as in a choice situation, contrast effect, and contingency analysis, where behavior change is a function of the differences in the accumulated rate of reinforcement across different environments and time. In addition, although emergent and theoretical behaviorisms use an agent such as memory and the decision-making process to account for these phenomena, molar behaviorists cannot invoke an agent. Baum ( 2002 ) is aware of the challenge and offers an alternative:

Any science that deals with change, whether phylogenetic change, developmental change, or behavioral change, requires entities that can change and yet retain their identity . . . because only such entities provide historical continuity. In other words, because only individuals can change and yet maintain historical continuity, such a science must deal with individuals. Although individual usually means individual organism in everyday discourse, philosophers mean something more general. Organisms exemplify cohesive wholes, but so too do activities or allocations. (p. 108)

The molar behaviorists’ solution is to look at time and activities. To resolve the issue of behavior change across time and environments without using the agent, the molar multiscale view sees behavior as activities, a chain of responses, instead of the molecular behaviorists’ position that a response is a discrete unit. By using activities as a unit of operant, the molar multiscale view states that time (or reinforcement frequency within a given timeframe) selects different activities (behavior chains) across different environments instead of a single reinforcement that selects a single response in a single condition in a single moment as in Skinnerian and molecular behaviorist views (Baum, 2012 ). Unlike a single instance of reinforcement specific to one environmental condition, response class, and moment, time is present across environments and selects activities that produce the maximum rate of reinforcement per situation. That is, instead of looking at behavior across environments and time as completely unrelated instances of the three-term contingencies as the molecular behaviorists do or a “behavior change” of one agent as the cognitivists do, the molar behaviorists view behavior in different environments as separate activities, each competes for time. By doing so, the molar multiscale view can account for “behavior change” beyond the scope of the single three-term contingency without introducing the agent.

Because the molar behaviorists do not see the need to include the agent in its analysis of “behavior change” across time and environments, their take on the private events, a subcategory of the agent problem, is also dismissive. The molar multiscale view takes the stance that private events are not needed to explain, predict, and control behavior (Baum, 2011b ). Likewise, teleological behaviorism takes a position that “behaviorism is the study of the overt behavior, over time, of the organism as a whole in its temporal and social context . . . an organism’s mental life resides in its overt behavior” (Rachlin, 2013 , p. 209). Differences aside, their approaches have been in favor of their niche, the journals such as the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior , and they succeeded radical behaviorism’s agent-free approach despite the differences between the molecular and molar stances.

Radical Behaviorism in Applied Behavior Analysis

The mainstream experimental psychology’s interest in the proximal causes of behavior and theory development is in stark contrast to the field of clinical psychology/psychotherapy, especially in applied behavior analysis, where radical behaviorism still dominates. In discussing the characteristics of applied behavior analysis, Baer, Wolf, and Risley ( 1968 ) point out that a small change in behavior is not important in clinical settings and therefore not emphasized in applied behavior analysis. They wrote:

Non-applied research often may be extremely valuable when it produces small but reliable effects, in that these effects testify to the operation of some variable which in itself has great theoretical importance. In application, the theoretical importance of a variable is usually not at issue. Its practical importance, specifically its power in altering behavior enough to be socially important, is the essential criterion. (p. 96)

Thus, the selective pressure in clinical psychology is different from that of experimental psychology and such a difference shapes behaviorism differently (see also Rider, 1991 ).

It is not to say that radical behaviorism in applied behavior analysis is free of the agent problem. As discussed above, this problem is deeply rooted in Western culture and in the field of clinical psychology/psychotherapy as seen in the development of contextualistic behaviorism. The struggle is evident in the field of applied behavior analysis as well. Although radical behaviorism in applied behavior analysis maintains its agent-free approach, it largely operates in clinical and educational settings and with people with autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disabilities. These clinical/educational settings are not different from other fields where the agent is seen as the controller of behavior. The pressure to include an agent in the analysis of behavior is high and behavior analysts are often asked to “translate” their terminologies to “a layperson’s” language in order to appeal to the general public (e.g., Rolider & Axelrod, 2005 ). Unlike Baum ( 2011a ), who assumes that a therapist needs only to pay attention to a therapeutic effect on behavior and not to subjective feelings, therapists in this niche have long recognized that a client’s and family’s subjective experience of the therapy is an important variable in the survival of their method in this niche (Wolf, 1978 ). This selective pressure can be seen in a recent modification of the three-term contingency. Two such examples are the treatment of motivation and genes.

Although the concept of motivation is accepted without scrutiny in folk psychology as a controlling variable of behavior, behavior analysis has been taking a conservative stance. Miguel ( 2013 ) described how the concept of a drive/motivation has been treated in the field of behavior analysis over time. He points out that the concept of a drive was originally used by learning theorists as an internal hypothetical construct to explain the effect of reinforcement. “Early” Skinner had adapted the use of the drive concept as an internal intervening state (Skinner, 1938/1990), but gradually shifted his position to describe it as an environmental operation (Skinner, 1957 ) such that food deprivation replaced hunger and water satiation replaced the reduction of thirst (Miguel, 2013 ; Sundberg, 2013 ). For Skinner, motivational operations remained independent of the three-term contingency similar to the choice of animal species and the operant box arrangement.

Later, Skinner’s effort to externalize the concept of a drive/motivation was extended by Michael ( 1982 , 1993 ) in applied behavior analysis. Given Michael’s concept of the motivating operations, Sundberg ( 1993 ) proposed reconceptualizing the three-term contingency as a four-term contingency by including the concept of motivating operations: motivating operation, antecedent, behavior, and consequence. Although treating the motivating operation as an independent variable is operationally sound, to include it in the three-term contingency implies the presence of the agent whose state influences the effectiveness of the environmental stimuli across time and environments. This is evident in Michael’s ( 1993 ) description of the concept:

An establishing operation . . . is an environmental event, operation, or stimulus condition that affects an organism by momentarily altering (a) the reinforcing effectiveness of other events and (b) the frequency of occurrence of that part of the organism’s repertoire relevant to those events as consequences. (p. 192; emphasis in original)

Michael assumes that the motivating operation affects “organism” that carries and executes multiple sets of three-term contingencies (“repertoire”) given different environments. One can foresee that the logical extension of this approach is the introduction of the agent in the three-term contingency just like in the S-O-R formula in which the drive concept played a significant role in the explanation of behavior. One of the reasons behind Michael’s reconceptualization of motivational variables was that behavior analysis would become vulnerable to criticisms by others in psychology without addressing motivation (Sundberg, 2013 ). Here, one can see behavior analysts’ struggle to stay agent-free while adapting to the demand of the niche.

Another example is the treatment of genetic factors. As applied behavior analysts expanded their professional niches to the area of clinical psychology, especially in the field of developmental disabilities, the role of genetic factors became potent. Langthorne and McGill ( 2008 ) discussed the importance of incorporating genetic influence on the development of self-injurious behavior (SIB) with people with certain developmental disabilities such as Down syndrome and Rett syndrome. Their model of the early development of SIB was an extended version of the three-term contingency incorporating factors such as genes and motivations. They indicated that genetic events influence the nature of motivation, topographies of behavior later conditioned to be an operant, stimuli that are later discriminated, and contingencies that would function as a reinforcer. The authors suggest that acknowledging and incorporating genetic influence in the analysis would enhance a therapist’s ability to assess, treat, and prevent SIB among people with a given disability. Again, just like Michael, the incorporation of the genetic variable in the three-term contingency also implies the presence of the agent whose state alters the effectiveness of the environmental variables across time and settings.

A similar issue can be seen when behavior analysts migrated to the animal training field. Behavior analysts had been criticized for the use of a limited kind of animal species as their experimental subjects and disregarding a species-specific behavior or instincts in their analyses of behavior. When Breland and Breland ( 1961 ), animal training specialists, adapted the behavior analytic approach to animal training, they encountered a similar issue such that they had difficulty conditioning the behavior of different species of animals in a uniform fashion without taking into consideration each animal’s instinctive behavior pattern. They offered a way to redefine instincts in a behavior analytic term and urged operant psychologists to incorporate and study animals ethologically and as a whole in their experimental works. Here, too, is an emphasis to include an agent, an animal as a whole, in behavior analysis.

In all cases, the agent problem is a constant selective pressure that demands responses from behavior analysts. Instead of introducing the agent directly, applied behavior analysts extended its three-term contingency formula to respond to such a demand, but the inclusion of variables such as the motivating operation and the subject variable as an extension of the three-term contingency could lead to something similar to the cognitivists’ S-O-R formula in the future.

Human Behavior and Behaviorism

The agent problem is most salient in the niche where human behavior is of interest. This is even more so in the niche where the behavior of typically developing, language-able adult humans is concerned. In the field of economics, intentional behaviorism (Foxall, 2007 , 2008 ) actively incorporates the agent, a language-able person, into its formula. Foxall ( 2008 ) points out that radical behaviorism cannot account for “(a) behavior at the personal level (as opposed to accounting for behavior-environment relationships), (b) the continuity of behavior over time and space, and (c) the delimitation of interpretations of behavior” (p. 119). Foxall argues that even though radical behaviorism is sufficient in predicting and controlling behavior using extensional (objective) language, it still misses information at the personal level, such as subjective experience, without which the analysis of human behavior is not complete. By including the personal level with the analysis of intentional idioms (statements using the first-person point of view such as “I think,” I believe,” and “I want”), intentional behaviorism aims to fill the gap between the external stimulations (antecedents and contingencies) and behavior, providing continuity of behavior (Foxall, 2007 , 2008 ). By incorporating intentional explanations in behaviorism, Foxall argues that one can interpret behavior even though one does not have access to information about antecedents, contingencies, and history of reinforcement of a person of interest in the everyday situation, un-limiting behavioral interpretation.

Unlike emergent behaviorism and theoretical behaviorism, which incorporate the agent in the form of a hypothetical construct such as memory and attention, intentional behaviorism permits a person to mediate time and environments. In this case, a person is a language-able human being who uses first-person statements. Personal experience and a report of it, Foxall argues, would not be reducible to the functional analysis as radical behaviorism proposed nor could it be broken down into mathematical or cognitive mechanisms as emergent behaviorism and theoretical behaviorism proposed. He wrote, “The intentional terms ascribed in intentional behaviorism result entirely from an attempt to overcome radical behaviorism's problem of legitimately applying theoretical terms of an intentional nature. Intentionality is ascribed only to the person not to sub-personal entities” (Foxall, 2008 , p. 129). Foxall provides an example:

We can say that the fact that he is looking for his glasses is “something he knows ” without scrutinizing or making reference to his past or future behaviors . . . it is to argue that the man does not need to say, to himself at least, that he is enacting behavior that has culminated in his finding his glasses in the past. There is a level of understanding of his behavior, expressed in terms of what the man knows without external reference, that cannot be expressed in language other than the intentional. (p. 126; emphasis in original)

Here, intentional behaviorism assumes that the “man” is the mediator between the environmental events and his own behavior who is to look for the glasses. Unlike the molar behaviorists who would argue that one can explain this person’s behavior if one extends the observation in space and time, Foxall argues 1) the man’s self-report suffices the identification of the cause of his behavior and 2) subjective experience is unattainable to such an observer and requires incorporation of the subjective dimension into the analysis. In this case, intentional behaviorism indicates that there is a qualitative difference between the exensional (objective, third-person) and intentional (subjective, first-person) statements that a person verbalizes. Thus, intentional behaviorism advocates for the inclusion of reports of subjective experience (the use of intentional idioms) as a part of a comprehensive analysis of human behavior.

When dealing with typically developing, language-able humans, one’s subjective experience is difficult to exclude as a subject of study and the agent-free approach is least understood. As a means of adapting, intentional behaviorism makes a bold modification: its only concern is human activities and it actively incorporates a person as the agent in its formula as the interest of its study, both of which are a drastic move away from the other behaviorisms. Such an adaptation can be seen as a result of the selective pressure of the niche. In the field of economics, theories of human economic behavior heavily employ the concepts such as “satisfice,” “optimal decision making,” “nudging,” and “preference,” all of which infer a person (i.e., the agent) when explaining the results of quantified human economic behavior (e.g., Foxall, 2017 ). Intentional behaviorism’s adaptation is evident in Foxall’s ( 2017 ) statement, “. . . consumer behavior analysis has sought to meld behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and marketing science into a unified whole that comprehends consumer behavior in a unique way” (p. 309). For a person whose aim is to incorporate behavior analysis into this niche, it is understandable that their version of behaviorism takes a shape of intentional behaviorism.

An interesting comparison can be made between intentional behaviorism and contextualistic behaviorism where both claim that their subject matter is human behavior and no other animals. They differ in their attitude toward the agent problem. Whereas intentional behaviorism embraces the agent as a necessary component of the analysis of behavior, contextualistic behaviorism diminishes it as a mechanistic component that does not represent a whole organism. Although intentional behaviorism preserves a separate analysis to a person’s subjective experience, contextualistic behaviorism redefines the “psychological level of analysis as the study of whole organisms interacting in and with a context,” and indicates that the agent in its isolation from the context is not appropriate for their analysis of behavior (Hayes & Hayes, 1992 ). How can two behaviorisms that both focus on human behavior differ? A factor that could have influenced this difference might be their competitors in their niches. As discussed above, contextualistic behaviorism competes with behavior therapists who embraced cognitivism in their understanding of human behavior. Thus, accepting the agent in a causal chain of behavior would not distinguish contextualistic behaviorism from the rest. On the other hand, intentional behaviorism is in the field of behavioral economics where psychological behaviorism is a new perspective. It would be difficult for intentional behaviorism to stay agent-free and be accepted by such a niche.

Pragmatism and Diversification

Behaviorism is unique in the way that it is adaptive to a given environment compared to other schools of philosophy. One characteristic of behaviorism that permits such flexibility is pragmatism, and all the new versions of behaviorism discussed above adhere to this characteristic. This aspect of behaviorism has provided success in many niches where behaviorists have migrated. Its commitment to pragmatic success in changing behavior is often one of the strengths against its competitors in a given field such as clinical psychology. As discussed above, this aspect of behaviorism also allows it to change its own shape to adapt to a given niche. On the other hand, such adaptation to the niches often causes a debate among behaviorists of different niches as to what the subject matter of their study is, what measurement and criteria are to be used, and how to interpret the results. The practicality of using theory is emphasized by emergent behaviorism and theoretical behaviorism. The use of time and activities are advocated by molar behaviorists. The inclusion of intentional terms is suggested by intentional behaviorism. A socially significant behavior change is emphasized by radical behaviorists in applied behavior analysis and contextualistic behaviorism. Baum ( 2002 ) writes, for example, when discussing the unit of analysis of his dependent variable, “Where should subdividing stop, and how does one define the parts? Answers would depend on the purpose of the analysis, whether it be therapeutic intervention, basic research, or something else” (p. 111). Some scholars are cautious about the pragmatic nature of behaviorism. Burgos ( 2003 ) discusses the danger of pragmatism by pointing out that, “. . . Jamesian pragmatism is the most discussed form of pragmatism in philosophy and science (behaviorism and behavior analysis included. . . ). Under Jamesian pragmatism, anything goes, even nonsense, as long as it is useful to someone. . .” (p. 42). He also writes, “Pragmatism leads to a relativism that is seriously at odds with an emphasis on science as the best way of knowing” (Burgos, 2007 , p. 63). Thus, one can argue that the diversification seen in this article is a result of behaviorists not strictly adhering to the original core values that early behaviorism advocated. Staddon ( 2018 ) also argued that the diversification of social science is disadvantageous to the field because it would prevent a healthy and open scientific communication and criticism between niches. Likewise, Rider ( 1991 ) shows a concern that there has been less and less communication between the experimental analysis of behavior and applied behavior analysis. On the other hand, diversification is a natural phenomenon that is a product of the environment and is largely uncontrollable. It is a part of the survival of the species without which no behaviorisms would exist today. Time will only show which behaviorism will survive tomorrow.

This article reviewed the diversification of behaviorism in recent decades using the concept of adaptive radiation as a guiding principle. As behaviorism migrated from its original niche of experimental psychology into new niches such as clinical psychology and economics, it has diversified into new forms. Although some characteristics of behaviorism remained, other characteristics were modified. One such characteristic that went through extensive modification was the agent-free approach to the analysis of behavior. The article discussed the agent problem as one of the major selective pressures that influenced the shape of new kinds of behaviorism in different niches. The presence of competitors and the nature of the resources were also factors in the emergence of new forms. Thus, variations in present-day behaviorism can be thought of as a product of the selective pressure of each niche.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• Baer DM, Wolf MM, Risley TR. Some current dimensions of applied behavior analysis. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 1968; 1 (1):91–97. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1968.1-91. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action . Englewood Cliffs.
• Baum WM. From molecular to molar: A paradigm shift in behavior analysis. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 2002; 78 (1):95–116. doi: 10.1901/jeab.2002.78-95. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baum WM. Commentary on Foxall, Intentional behaviorism. Behavior & Philosophy. 2007; 35 :57–60. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baum WM. Behaviorism, private events, and the molar view of behavior. The Behavior Analyst. 2011; 34 (2):185–200. doi: 10.1007/BF03392249. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baum WM. No need for private events in a science of behavior: Response to commentaries. The Behavior Analyst. 2011; 34 (2):237–244. doi: 10.1007/BF03392255. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baum WM. Rethinking reinforcement: Allocation, induction, and contingency. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 2012; 97 (1):101–124. doi: 10.1901/jeab.2012.97-101. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baum WM. What counts as behavior? The molar multiscale view. The Behavior Analyst. 2013; 36 (2):283–293. doi: 10.1007/BF03392315. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Branch MN, Malagodi EF. Where have all the behaviorists gone? The Behavior Analyst. 1980; 3 (1):31–38. doi: 10.1007/BF03392376. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Breland K, Breland M. The misbehavior of organisms. American Psychologist. 1961; 16 (11):681. doi: 10.1037/h0040090. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brown PL, Jenkins HM. Auto-shaping of the pigeon’s key-peck. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 1968; 11 (1):1–8. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1968.11-1. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Burgos J. Laudable goals, interesting experiments, unintelligible theorizing. Behavior & Philosophy. 2003; 31 :19–45. [ Google Scholar ]
• Burgos J. About aboutness: Thoughts on intentional behaviorism. Behavior & Philosophy. 2007; 35 :65–76. [ Google Scholar ]
• Catania AC. On Baum’s public claim that he has no significant private events. The Behavior Analyst. 2011; 34 (2):227–236. doi: 10.1007/BF03392254. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Claus CK. B. F. Skinner and T. N. Whitehead: A brief encounter, research similarities, Hawthorne revisited, what next? The Behavior Analyst. 2007; 30 (1):79–86. doi: 10.1007/BF03392147. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Day W. On the difference between radical and methodological behaviorism. Behaviorism. 1983; 11 (1):89–102. [ Google Scholar ]
• Day WE. On certain similarities between the philosophical investigations of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the operationism of B. E Skinner. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 1969; 12 :489–506. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1969.12-489. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Day WF. The historical antecedents of contemporary behaviorism. In: Rieber RW, Salzinger K, editors. Psychology: Theoretical-historical perspectives. New York: Academic Press; 1980. pp. 203–262. [ Google Scholar ]
• Estes WK, Skinner BF. Some quantitative properties of anxiety. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 1941; 29 (5):390. doi: 10.1037/h0062283. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Foxall G. Intentional behaviorism revisited. Behavior & Philosophy. 2008; 36 :113–155. [ Google Scholar ]
• Foxall GR. Intentional behaviorism. Behavior & Philosophy. 2007; 35 :1–55. [ Google Scholar ]
• Foxall GR. Behavioral economics in consumer behavior analysis. The Behavior Analyst. 2017; 40 (2):309–313. doi: 10.1007/s40614-017-0127-4. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gibbon J. On the form and location of the psychometric bisection function for time. Journal of Mathematical Psychology. 1981; 24 (1):58–87. doi: 10.1016/0022-2496(81)90035-3. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hayes SC, Hayes LJ. Some clinical implications of contextualistic behaviorism: The example of cognition. Behavior Therapy. 1992; 23 (2):225–249. doi: 10.1016/S0005-7894(05)80383-1. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hineline PN. Beyond the molar—molecular distinction: We need multiscaled analyses. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 2001; 75 (3):342–347. doi: 10.1901/jeab.2001.75-342. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kantor JR. In defense of stimulus-response psychology. Psychological Review. 1933; 40 (4):324–336. doi: 10.1037/h0073851. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kantor JR. The scientific evolution of psychology, Vol. 1. Bloomington: Principia Press; 1963. [ Google Scholar ]
• Killeen P. Emergent behaviorism. Behaviorism. 1984; 12 (2):25–40. [ Google Scholar ]
• Killeen PR, Fetterman JG, Bizo LA. Time's causes. In: Bradshaw CM, Szabadi E, editors. Time and behaviour: Psychological and neurobehavioural analyses. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science; 1997. pp. 79–131. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kuhn TS. The structure of scientific revolutions. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1970. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lam A. What motivates academic scientists to engage in research commercialization: “Gold,” “ribbon” or “puzzle?” Research Policy. 2011; 40 (10):1354–1368. doi: 10.1016/j.respol.2011.09.002. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Langthorne P, McGill P. Functional analysis of the early development of self-injurious behavior: Incorporating gene-environment interactions. American Journal on Mental Retardation. 2008; 113 (5):403–417. doi: 10.1352/2008.113:403-417. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• MacCorquodale K. On Chomsky's review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior . Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 1970; 13 (1):83–99. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1970.13-83. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Malone JC. Modern molar behaviorism and theoretical behaviorism: Religion and science. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 2004; 82 (1):95–102. doi: 10.1901/jeab.2004.82-95. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Michael J. Distinguishing between discriminative and motivational functions of stimuli. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 1982; 37 (1):149–155. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1982.37-149. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Michael J. Establishing operations. The Behavior Analyst. 1993; 16 (2):191–206. doi: 10.1007/BF03392623. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miguel CF. Jack Michael’s motivation. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. 2013; 29 :3–11. doi: 10.1007/BF03393119. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Moore J. On distinguishing methodological from radical behaviorism. European Journal of Behavior Analysis. 2001; 2 (2):221–244. doi: 10.1080/15021149.2001.11434196. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Moore J. Comments on “Intentional Behaviorism by G. R. Foxall” Behavior & Philosophy. 2007; 35 :113–130. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pavlov IP. Conditioned reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex. New York: Dover; 1960. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rachlin, H. (1994). Behavior and mind: The roots of modern psychology . New York: Oxford University Press.
• Rachlin H. Baum’s private thoughts. The Behavior Analyst. 2011; 34 (2):209–212. doi: 10.1007/BF03392251. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rachlin H. About teleological behaviorism. The Behavior Analyst. 2013; 36 (2):209–222. doi: 10.1007/BF03392307. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rider DP. The speciation of behavior analysis. The Behavior Analyst. 1991; 14 (2):171–181. doi: 10.1007/BF03392567. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rolider A, Axelrod S, et al. The effects of “behavior-speak” on public attitudes toward behavioral interventions: A cross-cultural argument for using conversational language to describe behavioral interventions. In: Heward WL, Heron TE, Neef NA, Peterson SM, Sainto DM, Cartledge G, Gardner R III, et al., editors. Focus on behavior analysis in education. Upper Saddle River: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall; 2005. pp. 283–293. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schluter D. The ecology of adaptive radiation. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2000. [ Google Scholar ]
• Shimp CP. Toward the unification of molecular and molar analyses. The Behavior Analyst. 2013; 36 (2):295–312. doi: 10.1007/BF03392316. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Skinner BF. The operational analysis of psychological terms. Psychological Review. 1945; 52 :270–277. doi: 10.1037/h0062535. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Skinner BF. Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts; 1957. [ Google Scholar ]
• Skinner, B. F. (1990). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis . BF Skinner Foundation. (Original work published 1938)
• Staddon J. The new behaviorism: Mind, mechanism and society. Philadelphia: Psychology Press; 2001. [ Google Scholar ]
• Staddon J. Theoretical behaviorism. Behavior & Philosophy. 2017; 45 :27–44. [ Google Scholar ]
• Staddon, J. (2018). The devolution of social science. Retrieved from https://quillette.com/2018/10/07/the-devolution-of-social-science/
• Sundberg, M. L. (1993). The application of establishing operations. The Behavior Analyst, 16 (2), 211–214. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ]
• Sundberg ML. Thirty points about motivation from Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior . Analysis of Verbal Behavior. 2013; 29 :13–40. doi: 10.1007/BF03393120. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Watson JB. Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review. 1913; 20 (2):158. doi: 10.1037/h0074428. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Watson JB. Behaviorism (Rev. ed.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1957. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wolf MM. Social validity: The case for subjective measurement or how applied behavior analysis is finding its heart. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 1978; 11 :203–214. doi: 10.1901/jaba.1978.11-203. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

Behaviorism

It has sometimes been said that “behave is what organisms do.” Behaviorism is built on this assumption, and its goal is to promote the scientific study of behavior. The behavior, in particular, of individual organisms. Not of social groups. Not of cultures. But of persons and animals.

This entry considers different types of behaviorism and outlines reasons for and against being a behaviorist. It consider contributions of behaviorism to the study of behavior. Special attention is given to the so-called “radical behaviorism” of B. F. Skinner (1904–90). Skinner is given special (not exclusive) attention because he is the behaviorist who has received the most attention from philosophers, fellow scientists and the public at large. General lessons can also be learned from Skinner about the conduct of behavioral science in general. The entry describes those lessons.

1. What is Behaviorism?

2. three types of behaviorism, 3. roots of behaviorism, 4. popularity of behaviorism, 5. why be a behaviorist, 6. skinner’s social worldview, 7. why be anti-behaviorist, 8. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

One has to be careful with “ism” words. They often have both loose and strict meanings. And sometimes multiple meanings of each type. ‘Behaviorism’ is no exception. Loosely speaking, behaviorism is an attitude – a way of conceiving of empirical constraints on psychological state attribution. Strictly speaking, behaviorism is a doctrine – a way of doing psychological or behavioral science itself.

Wilfred Sellars (1912–89), the distinguished philosopher, noted that a person may qualify as a behaviorist, loosely or attitudinally speaking, if they insist on confirming “hypotheses about psychological events in terms of behavioral criteria” (1963, p. 22). A behaviorist, so understood, is someone who demands behavioral evidence for any psychological hypothesis. For such a person, there is no knowable difference between two states of mind (beliefs, desires, etc.) unless there is a demonstrable difference in the behavior associated with each state. Consider the current belief of a person that it is raining. If there is no difference in his or her behavior between believing that it is raining and believing that it is not raining, there is no grounds for attributing the one belief rather than the other. The attribution is empirically empty or unconstrained.

Arguably, there is nothing truly exciting about behaviorism loosely understood. It enthrones behavioral evidence, an arguably inescapable premise not just in psychological science but in ordinary discourse about mind and behavior. Just how behavioral evidence should be ‘enthroned’ (especially in science) may be debated. But enthronement itself is not in question.

Not so behaviorism the doctrine. It has been widely and vigorously debated. This entry is about the doctrine, not the attitude. Behaviorism, the doctrine, has caused considerable excitation among both advocates and critics. In a manner of speaking, it is a doctrine, or family of doctrines, about how to enthrone behavior not just in the science of psychology but in the metaphysics of human and animal behavior.

Behaviorism, the doctrine, is committed in its fullest and most complete sense to the truth of the following three sets of claims.

• Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the inner mind – as something other or different from behavior.
• Behavior can be described and explained without making ultimate reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind, in the head).
• In the course of theory development in psychology, if, somehow, mental terms or concepts are deployed in describing or explaining behavior, then either (a) these terms or concepts should be eliminated and replaced by behavioral terms or (b) they can and should be translated or paraphrased into behavioral concepts.

The three sets of claims are logically distinct. Moreover, taken independently, each helps to form a type of behaviorism. “Methodological” behaviorism is committed to the truth of (1). “Psychological” behaviorism is committed to the truth of (2). “Analytical” behaviorism (also known as “philosophical” or “logical” behaviorism) is committed to the truth of the sub-statement in (3) that mental terms or concepts can and should be translated into behavioral concepts.

Other nomenclature is sometimes used to classify behaviorisms. Georges Rey (1997, p. 96), for example, classifies behaviorisms as methodological, analytical, and radical, where “radical” is Rey’s term for what is here classified as psychological behaviorism. The term “radical” is instead reserved for the psychological behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. Skinner employs the expression “radical behaviorism” to describe his brand of behaviorism or his philosophy of behaviorism (see Skinner 1974, p. 18). In the classification scheme used in this entry, radical behaviorism is a sub-type of psychological behaviorism, primarily, although it combines all three types of behaviorism (methodological, analytical, and psychological).

Methodological behaviorism is a normative theory about the scientific conduct of psychology. It claims that psychology should concern itself with the behavior of organisms (human and nonhuman animals). Psychology should not concern itself with mental states or events or with constructing internal information processing accounts of behavior. According to methodological behaviorism, reference to mental states, such as an animal’s beliefs or desires, adds nothing to what psychology can and should understand about the sources of behavior. Mental states are private entities which, given the necessary publicity of science, do not form proper objects of empirical study. Methodological behaviorism is a dominant theme in the writings of John Watson (1878–1958).

Psychological behaviorism is a research program within psychology. It purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. Psychological behaviorism is present in the work of Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), Edward Thorndike (1874–1949), as well as Watson. Its fullest and most influential expression is B. F. Skinner’s work on schedules of reinforcement.

To illustrate, consider a hungry rat in an experimental chamber. If a particular movement, such as pressing a lever when a light is on, is followed by the presentation of food, then the likelihood of the rat’s pressing the lever when hungry, again, and the light is on, is increased. Such presentations are reinforcements, such lights are (discriminative) stimuli, such lever pressings are responses, and such trials or associations are learning histories.

Analytical or logical behaviorism is a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or concepts. It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea of a behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. When we attribute a belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are characterizing the person in terms of what he or she might do in particular situations or environmental interactions. Analytical behaviorism may be found in the work of Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–51) (if perhaps not without controversy in interpretation, in Wittgenstein’s case). More recently, the philosopher-psychologist U. T. Place (1924–2000) advocated a brand of analytical behaviorism restricted to intentional or representational states of mind, such as beliefs, which Place took to constitute a type, although not the only type, of mentality (see Graham and Valentine 2004). Arguably, a version of analytical or logical behaviorism may also be found in the work of Daniel Dennett on the ascription of states of consciousness via a method he calls ‘heterophenomenology’ (Dennett 2005, pp. 25–56). (See also Melser 2004.)

Each of methodological, psychological, and analytical behaviorism has historical foundations. Analytical behaviorism traces its historical roots to the philosophical movement known as Logical Positivism (see Smith 1986). Logical positivism proposes that the meaning of statements used in science must be understood in terms of experimental conditions or observations that verify their truth. This positivist doctrine is known as “verificationism.” In psychology, verificationism underpins or grounds analytical behaviorism, namely, the claim that mental concepts refer to behavioral tendencies and so must be translated into behavioral terms.

Analytical behaviorism helps to avoid a metaphysical position known as substance dualism. Substance dualism is the doctrine that mental states take place in a special, non-physical mental substance (the immaterial mind). By contrast, for analytical behaviorism, the belief that I have as I arrive on time for a 2pm dental appointment, namely, that I have a 2pm appointment, is not the property of a mental substance. Believing is a family of tendencies of my body. In addition, for an analytical behaviorist, we cannot identify the belief about my arrival independently of that arrival or other members of this family of tendencies. So, we also cannot treat it as the cause of the arrival. Cause and effect are, as Hume taught, conceptually distinct existences. Believing that I have a 2pm appointment is not distinct from my arrival and so cannot be part of the causal foundations of arrival.

Psychological behaviorism’s historical roots consist, in part, in the classical associationism of the British Empiricists, foremost John Locke (1632–1704) and David Hume (1711–76). According to classical associationism, intelligent behavior is the product of associative learning. As a result of associations or pairings between perceptual experiences or stimulations on the one hand, and ideas or thoughts on the other, persons and animals acquire knowledge of their environment and how to act. Associations enable creatures to discover the causal structure of the world. Association is most helpfully viewed as the acquisition of knowledge about relations between events. Intelligence in behavior is a mark of such knowledge.

Classical associationism relied on introspectible entities, such as perceptual experiences or stimulations as the first links in associations, and thoughts or ideas as the second links. Psychological behaviorism, motivated by experimental interests, claims that to understand the origins of behavior, reference to stimulations (experiences) should be replaced by reference to stimuli (physical events in the environment), and that reference to thoughts or ideas should be eliminated or displaced in favor of reference to responses (overt behavior, motor movement). Psychological behaviorism is associationism without appeal to inner mental events.

Don’t human beings talk of introspectible entities, thoughts, feelings, and so on, even if these are not recognized by behaviorism or best understood as behavioral tendencies? Psychological behaviorists regard the practice of talking about one’s own states of mind, and of introspectively reporting those states, as potentially useful data in psychological experiments, but as not presupposing the metaphysical subjectivity or non-physical presence of those states. There are different sorts of causes behind introspective reports, and psychological behaviorists take these and other elements of introspection to be amenable to behavioral analysis. (For additional discussion, see Section 5 of this entry). (See, for comparison, Dennett’s method of heterophenomenology; Dennett 1991, pp. 72–81)

The task of psychological behaviorism is to specify types of association, understand how environmental events control behavior, discover and elucidate causal regularities or laws or functional relations which govern the formation of associations, and predict how behavior will change as the environment changes. The word “conditioning” is commonly used to specify the process involved in acquiring new associations. Animals in so-called “operant” conditioning experiments are not learning to, for example, press levers. Instead, they are learning about the relationship between events in their environment, for example, that a particular behavior, pressing the lever in the presences of a light, causes food to appear.

In its historical foundations, methodological behaviorism shares with analytical behaviorism the influence of positivism. One of the main goals of positivism was to unify psychology with natural science. Watson wrote that “psychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is … prediction and control” (1913, p. 158). Watson also wrote of the purpose of psychology as follows: “To predict, given the stimulus, what reaction will take place; or, given the reaction, state what the situation or stimulus is that has caused the reaction” (1930, p. 11).

Though logically distinct, methodological, psychological, and analytical behaviorisms are sometimes found in one behaviorism. Skinner’s radical behaviorism combines all three forms of behaviorism. It follows analytical strictures (at least loosely) in paraphrasing mental terms behaviorally, when or if they cannot be eliminated from explanatory discourse. In Verbal Behavior (1957) and elsewhere, Skinner tries to show how mental terms can be given behavioral interpretations. In About Behaviorism (1974) he says that when mental terminology cannot be eliminated it can be “translated into behavior” (p. 18, Skinner brackets the expression with his own double quotes).

Radical behaviorism is concerned with the behavior of organisms, not with internal processing (if treated or described differently from overt behavior). So, it is a form of methodological behaviorism. Finally, radical behaviorism understands behavior as a reflection of frequency effects among stimuli, which means that it is a form of psychological behaviorism.

Behaviorism of one sort or another was an immensely popular research program or methodological commitment among students of behavior from about the third decade of the twentieth century through its middle decades, at least until the beginnings of the cognitive science revolution. Cognitive science began to mature roughly from 1960 until 1985 (see Bechtel, Abrahamsen, and Graham 1998, pp. 15–17). In addition to Ryle and Wittgenstein, philosophers with sympathies for behaviorism included Carnap (1932–33), Hempel (1949), and Quine (1960). Quine, for example, took a behaviorist approach to the study of language. Quine claimed that the notion of psychological or mental activity has no place in a scientific account of either the origins or the meaning of speech. To talk in a scientifically disciplined manner about the meaning of an utterance is to talk about stimuli for the utterance, its so-called “stimulus meaning”. Hempel (1949) claimed that “all psychological statements that are meaningful … are translatable into statements that do not involve psychological concepts,” but only concepts for physical behavior (p. 18).

Among psychologists behaviorism was even more popular than among philosophers. In addition to Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, and Watson, the list of behaviorists among psychologists included, among others, E. C. Tolman (1886–1959), C. L. Hull (1884–52), and E. R. Guthrie (1886–1959). Tolman, for example, wrote that “everything important in psychology … can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze” (1938, p. 34).

Behaviorists created journals, organized societies, and founded psychology graduate programs reflective of behaviorism. Behaviorists organized themselves into different types of research clusters, whose differences stemmed from such factors as varying approaches to conditioning and experimentation. Some clusters were named as follows: “the experimental analysis of behavior”, “behavior analysis”, “functional analysis”, and, of course, “radical behaviorism”. These labels sometimes were responsible for the titles of behaviorism’s leading societies and journals, including the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis (SABA), and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (begun in 1958) as well as the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (begun in 1968).

Behaviorism generated a type of therapy, known as behavior therapy (see Rimm and Masters 1974; Erwin 1978). It developed behavior management techniques for autistic children (see Lovaas and Newsom 1976) and token economies for the management of chronic schizophrenics (see Stahl and Leitenberg 1976). It fueled discussions of how best to understand the behavior of nonhuman animals and of the relevance of laboratory study to the natural environmental occurrence of animal behavior (see Schwartz and Lacey 1982).

Behaviorism stumbled upon various critical difficulties with some of its commitments. One difficulty is confusion about the effects of reinforcement on behavior (see Gallistel 1990). In its original sense, a stimulus such as food is a reinforcer only if its presentation increases the frequency of a response in a type of associative conditioning known as operant conditioning. A problem with this definition is that it defines reinforcers as stimuli that change behavior. The presentation of food, however, may have no observable effect on response frequency with respect to food even in cases in which an animal is food deprived or hungry. Rather, response frequency can be associated with an animal’s ability to identify and remember temporal or spatial properties of the circumstances in which a stimulus (say, food) is presented. This and other difficulties prompted changes in behaviorism’s commitments and new directions of research. One alternative direction has been the study of the role of short term memory in contributing to reinforcement effects on the so-called trajectory of behavior (see Killeen 1994).

Another stumbling block, in the case of analytical behaviorism, is the fact that the behavioral sentences that are intended to offer the behavioral paraphrases of mental terms almost always use mental terms themselves (see Chisholm 1957). In the example of my belief that I have a 2pm dental appointment, one must also speak of my desire to arrive at 2pm, otherwise the behavior of arriving at 2pm could not count as believing that I have a 2pm appointment. The term “desire” is a mental term. Critics of analytical behaviorism have charged that we can never escape from using mental terms in the characterization of the meaning of mental terms. This suggests that mental discourse cannot be displaced by behavioral discourse. At least it cannot be displaced term-by-term. Perhaps analytical behaviorists need to paraphrase a whole swarm of mental terms at once so as to recognize the presumption that the attribution of any one such mental term presupposes the application of others (see Rey 1997, p. 154–5).

Why would anyone be a behaviorist? There are three main reasons (see also Zuriff 1985).

The first reason is epistemic or evidential. Warrant or evidence for saying, at least in the third person case, that an animal or person is in a certain mental state, for example, possesses a certain belief, is grounded in behavior, understood as observable behavior. Moreover, the conceptual space or step between the claim that behavior warrants the attribution of belief and the claim that believing consists in behavior itself is a short and in some ways appealing step. If we look, for example, at how people are taught to use mental concepts and terms—terms like “believe”, “desire”, and so on—conditions of use appear inseparably connected with behavioral tendencies in certain circumstances. If mental state attribution bears a special connection with behavior, it is tempting to say that mentality just consists in behavioral tendencies.

The second reason can be expressed as follows: One major difference between mentalistic (mental states in-the-head) and associationist or conditioning accounts of behavior is that mentalistic accounts tend to have a strong nativist bent. This is true even though there may be nothing inherently nativist about mentalistic accounts (see Cowie 1998).

Mentalistic accounts tend to assume, and sometimes even explicitly to embrace (see Fodor 1981), the hypothesis that the mind possesses at birth or innately a set of procedures or internally represented processing rules which are deployed when learning or acquiring new responses. Behaviorism, by contrast, is anti-nativist. Behaviorism, therefore, appeals to theorists who deny that there are innate rules by which organisms learn. To Skinner and Watson organisms learn without being innately or pre-experientially provided with implicit procedures by which to learn. Learning does not consist, at least initially, in rule-governed behavior. Learning is what organisms do in response to stimuli. For a behaviorist an organism learns, as it were, from its successes and mistakes. “Rules,” says Skinner (1984a), “are derived from contingencies, which specify discriminative stimuli, responses, and consequences” (p. 583). (See also Dennett 1978).

Much contemporary work in cognitive science on the set of models known as connectionist or parallel distributed processing (PDP) models seems to share behaviorism’s anti-nativism about learning. PDP model building takes an approach to learning which is response oriented rather than rule-governed and this is because, like behaviorism, it has roots in associationism (see Bechtel 1985; compare Graham 1991 with Maloney 1991). Whether PDP models ultimately are or must be anti-nativist depends upon what counts as native or innate rules (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 1991, pp. 103–105).

The third reason for behaviorism’s appeal, popular at least historically, is related to its disdain for reference to inner mental or mentalistic information processing as explanatory causes of behavior. The disdain is most vigorously exemplified in the work of Skinner. Skinner’s skepticism about explanatory references to mental innerness may be described as follows.

Suppose we try to explain the public behavior of a person by describing how they represent,conceptualize or think about their situation. Suppose they conceive or think of their situation in a certain way, not as bare, as filled with items without attributes, but as things, as trees, as people, as walruses, walls, and wallets. Suppose, we also say, a person never merely interacts with their environment; but rather interacts with their environment as they perceive, see, or represent it. So, for example, thinking of something as a wallet, a person reaches for it. Perceiving something as a walrus, they back away from it. Classifying something as a wall, they don’t bump into it. So understood, behavior is endogenously produced movement, viz. behavior that has its causal origin within the person who thinks of or represents their situation in a certain way.

Skinner would object to such claims. He would object not because he believes that the eye is innocent or that inner or endogenous activity does not occur. He would object because he believes that behavior must be explained in terms that do not themselves presuppose the very thing that is explained. The outside (public) behavior of a person is not accounted for by referring to the inside (inner processing, cognitive activity) behavior of the person (say, his or her classifying or analyzing their environment) if, therein, the behavior of the person ultimately is unexplained. “The objection,” wrote Skinner, “to inner states is not that they do not exist, but that they are not relevant in a functional analysis” (Skinner 1953, p. 35). ‘Not relevant’ means, for Skinner, explanatorily circular or regressive.

Skinner charges that since mental activity is a form of behavior (albeit inner), the only non-regressive, non-circular way to explain behavior is to appeal to something non-behavioral. This non-behavioral something is environmental stimuli and an organism’s interactions with, and reinforcement from, the environment.

So, the third reason for behaviorism’s appeal is that it tries to avoid (what it claims is) circular, regressive explanations of behavior. It aims to refrain from accounting for one type of behavior (overt) in terms of another type of behavior (covert), all the while, in some sense, leaving behavior unexplained.

It should be noted that Skinner’s views about explanation and the purported circularity of explanation by reference to inner processing are both extreme and scientifically contestable, and that many who have self-identified as behaviorists including Guthrie, Tolman, and Hull, or continue to work within the tradition, broadly understood, including Killeen (1987) and Rescorla (1990), take exception to much that Skinner has said about explanatory references to innerness. Also Skinner himself is not always clear about his aversion to innerness. Skinner’s derisive attitude towards explanatory references to mental innerness stems, in part, not just from fears of explanatory circularity but from his conviction that if the language of psychology is permitted to refer to internal processing, this goes some way towards permitting talk of immaterial mental substances, agents endowed with contra-causal free will, and little persons (homunculi) within bodies. Each of these Skinner takes to be incompatible with a scientific worldview (see Skinner 1971; see also Day 1976). Finally, it must be noted that Skinner’s aversion to explanatory references to innerness is not an aversion to inner mental states or processes per se. He readily admits that private thoughts and so on exist. Skinner countenances talk of inner events but only provided that their innerness is treated in the same manner as public behavior or overt responses. An adequate science of behavior, he claims, must describe events taking place within the skin of the organism as part of behavior itself (see Skinner 1976). “So far as I am concerned,” he wrote in 1984 in a special issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences devoted to his work, “whatever happens when we inspect a public stimulus is in every respect similar to what happens when we introspect a private one” (Skinner 1984b, p. 575; compare Graham 1984, pp. 558–9).

Skinner does not have much to say about just how inner (covert, private) behavior (like thinking, classifying, and analyzing) can be described in the same manner as public or overt behavior. But his idea is roughly as follows. Just as we may describe overt behavior or motor movement in terms of concepts like stimulus, response, conditioning, reinforcement, and so on, so we may deploy the very same terms in describing inner or covert behavior. One thought or line of thought may reinforce another thought. An act of analysis may serve as a stimulus for an effort at classification. And so on. Purely ‘mentalistic’ activities may be at least roughly parsed in terms of behavioral concepts — a topic to be revisited later in the entry (in the 7th Section).

Skinner is the only major figure in the history of behaviorism to offer a socio-political world view based on his commitment to behaviorism. Skinner constructed a theory as well as narrative picture in Walden Two (1948) of what an ideal human society would be like if designed according to behaviorist principles (see also Skinner 1971). Skinner’s social worldview illustrates his aversions to free will, to homunculi, and to dualism as well as his positive reasons for claiming that a person’s history of environmental interactions controls his or her behavior.

One possible feature of human behavior which Skinner deliberately rejects is that people freely or creatively make their own environments (see Chomsky 1971, Black 1973). Skinner protests that “it is in the nature of an experimental analysis of human behavior that it should strip away the functions previously assigned to a free or autonomous person and transfer them one by one to the controlling environment” (1971, p. 198).

Critics have raised several objections to the Skinnerian social picture. One of the most persuasive, and certainly one of the most frequent, adverts to Skinner’s vision of the ideal human society. It is a question asked of the fictional founder of Walden Two, Frazier, by the philosopher Castle. It is the question of what is the best social or communal mode of existence for a human being. Frazier’s, and therein Skinner’s, response to this question is both too general and incomplete. Frazier/Skinner praises the values of health, friendship, relaxation, rest, and so forth. However, these values are hardly the detailed basis of a social system.

There is a notorious difficulty in social theory of specifying the appropriate level of detail at which a blueprint for a new and ideal society must be presented (see Arnold 1990, pp. 4–10). Skinner identifies the behavioristic principles and learning incentives that he hopes will reduce systematic injustices in social systems. He also describes a few practices (concerning child rearing and the like) that are intended to contribute to human happiness. However, he offers only the haziest descriptions of the daily lives of Walden Two citizens and no suggestions for how best to resolve disputes about alternative ways of life that are prima facie consistent with behaviorist principles (see Kane 1996, p. 203). He gives little or no serious attention to the crucial general problem of inter-personal conflict resolution and to the role of institutional arrangements in resolving conflicts.

In an essay which appeared in The Behavior Analyst (1985), nearly forty years after the publication of Walden Two, Skinner, in the guise of Frazier, tried to clarify his characterization of ideal human circumstances. He wrote that in the ideal human society “people just naturally do the things they need to do to maintain themselves … and treat each other well, and they just naturally do a hundred other things they enjoy doing because they do not have to do them” (p. 9). However, of course, doing a hundred things humans enjoy doing means only that Walden Two is vaguely defined, not that its culturally instituted habits and the character of its institutions merit emulation.

The incompleteness of Skinner’s description of the ideal human society or life is so widely acknowledged that one might wonder if actual experiments in Walden Two living could lend useful detail to his blueprint. More than one such social experiment has been conducted. Perhaps the most interesting (in part because the community has evolved away from its Skinnerian roots) is the Twin Oaks Community in Virginia in the U.S.A., which can be indirectly explored via the Internet (see Other Internet Resources).

Behaviorism is dismissed by cognitive scientists developing intricate internal information processing models of cognition. Its laboratory routines or experimental regimens are neglected by cognitive ethologists and ecological psychologists convinced that its methods are irrelevant to studying how animals and persons behave in their natural and social environment. Its traditional relative indifference towards neuroscience and deference to environmental contingencies is rejected by neuroscientists sure that direct study of the brain is the only way to understand the truly proximate causes of behavior.

But by no means has behaviorism disappeared. Robust elements of behaviorism survive in both behavior therapy and laboratory-based animal learning theory (of which more below). In the metaphysics of mind, too, behavioristic themes survive in the approach to mind known as Functionalism. Functionalism defines states of mind as states that play causal-functional roles in animals or systems in which they occur. Paul Churchland writes of Functionalism as follows: “The essential or defining feature of any type of mental states is the set of causal relations it bears to … bodily behavior” (1984, p. 36). This functionalist notion is similar to the behaviorist idea that reference to behavior and to stimulus/response relations enters centrally and essentially into any account of what it means for a creature to behave or to be subject, in the scheme of analytical or logical behaviorism, to the attribution of mental states.

Fans of the so-called and now widely discussed Extended Mind Hypothesis (EMH) also share a kinship with behaviorism or at least with Skinner. The defining hypothesis of EMH is that “mental” representation is a matter that spills out from the brain or head into the world and cultural environment (Levy 2007). Representations are things external to the head or which bear special individuating relationships with external devices or forms of cultural activity. Skinner’s misgivings about depicting the power of mental representation as something confined to the head (brain, inner mind) are at least loosely akin to EMH’s shift to depict representationality as environmentally extended.

Elements, however, are elements. Behaviorism is no longer a dominating research program.

Why has the influence of behaviorism declined? The deepest and most complex reason for behaviorism’s decline in influence is its commitment to the thesis that behavior can be explained without reference to non-behavioral and inner mental (cognitive, representational, or interpretative) activity. Behavior, for Skinner, can be explained just by reference to its “functional” (Skinner’s term) relation to or co-variation with the environment and to the animal’s history of environmental interaction. Neurophysiological and neurobiological conditions, for Skinner, sustain or implement these functional or causal relations. But they do not serve as ultimate or independent sources or explanations of behavior. Behavior, Skinner (1953) wrote, cannot be accounted for “while staying wholly inside [an animal]; eventually we must turn to forces operating upon the organism from without.” “Unless there is a weak spot in our causal chain so that the second [neurological] link is not lawfully determined by the first [environmental stimuli], or the third [behavior] by the second, the first and third links must be lawfully related.” (p. 35) “Valid information about the second link may throw light on this relationship but can in no way alter it.” (ibid.) It is “external variables of which behavior is a function.” (ibid.)

Skinner was no triumphalist about neuroscience. Neuroscience, for him, more or less just identifies organismic physical processes that underlie animal/environment interactions. Therein, it rides evidential or epistemic piggyback on radical behaviorism’s prior description of those interactions. “The organism”, he says, “is not empty, and it cannot adequately be treated simply as a black box” (1976, p. 233). “Something is done today which affects the behavior of the organism tomorrow” (p. 233). Neuroscience describes inside-the-box mechanisms that permit today’s reinforcing stimulus to affect tomorrow’s behavior. The neural box is not empty, but it is unable, except in cases of malfunction or breakdown, to disengage the animal from past patterns of behavior that have been reinforced. It cannot exercise independent or non-environmentally countervailing authority over behavior.

For many critics of behaviorism it seems obvious that, at a minimum, the occurrence and character of behavior (especially human behavior) does not depend primarily upon an individual’s reinforcement history, although that is a factor, but on the fact that the environment or learning history is represented by an individual and how (the manner in which) it is represented. The fact that the environment is represented by me constrains or informs the functional or causal relations that hold between my behavior and the environment and may, from an anti-behaviorist perspective, partially disengage my behavior from its conditioning or reinforcement history. No matter, for example, how tirelessly and repeatedly I have been reinforced for pointing to or eating ice cream, such a history is impotent if I just don’t see a potential stimulus as ice cream or represent it to myself as ice cream or if I desire to hide the fact that something is ice cream from others. My conditioning history, narrowly understood as unrepresented by me, is behaviorally less important than the environment or my learning history as represented or interpreted by me.

Similarly, for many critics of behaviorism, if representationality comes between environment and behavior, this implies that Skinner is too restrictive or limited in his attitude towards the role of brain mechanisms in producing or controlling behavior. The brain is no mere passive memory bank of behavior/environment interactions (see Roediger and Goff 1998). The central nervous system, which otherwise sustains my reinforcement history, contains systems or neurocomputational sub-systems that implement or encode whatever representational content or meaning the environment has for me. It is also an active interpretation machine or semantic engine, often critically performing environmentally untethered and behavior controlling tasks. Such talk of representation or interpretation, however, is a perspective from which behaviorism—most certainly in Skinner— wishes and tries to depart.

One defining aspiration of traditional behaviorism is that it tried to free psychology from having to theorize about how animals and persons represent (internally, in the head) their environment. This effort at freedom was important, historically, because it seemed that behavior/environment connections are a lot clearer and more manageable experimentally than internal representations. Unfortunately, for behaviorism, it’s hard to imagine a more restrictive rule for psychology than one which prohibits hypotheses about representational storage and processing. Stephen Stich, for example, complains against Skinner that “we now have an enormous collection of experimental data which, it would seem, simply cannot be made sense of unless we postulate something like” information processing mechanisms in the heads of organisms (1998, p. 649).

A second reason for rejecting behaviorism is that some features of mentality—some elements, in particular, of the conscious mental life of persons—have characteristic ‘qualia’ or presentationally immediate or phenomenal qualities. To be in pain, for example, is not merely to produce appropriate pain behavior under the right environmental circumstances, but it is to experience a ‘like-thisness’ to the pain (as something dull or sharp, perhaps). A purely behaviorist creature, a ‘zombie’, as it were, may engage in pain behavior, including beneath the skin pain responses, yet completely lack whatever is qualitatively distinctive of and proper to pain (its painfulness). (See also Graham 1998, pp. 47–51 and Graham and Horgan 2000. On the scope of the phenomenal in human mentality, see Graham, Horgan, and Tienson 2009).

The philosopher-psychologist U. T. Place, although otherwise sympathetic to the application of behaviorist ideas to matters of mind, argued that phenomenal qualia cannot be analyzed in behaviorist terms. He claimed that qualia are neither behavior nor dispositions to behave. “They make themselves felt,” he said, “from the very moment that the experience of whose qualia they are” comes into existence (2000, p. 191; reprinted in Graham and Valentine 2004). They are instantaneous features of processes or events rather than dispositions manifested over time. Qualitative mental events (such as sensations, perceptual experiences, and so on), for Place, undergird dispositions to behave rather than count as dispositions. Indeed, it is tempting to postulate that the qualitative aspects of mentality affect non-qualitative elements of internal processing, and that they, for example, contribute to arousal, attention, and receptivity to associative conditioning.

The third reason for rejecting behaviorism is connected with Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has been one of behaviorism’s most successful and damaging critics. In a review of Skinner’s book on verbal behavior (see above), Chomsky (1959) charged that behaviorist models of language learning cannot explain various facts about language acquisition, such as the rapid acquisition of language by young children, which is sometimes referred to as the phenomenon of “lexical explosion.” A child’s linguistic abilities appear to be radically underdetermined by the evidence of verbal behavior offered to the child in the short period in which he or she expresses those abilities. By the age of four or five (normal) children have an almost limitless capacity to understand and produce sentences which they have never heard before. Chomsky also argued that it seems plainly untrue that language learning depends on the application of detailed reinforcement. A child does not, as an English speaker in the presence of a house, utter “house” repeatedly in the presence of reinforcing elders. Language as such seems to be learned without, in a sense, being explicitly taught or taught in detail, and behaviorism doesn’t offer an account of how this could be so. Chomsky’s own speculations about the psychological realities underlying language development include the hypothesis that the rules or principles underlying linguistic behavior are abstract (applying to all human languages) and innate (part of our native psychological endowment as human beings). When put to the test of uttering a grammatical sentence, a person, for Chomsky, has a virtually infinite number of possible responses available, and the only way in which to understand this virtually infinite generative capacity is to suppose that a person possesses a powerful and abstract innate grammar (underlying whatever competence he or she may have in one or more particular natural languages).

The problem to which Chomsky refers, which is the problem of behavioral competence and thus performance outstripping individual learning histories, goes beyond merely the issue of linguistic behavior in young children. It appears to be a fundamental fact about human beings that our behavior and behavioral capacities often surpass the limitations of individual reinforcement histories. Our history of reinforcement is often too impoverished to determine uniquely what we do or how we do it. Much learning, therefore, seems to require pre-existing or innate representational structures or principled constraints within which learning occurs. (See also Brewer 1974, but compare with Bates et al. 1998 and Cowie 1998).

Is the case against behaviorism definitive? Decisive? Paul Meehl noted decades ago that theories in psychology seem to disappear not under the force of decisive refutation but rather because researchers lose interest in their theoretical orientations (Meehl 1978). One implication of Meehl’s thesis is that a once popular “Ism”, not having been decisively refuted, may restore some of its former prominence if it mutates or transforms itself so as to incorporate responses to criticisms. What may this mean for behaviorism? It may mean that some version of the doctrine might rebound.

Skinner claimed that neural activities subserve or underlie behavior/environment relations and that the organism’s contribution to these relations does not reduce to neurophysiological properties. But this does not mean that behaviorism cannot gain useful alliance with neuroscience. Reference to brain structures (neurobiology, neurochemistry, and so on) may help in explaining behavior even if such references do not ultimately displace reference to environmental contingencies in a behaviorist account.

Such is a lesson of animal modeling in which behaviorist themes still enjoy currency. Animal models of addiction, habit and instrumental learning are particularly noteworthy because they bring behavioral research into closer contact than did traditional psychological behaviorism with research on the brain mechanisms underlying reinforcement, especially positive reinforcement (West 2006, pp. 91–108). One result of this contact is the discovery that sensitized neural systems responsible for heightened reinforcement value or strength can be dissociated from the hedonic utility or pleasurable quality of reinforcement (see Robinson and Berridge 2003). The power of a stimulus to reinforce behavior may be independent of whether it is a source or cause of pleasure. Focus on brain mechanisms underlying reinforcement also forms the centerpiece of one of the most active research programs in current neuroscience, so-called neuroeconomics, which weds study of the brain’s reward systems with models of valuation and economic decision making (see Montague and Berns 2002; Nestler and Malenka 2004; Ross et al 2008). Behaviorism may do well to purchase some of neuroeconomic’s conceptual currency, especially since some advocates of the program see themselves as behaviorists in spirit if not stereotypical letter and honor the work of a number of theorists in the behavioristic tradition of the experimental analysis of behavior, such as George Ainslie, Richard Herrnstein and Howard Rachlin, on how patterns of behavior relate to patterns of reward or reinforcement (see Ross et al. 2008, especially p. 10). One important assumption in neuroeconomics is that full explanations of organism/environmental interactions will combine facts about such things as reinforcement schedules with appeal to neurocomputational modeling and to the neurochemistry and neurobiology of reinforcement.

Other potential sources of utility or renewal? The continued popularity of so-called economic behavior therapy is noteworthy because it offers a potential domain of testing application for the regimen of behaviorism. Early versions of behavior therapy sought to apply restricted results from Skinnerian or Pavlovian conditioning paradigms to human behavior problems. No minds should be spoken of; just behavior—stimuli, responses, and reinforcement. Therapy shapes behavior not thought. Successive generations of behavior therapy relax those conceptual restrictions. Advocates refer to themselves as cognitive behavior therapists (e.g. Mahoney 1974; Meichenbaum 1977). Clients’ behavior problems are described by referring to their beliefs, desires, intentions, memories, and so on. Even the language of self-reflexive thought and belief (so-called ‘meta-cognition’) figures in some accounts of behavioral difficulties and interventions (Wells 2000). One goal of such language is to encourage clients to monitor and self-reinforce their own behavior. Self-reinforcement is an essential feature of behavioral self-control (Rachlin 2000; Ainslie 2001). The monitoring process may include a number of checking and error detection processes and correction of behavior in a client’s current life circumstances (West 2006).

It may be wondered whether cognitive behavior therapy is aptly consistent with behaviorist doctrine. Much depends on how beliefs and desires are understood. If beliefs and desires are understood as states that somehow spill out into the environment and are individuated in terms of their non-mentalistic, behavior-like role in organism/environment interactions, this would be consistent with traditional behaviorist doctrine. It would reflect the principle of logical or analytical behaviorism that if mental terms are to be used in the description and explanation of behavior, they must be defined or paraphrased in non-mental behavioral terms. Prospects for belief/desire individuation in non-mental, environmentally externalist terms may look doubtful however, especially in cases of conscious attitudes(see Horgan, Tienson and Graham 2006). But the topic of the forms and limits of behavior therapy and the range of its plausible application is open for continued further exploration.

In 1977 Willard Day, a behavioral psychologist and founding editor of the journal Behaviorism (later known as Behavior and Philosophy), published Skinner’s “Why I am not a cognitive psychologist” (Skinner 1977). Skinner began the paper by stating that “the variables of which human behavior is a function lie in the environment” (p. 1). Skinner ended by remarking that “cognitive constructs give … a misleading account of what” is inside a human being (p. 10)

More than a decade earlier, in 1966 Carl Hempel had announced his defection from behaviorism:

In order to characterize … behavioral patterns, propensities, or capacities … we need not only a suitable behavioristic vocabulary, but psychological terms as well. (p. 110)

Hempel had come to believe that it is a mistake to imagine that human behavior can be understood exclusively in non-mental, behavioristic terms.

Contemporary psychology and philosophy largely share Hempel’s conviction that the explanation of behavior cannot omit invoking a creature’s representation of its world. Psychology must use psychological terms. Behavior without cognition is blind. Psychological theorizing without reference to internal cognitive processing is explanatorily impaired. To say this, of course, is not to a priori preclude that behaviorism will recover some of its prominence. Just how to conceive of cognitive processing (even where to locate it) remains a heated subject of debate (see Melser 2004; see also Levy 2007, pp. 29–64). But if behaviorism is to recover some of its prominence, this recovery may require a reformulation of its doctrines that is attune to developments (like that of neuroeconomics) in neuroscience as well as in novel therapeutic orientations.

Skinner’s vantage point on or special contribution to behaviorism mates the science of behavior with the language of organism/environment interactions. But we humans don’t just run and mate and walk and eat in this or that environment. We think, classify, analyze, imagine, and theorize. In addition to our outer behavior, we have highly complex inner lives, wherein we are active, often imaginatively, in our heads, all the while often remaining as stuck as posts, as still as stones. Call our inner life ‘behavior’ if one wants, but this piece of linguistic stipulation does not mean that the probability or occurrence of inner events is shaped by the same environmental contingencies as overt behavior or bodily movements. It does not mean that understanding a sentence or composing an entry for this encyclopedia consist of the same general modes of discriminatory responses as learning how to move one’s body in pursuit of a food source. How the Inner Representational World of mind maps into the Country of Behaviorism remains the “ism’s” still incompletely charted territory.

• Ainslie, G., 2001. Breakdown of Will , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Arnold, N. S., 1990. Marx’s Radical Critique of Capitalist Society , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bates, E., Ellman, J., Johnson, M., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Parisi, D., and Plunkett, K., 1998. “Innateness and Emergentism”, in Bechtel and Graham (eds.) 1998.
• Bechtel, W., 1985. “Contemporary Connectionism: Are the New Parallel Distributed Processing Models Cognitive or Associationist?”, Behaviorism , 13: 53–61. (See Skinner 1977.)
• Bechtel, W., and Abrahamsen, A., 1991. Connectionism and the Mind , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Bechtel, W., and G. Graham (eds.), 1998, A Companion to Cognitive Science , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Bechtel, W., Abrahamsen, A., and Graham, G., 1998. “The Life of Cognitive Science”, in W. Bechtel and G. Graham (eds.) 1998.
• Black, M., 1973. “Some Aversive Responses to a Would-be Reinforcer”, in H. Wheeler (ed.), Beyond the Punitive Society , San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, pp. 125–34.
• Brewer, W. F., 1974. “There is No Convincing Evidence for Operant or Classical Conditioning in Adult Humans”, In W. Weiner and D. Palermo (eds.), Cognition and Symbolic Processes , Hillsdale, N. J.: Earlbaum.
• Carnap, R., 1932/33. “Psychology in Physical Language,” Erkenntnis , 3: 107–42.
• Chisholm, R. M., 1957. Perceiving , Ithaca: Cornell.
• Chomsky, N., 1959. “Review of Verbal Behavior,” Language , 35: 26–58.
• –––, 1971. “The Case Against B. F. Skinner,” New York Review of Books , 30: 18–24.
• –––, 1975. Reflections on Language , New York: Pantheon Books.
• Churchland, P., 1984. Matter and Consciousness , Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press/Bradford Books.
• Cowie, F., 1998. What’s Within: Nativism Reconsidered , Oxford: Oxford.
• Day, W., 1976. “The Case for Behaviorism,” in M. Marx and F. Goodson (eds.) Theories in Contemporary Psychology , New York: Macmillan, pp. 534–45.
• Dennett, D., 1978. “Why the Law of Effect Will Not Go Away”, in D. Dennett (ed.) Brainstorms , Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press/Bradford Books, pp. 71–89.
• –––, 1991. Consciousness Explained , Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
• –––, 2005. Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Erwin, E., 1978. Behavior Therapy: Scientific, Philosophical, and Moral Foundations , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Fisher, Tyrus, 2011, “Quine’s Behaviorism and Linguistic Meaning: Why Quine’s Behaviorism Is Not Illicit”, Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel , 39(1): 51–59.
• Fodor, J., 1981. “The Present Status of the Innateness Controversy”, in J. Fodor (ed.), Representations , Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press/Bradford Books, pp. 257–316.
• Føllesdal, Dagfinn, 2011, “Developments in Quine’s Behaviorism”, American Philosophical Quarterly , 48(3): 273–282.
• Gallistel, C. R., 1990. The Organization of Learning , Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
• Graham, G., 1984. “Sensation and Classification”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 7: 558–559.
• –––, 1991. “Connectionism in Pavlovian Harness”, in T. Horgan and J. Tienson (eds.), Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind , Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 143–66.
• –––, 1998. Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction , 2nd edition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Graham, G. and Horgan, T., 2000. “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary”, Philosophical Studies , 99: 59–87.
• Graham, G, and Valentine, E., 2004. Identifying the Mind: Selected Papers of U. T. Place , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Graham, G., Horgan, T., and Tienson, J., 2009. “Phenomenology, Intentionality, and the Unity of Mind”, in A. Beckermann and B. McLaughlin (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind , Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 512–37.
• Hempel, C., 1949. “The Logical Analysis of Psychology”, in H. Feigl and W. Sellars (eds.), Readings in Philosophical Analysis , New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, pp. 373–84.
• –––, 1966. Philosophy of Natural Science , Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.
• Honig, W. and J. G. Fetterman (eds), 1992. Cognitive Aspects of Stimulus Control , Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum.
• Horgan, T., Tienson, J. and Graham, G., 2006. “Internal-world Skepticism and the Self-Presentational Nature of Phenomenal Consciousness”, in U. Kriegel and K. Williford (eds.), Self-Representational Approaches to Consciousness , Cambridge, MA: MIT, pp. 41–61.
• Kane, R., 1996. The Significance of Free Will , Oxford: Oxford.
• Killeen, P., 1987. “Emergent Behaviorism”, in S. Modgil and C. Modgil (eds.), B. F. Skinner: Consensus and Controversy , New York: Falmer, pp. 219–34.
• –––, 1994. “Mathematical Principles of Reinforcement,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 17: 105–172.
• Leitenberg, H. (ed.), 1976, Handbook of Behavior Modification and Behavior Therapy , Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.
• Levy, N., 2007. Neuroethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lovaas, O. I. and Newsom, C. D., 1976. “Behavior Modification with Psychotic Children”, in H. Leitenberg (ed.) 1976, pp. 303–360.
• O’Donnell, J., 1985. The Origins of Behaviorism: American Psychology , 1870–1920. New York: NYU Press.
• Mackenzie, B., 1977. Behaviorism and the Limits of Scientific Method , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Mahoney, M. J., 1974. Cognition and Behavior Modification , Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
• Maloney, C., 1991. “Connectionism and Conditioning”, In T. Horgan and J. Tienson (eds.), Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind , Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 167–95.
• Manning, Richard N., 2014, “Sellarsian Behaviorism, Davidsonian Interpretivism, and First Person Authority”, Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel , 42(2): 433–456.
• Meehl, P. E., 1978. “Theoretical Risks and Tabular Asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and The Slow Progress of Soft Psychology”, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology , 46: 806–34.
• Meichenbaum, D., 1977. Cognitive-Behavior Modification , New York: Plenum.
• Melser, D., 2004. The Act of Thinking , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Montague, R. and Berns, G., 2002. “Neural Economics and the Biological Substrates of Valuation”, Neuron , 36: 265–284.
• Nestler, E. J. and Malenka, R. C., 2004. “The Addicted Brain”, Scientific American , 290: 78–85.
• Place, U. T., 2000. “The Causal Potency of Qualia: Its Nature and Its Source”, Brain and Mind , 1: 183–192; reprinted in Graham and Valentine 2004.
• Quine, W., 1960. Word and Object , Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
• Rachlin, H., 2000. The Science of Self-Control , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Rey, G., 1997. Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: A Contentiously Classical Approach , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Rescorla, R. A., 1990. “The Role of Information about the Response-Outcome Relationship in Instrumental Discrimination Learning,” Journal of Experimental Psychology : Animal Behavior Processes, 16: 262–70.
• Rimm, D. C. and Masters, J. C., 1974. Behavior Therapy: Techniques and Empirical Findings , New York: Academic Press.
• Robinson, T. E. and Berridge, K. C., 2003. “Addiction” Annual Review of Psychology , 54: 25–53.
• Roediger, H. and Goff, L., 1998. “Memory”, in Bechtel and Graham (eds.) 1998.
• Ross, D., Sharp, C., Vuchinich, R., Spurrett, D., 2008. Midbrain Mutiny: The Picoeconomics and Neuroeconomics of Disordered Gambling , Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Ryle, G., 1949. The Concept of Mind , London: Hutchinson.
• Schwartz, B. and Lacey, H., 1982. Behaviorism, Science, and Human Nature , New York: Norton.
• Sellars, W., 1963. “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, in Science, Perception, and Reality , New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 1–40.
• Skinner, B. F., 1948. Walden Two , New York: Macmillan.
• –––, 1953. Science and Human Behavior , New York: Macmillan.
• –––, 1971. Beyond Freedom and Dignity , New York: Knopf.
• –––, 1974. About Behaviorism , New York: Vintage.
• –––, 1977. “Why I am not a Cognitive Psychologist”, Behaviorism , 5: 1–10. (This journal is now known as Behavior and Philosophy.)
• –––, 1984a. Abstract for “An Operant Analysis of Problem Solving”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 7: 583.
• –––, 1984b. “Coming to Terms with Private Events”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 7: 573–581.
• –––, 1985. “News from Nowhere, 1984”, The Behavior Analyst , 8: 5–14.
• Smith, L., 1986. Behaviorism and Logical Positivism: A Reassessment of Their Alliance , Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Stahl, J. R. and Leitenberg, H., 1976. “Behavioral treatment of the chronic mental hospital patient”, in Leitenberg (ed.) 1976.
• Stich, S., 1984. “Is Behaviorism Vacuous?,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 7: 647–649.
• Tolman, E. C., 1938, “The Determiners of Behavior at a Choice Point,” Psychological Review , 45: 1–41.
• Tripodi, Paolo, 2011, “Revisiting the Myth of Jones: Sellars and Behaviorism”, History of Philosophy Quarterly , 28(1): 85–105.
• Watson, J., 1913. “Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It,” Psychological Review , 20: 158–77.
• –––, 1930. Behaviorism , Norton: New York.
• Wells, A., 2000. Emotional Disorders and Metacognition: Innovative Cognitive Therapy , Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
• West, R., 2006. Theory of Addiction , Blackwell: Oxford.
• Wittgenstein, L., 1953/1968. Philosophical Investigations , trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Zuriff, G., 1985. Behaviorism: A Conceptual Reconstruction , New York: Columbia University Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Association for Behavior Analysis International
• Twin Oaks Community, Virginia

cognitive science | connectionism | functionalism | innateness: and contemporary theories of cognition | qualia | zombies

Copyright © 2023 by George Graham < ggrhm @ yahoo . com >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Behaviorism

Learning Theory

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Behaviorism is a psychological school of thought that seeks to identify observable, measurable laws that explain human (and animal) behavior. Rather than looking inward to incorporate the subject’s thoughts and feelings, classical behaviorism focused on observable behavioral outputs, presuming that each behavior was carried out in response to environmental stimuli or a result of the individual’s past conditioning—which may have included consequences, such as rewards or punishments. What’s more, proponents argued that any task or behavior could be modified with the right conditioning, regardless of individual traits and thinking patterns.

Behaviorism was most dominant in the first half of the twentieth century. Though the field did evolve beyond its early hyperfocus on external behavior, it is no longer widely cited amongst clinicians or academics because modern psychology tends to privilege the inner landscape of emotions and thought. Still, behavioral therapy techniques are used to help with developing new skills, connecting the steps required to complete a task, and rewarding desired behavior, particularly in the areas of developmental delays and the modification of problematic behaviors. The theory of behaviorism laid the groundwork for understanding how we learn, and has had a durable influence on everything from animal training to parenting techniques to teaching standards.

• The Basics of Behaviorism
• Why People Like Behaviorist Approaches to the Mind
• The Criticisms of Behaviorism

Behaviorism emerged in the early 1900s, largely in response to other popular schools of thought at the time—including Freudian psychology, which emphasized the importance of unconscious thoughts and urges. Early behaviorists aimed to transform psychology into a more objective scientific discipline that, like biology or chemistry, focused on measurable, observable phenomenon, rather than the unobservable internal phenomena that Freud and his contemporaries prioritized. Classical behaviorists did not deny that humans have thoughts and emotions; rather, they argued that because such internal cognitions could not be measured or documented, they were not relevant for the study of human behavior. Though such theories have been largely discounted, some elements of behaviorism—particularly those related to radical behaviorism, a theory promoted by noted psychologist B.F. Skinner—remain in use today

An American psychologist named John B. Watson, born in 1898, is considered the “father” of behaviorism. Watson primarily studied animal behavior and child development and was (in)famous for conducting the “Little Albert” experiment, now widely seen as unethical. Though his work is still taught to psychology students, some argue that his legacy should be rethought .

Classical conditioning is a form of learning in which the repeated pairing of two stimuli will cause an organism to respond to one stimulus as if the other was present, even when it isn’t. A famous example of classical conditioning is an experiment conducted by Ivan Pavlov, who observed that dogs could be made to salivate in response to unrelated auditory or visual stimuli. In one version of the experiment, food—which itself caused the dogs to salivate—was repeatedly paired with a whistling sound. After being conditioned, the dogs would salivate at the mere sound of the whistle—even if food never arrived.

Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which an organism modifies its behavior in response to repeated rewards or punishments. A child who touches a hot stove, for example, will be burned; that negative consequence will likely lead them to avoid touching hot stoves in the future.

“Methodological behaviorism,” credited to John Watson, argues that because only external behaviors can be observed, they are all that should be measured and studied. “Radical behaviorism,” devised by B.F. Skinner, argues that thoughts and feelings represent “inner behavior” and can be studied and modified, just like external behaviors. 

Behaviorism does not suggest that negative consequences necessarily promote desired behavior—rather, they teach the organism to avoid undesired behavior. Spanking , for example, is a common example of negative consequences being used to manage behavior—a child who misbehaves is punished, and (in theory) avoids the bad behavior in the future. However, the child has not learned a positive replacement behavior, and the punished behavior may reappear once the punitive consequences (i.e. spanking) are stopped.

The “Little Albert” experiment was an early-20th-century behaviorist study in which an infant (dubbed “Albert”) was conditioned to fear certain animals and objects—such as a rat, a white rabbit, and a Santa Claus mask—because each was paired with a loud, frightening sound. The experiment is now considered unethical because the researchers did not attempt to “decondition” the infant afterward, potentially leaving him with lasting fears of harmless objects; some experts also speculate that “Albert’s” mother was coerced into participating. Though several historians have claimed to have discovered the identity of “Albert,” the child’s true identity—and the aftereffects of the study—remain debated.

Behaviorist principles are sometimes used today to treat mental health challenges, such as phobias or PTSD ; exposure therapy , for example, aims to weaken conditioned responses to certain feared stimuli. Applied behavior analysis (ABA), a therapy used to treat autism, is based on behaviorist principles. Behaviorism also shows up in organizational psychology , particularly in the use of rewards and punishments to modify employee behavior. 

One reason behaviorism rose to prominence in the 1920s is that it implies human behavior is predictable. People often expect, or hope, that others will behave in a predictable fashion, even if that isn’t always the case. On a social level, behavioral predictability builds confidence and trust—and behaviors and attitudes that deviate too far from the established norm or that are erratic and unpredictable are often considered unacceptable. Thus, the idea that one can predict how another person will behave or elicit a standard response using operant conditioning was enticing to generations of psychologists. And though behaviorism is no longer a dominant school of thought in psychology, it hasn’t been entirely discounted—many modern approaches incorporate behaviorist elements with some success.

Many modern therapies, such as behavior therapy or exposure therapy, rely in part on behaviorist techniques. Behavior therapy, for example, makes use of positive and negative consequences (such as praise or the loss of privileges) to modify a child’s behavior; such therapy has been shown to be effective for developmental disorders such as ADHD .

Because behaviorism suggests that learning happens primarily via conditioning, behavioral approaches to teaching make use of rewards and punishments in order to reinforce desired concepts and behaviors. Such techniques may prove useful for simple behaviors or learning rooted in repetition; however, it is not thought to be effective in helping students master more complex concepts or engage in critical thinking. 

The principles of reinforcement can be used in interpersonal relationships; indeed, parents very often use the promise of a reward or the threat of a punishment to change their child’s behavior. Romantic partners can also make use of reinforcement to modify each other’s behavior—for example, “rewarding” a partner with affection when they complete a needed chore. Evidence suggests, however, that such “conditional regard” can backfire in romantic relationships .

Behaviorism is no longer as dominant as it once was, and many psychologists today discount most aspects of both classical behaviorism and radical behaviorism. While most modern therapeutic approaches aim to change behavior to some extent, they typically do so by targeting thoughts and emotions, rather than focusing primarily on rewards and punishment. There are exceptions to this—such as in the treatment of autism or other developmental disorders—but even these are not without their critics. Indeed, some psychologists argue that using behaviorist approaches to treat developmental disorders is both ineffective and potentially harmful.

Behaviorism began to decline in popularity when cognitive psychology, which prioritizes the study of internal mental processes such as attention and memory , started to gain steam in the 1960s. Psychologists of the time were frustrated by the limits of behaviorism and felt that it was unable to truly explain the complex realities of human behavior. An influential critique by linguist Noam Chomsky is credited with dismantling much of behaviorism’s influence.

Among the most common criticisms of behaviorism are that it is reductionist and that it ignores the complexity of human thought and emotion , as well as the possibility of free will . Some modern applications of behaviorism—most notably applied behavior analysis—have been criticized for modifying behavior at the expense of personal agency; some have suggested that the use of behaviorist techniques to treat autism , in particular, can be harmful.

ABA remains a popular approach to treating autism. Some autism advocates, however, argue that ABA uses punishment and/or negative reinforcement to force autistic individuals to behave in neurotypical ways, even when it does not benefit them. They also argue that it  does not address the underlying reasons for autistic behaviors —using reinforcement to get an autistic person to stop hand-flapping, for example, does not target his motivation for doing so in the first place, and thus leaves him with an unmet internal need. 

Your performance is more than cognitive and physical preparation. Your mental game—managing your self-talk and emotions—is just as important. Here's why.

Human existence comprises interrelated layers that make up our being and carry us throughout life.

Understanding links between social media and mental health conditions is not straightforward and requires an understanding of what mental health diagnoses involve.

Personal Perspective: Have you ever felt that changes in your workplace have accelerated to the point where it becomes almost impossible to do your job?

Science shows that our biology is built to learn, grow, and adapt. To hold our beliefs in a healthy way, we can train ourselves to stay open, connected, and humble.

Good therapists are acutely attuned to their patients' reactions to what happens in therapy, and they explore those reactions together to keep the relationship on track.

How consequences shape our sense of fairness and justice in unexpected ways.

Here's how overworking negatively impacts your life and how to break free of this "respectable" bad habit.

When we start aligning our head, body, and heart towards the greatest good for all through self-stewardship, we claim our right to be a whole person.

Autstic overwhelm has traditionally been labeled with the word "meltdown." Would "mindstorm" be a clearer, more helpful term for the phenomenon?

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Teletherapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Best Family Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2023 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

What Is Behaviorism?

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Classical Conditioning

Operant conditioning, frequently asked questions.

Behaviorism is a theory of learning based on the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning, and conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment . Behaviorists believe that our actions are shaped by environmental stimuli.

In simple terms, according to this school of thought, also known as behavioral psychology, behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner regardless of internal mental states. Behavioral theory also says that only observable behavior should be studied, as cognition , emotions , and mood are far too subjective.

Strict behaviorists believe that any person—regardless of genetic background, personality traits , and internal thoughts— can be trained to perform any task, within the limits of their physical capabilities. It only requires the right conditioning.

Verywell / Jiaqi Zhou

History of Behaviorism

Behaviorism was formally established with the 1913 publication of John B. Watson 's classic paper, "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." It is best summed up by the following quote from Watson, who is often considered the father of behaviorism:

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors."

Simply put, strict behaviorists believe that all behaviors are the result of experience. Any person, regardless of their background, can be trained to act in a particular manner given the right conditioning.

From about 1920 through the mid-1950s, behaviorism became the dominant school of thought in psychology . Some suggest that the popularity of behavioral psychology grew out of the desire to establish psychology as an objective and measurable science.

During that time, researchers were interested in creating theories that could be clearly described and empirically measured, but also used to make contributions that might have an influence on the fabric of everyday human lives.

Types of Behaviorism

There are two main types of behaviorism used to describe how behavior is formed.

Methodological Behaviorism

Methodological behaviorism states that observable behavior should be studied scientifically and that mental states and cognitive processes don't add to the understanding of behavior. Methodological behaviorism aligns with Watson's ideologies and approach.

Radical Behaviorism

Radical behaviorism is rooted in the theory that behavior can be understood by looking at one's past and present environment and the reinforcements within it, thereby influencing behavior either positively or negatively. This behavioral approach was created by the psychologist B.F. Skinner .

Classical conditioning is a technique frequently used in behavioral training in which a neutral stimulus is paired with a naturally occurring stimulus. Eventually, the neutral stimulus comes to evoke the same response as the naturally occurring stimulus, even without the naturally occurring stimulus presenting itself.

Throughout the course of three distinct phases of classical conditioning, the associated stimulus becomes known as the conditioned stimulus and the learned behavior is known as the conditioned response .

Learning Through Association

The classical conditioning process works by developing an association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus.

In physiologist Ivan Pavlov 's classic experiments, dogs associated the presentation of food (something that naturally and automatically triggers a salivation response) at first with the sound of a bell, then with the sight of a lab assistant's white coat. Eventually, the lab coat alone elicited a salivation response from the dogs.

Factors That Impact Conditioning

During the first part of the classical conditioning process, known as acquisition , a response is established and strengthened. Factors such as the prominence of the stimuli and the timing of the presentation can play an important role in how quickly an association is formed.

When an association disappears, this is known as extinction . It causes the behavior to weaken gradually or vanish. Factors such as the strength of the original response can play a role in how quickly extinction occurs. The longer a response has been conditioned, for example, the longer it may take for it to become extinct.

Operant conditioning, sometimes referred to as instrumental conditioning, is a method of learning that occurs through reinforcement and punishment . Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior.

This behavioral approach says that when a desirable result follows an action, the behavior becomes more likely to happen again in the future. Conversely, responses followed by adverse outcomes become less likely to reoccur.

Consequences Affect Learning

Behaviorist B.F. Skinner described operant conditioning as the process in which learning can occur through reinforcement and punishment. More specifically: By forming an association between a certain behavior and the consequences of that behavior, you learn.

For example, if a parent rewards their child with praise every time they pick up their toys, the desired behavior is consistently reinforced and the child will become more likely to clean up messes.

Timing Plays a Role

The process of operant conditioning seems fairly straightforward—simply observe a behavior, then offer a reward or punishment. However, Skinner discovered that the timing of these rewards and punishments has an important influence on how quickly a new behavior is acquired and the strength of the corresponding response.

This makes reinforcement schedules important in operant conditioning. These can involve either continuous or partial reinforcement.

• Continuous reinforcement involves rewarding every single instance of a behavior. It is often used at the beginning of the operant conditioning process. Then, as the behavior is learned, the schedule might switch to one of partial reinforcement.
• Partial reinforcement involves offering a reward after a number of responses or after a period of time has elapsed. Sometimes, partial reinforcement occurs on a consistent or fixed schedule. In other instances, a variable and unpredictable number of responses or amount of time must occur before the reinforcement is delivered.

Uses for Behaviorism

The behaviorist perspective has a few different uses, including some related to education and mental health.

Behaviorism can be used to help students learn, such as by influencing lesson design. For instance, some teachers use consistent encouragement to help students learn (operant conditioning) while others focus more on creating a stimulating environment to increase engagement (classical conditioning).

One of the greatest strengths of behavioral psychology is the ability to clearly observe and measure behaviors. Because behaviorism is based on observable behaviors, it is often easier to quantify and collect data when conducting research.

Mental Health

Behavioral therapy was born from behaviorism and originally used in the treatment of autism and schizophrenia. This type of therapy involves helping people change problematic thoughts and behaviors, thereby improving mental health.

Effective therapeutic techniques such as intensive behavioral intervention, behavior analysis, token economies, and discrete trial training are all rooted in behaviorism. These approaches are often very useful in changing maladaptive or harmful behaviors in both children and adults.

Impact of Behaviorism

Several thinkers influenced behavioral psychology. Among these are Edward Thorndike , a pioneering psychologist who described the law of effect, and Clark Hull , who proposed the drive theory of learning.

There are a number of therapeutic techniques rooted in behavioral psychology. Though behavioral psychology assumed more of a background position after 1950, its principles still remain important.

Even today, behavior analysis is often used as a therapeutic technique to help children with autism and developmental delays acquire new skills. It frequently involves processes such as shaping (rewarding closer approximations to the desired behavior) and chaining (breaking a task down into smaller parts, then teaching and chaining the subsequent steps together).

Other behavioral therapy techniques include aversion therapy , systematic desensitization , token economies, behavior modeling , and contingency management.

Criticisms of Behaviorism

Many critics argue that behaviorism is a one-dimensional approach to understanding human behavior. They suggest that behavioral theories do not account for free will or internal influences such as moods, thoughts, and feelings.

Freud, for example, felt that behaviorism failed by not accounting for the unconscious mind's thoughts, feelings, and desires, which influence people's actions. Other thinkers, such as Carl Rogers and other humanistic psychologists , believed that behaviorism was too rigid and limited, failing to take into consideration personal agency.

More recently, biological psychology has emphasized the role the brain and genetics play in determining and influencing human actions. The cognitive approach to psychology focuses on mental processes such as thinking, decision-making, language, and problem-solving. In both cases, behaviorism neglects these processes and influences in favor of studying only observable behaviors.

Behavioral psychology also does not account for other types of learning that occur without the use of reinforcement and punishment. Moreover, people and animals can adapt their behavior when new information is introduced, even if that behavior was established through reinforcement.

A Word From Verywell

While the behavioral approach might not be the dominant force that it once was, it has still had a major impact on our understanding of human psychology . The conditioning process alone has been used to understand many different types of behaviors, ranging from how people learn to how language develops.

But perhaps the greatest contributions of behavioral psychology lie in its practical applications. Its techniques can play a powerful role in modifying problematic behavior and encouraging more positive, helpful responses. Outside of psychology, parents, teachers, animal trainers, and many others make use of basic behavioral principles to help teach new behaviors and discourage unwanted ones.

John B. Watson is known as the founder of behaviorism. Though others had similar ideas in the early 1900s, when behavioral theory began, some suggest that Watson is credited as behavioral psychology's founder due to being "an attractive, strong, scientifically accomplished, and forceful speaker and an engaging writer" who was willing to share this behavioral approach when other psychologists were less likely to speak up.

Behaviorism can be used to help elicit positive behaviors or responses in students, such as by using reinforcement. Teachers with a behavioral approach often use "skill and drill" exercises to reinforce correct responses through consistent repetition, for instance.

Other ways reinforcement-based behaviorism can be used in education include praising students for getting the right answer and providing prizes for those who do well. Using tests to measure performance enables teachers to measure observable behaviors and is, therefore, another behavioral approach.

Behaviorism says that behavior is a result of environment, the environment being an external stimulus. Psychoanalysis is the opposite of this, in that it is rooted in the belief that behavior is a result of an internal stimulus. Psychoanalytic theory is based on behaviors being motivated by one's unconscious mind, thus resulting in actions that are consistent with their unknown wishes and desires.

Whereas strict behaviorism has no room for cognitive influences, cognitive behaviorism operates on the assumption that behavior is impacted by thoughts and emotions. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), for instance, attempts to change negative behaviors by changing the destructive thought patterns behind them.

Krapfl JE. Behaviorism and society . Behav Anal. 2016;39(1):123-9. doi:10.1007/s40614-016-0063-8

Abramson CI. Problems of teaching the behaviorist perspective in the cognitive revolution . Behav Sci (Basel). 2013;3(1):55-71. doi:10.3390/bs3010055

Malone JC. Did John B. Watson really "found" behaviorism? . Behav Anal. 2014;37(1):1-12. doi:10.1007/s40614-014-0004-3

Penn State University. Introductory psychology blog (S14)_C .

Moore J. Methodological behaviorism from the standpoint of a radical behaviorist . Behav Anal. 2013;36(2):197-208. doi:10.1007/bf03392306

Rouleau N, Karbowski LM, Persinger MA. Experimental evidence of classical conditioning and microscopic engrams in an electroconductive material . PLoS ONE. 2016;11(10):e0165269. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0165269

Vanelzakker MB, Dahlgren MK, Davis FC, Dubois S, Shin LM. From Pavlov to PTSD: The extinction of conditioned fear in rodents, humans, and anxiety disorders . Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2014;113:3-18. doi:10.1016/j.nlm.2013.11.014

Kehoe EJ. Repeated acquisitions and extinctions in classical conditioning of the rabbit nictitating membrane response . Learn Mem. 2006;13(3):366-75. doi:10.1101/lm.169306

Staddon JE, Cerutti DT. Operant conditioning . Annu Rev Psychol. 2003;54:115-44. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145124

Kaplan D. Behaviorism in online teacher training . Psychol . 2018;9(4):83687. doi:10.4236/psych.2018.94035

Stanford University. Behaviorism .

Smith T. What is evidence-based behavior analysis? . Behav Anal. 2013;36(1):7-33. doi:10.1007/bf03392290

Morris EK, Altus DE, Smith NG. A study in the founding of applied behavior analysis through its publications . Behav Anal . 2013;36(1):73-107. doi:10.1007/bf03392293

Schreibman L, Dawson G, Stahmer AC, et al. Naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions: Empirically validated treatments for autism spectrum disorder . J Autism Dev Disord. 2015;45(8):2411-28. doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2407-8

Bower GH. The evolution of a cognitive psychologist: a journey from simple behaviors to complex mental acts. Annu Rev Psychol . 2008;59:1-27. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093722

University of California Berkeley. Behaviorism .

American Psychoanalytic Association. About psychoanalysis .

Mills JA. Control: A History of Behavioral Psychology . New York University Press.

Skinner BF. About Behaviorism . Alfred A. Knopf.

Watson JB. Behaviorism . Transaction Publishers.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

• Browse All Articles
• Newsletter Sign-Up

• 26 Mar 2024
• Research & Ideas

How Humans Outshine AI in Adapting to Change

Could artificial intelligence systems eventually perform surgeries or fly planes? First, AI will have to learn to navigate shifting conditions as well as people do. Julian De Freitas and colleagues pit humans against machines in a video game to study AI's current limits and mine insights for the real world.

• 21 Nov 2023

Employee Negativity Is Like Wildfire. Manage It Before It Spreads.

One overwhelmed person's gripes can quickly escalate into collective distress. Research by Amit Goldenberg gives managers reasons to pay close attention to teams' emotions. He offers advice to help groups reframe negative experiences.

• 06 Nov 2023

Did You Hear What I Said? How to Listen Better

People who seem like they're paying attention often aren't—even when they're smiling and nodding toward the speaker. Research by Alison Wood Brooks, Hanne Collins, and colleagues reveals just how prone the mind is to wandering, and sheds light on ways to stay tuned in to the conversation.

• 10 Oct 2023

In Empowering Black Voters, Did a Landmark Law Stir White Angst?

The Voting Rights Act dramatically increased Black participation in US elections—until worried white Americans mobilized in response. Research by Marco Tabellini illustrates the power of a political backlash.

• 03 Oct 2023
• What Do You Think?

Do Leaders Learn More From Success or Failure?

There's so much to learn from failure, potentially more than success, argues Amy Edmondson in a new book. James Heskett asks whether the study of leadership should involve more emphasis on learning from failure? Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 05 Jul 2023

What Kind of Leader Are You? How Three Action Orientations Can Help You Meet the Moment

Executives who confront new challenges with old formulas often fail. The best leaders tailor their approach, recalibrating their "action orientation" to address the problem at hand, says Ryan Raffaelli. He details three action orientations and how leaders can harness them.

• 03 Mar 2023

When Showing Know-How Backfires for Women Managers

Women managers might think they need to roll up their sleeves and work alongside their teams to show their mettle. But research by Alexandra Feldberg shows how this strategy can work against them. How can employers provide more support?

• 19 Dec 2022

What Motivates People to Give Generously—and Why We Sometimes Don't

Some people donate to get that warm-and-fuzzy feeling. Others do it to avoid being asked again. Christine Exley and Julian Zlatev delve into the psychology and economics of charity to explain why people give.

• 10 Nov 2022

Too Nice to Lead? Unpacking the Gender Stereotype That Holds Women Back

People mistakenly assume that women managers are more generous and fair when it comes to giving money, says research by Christine Exley. Could that misperception prevent companies from shrinking the gender pay gap?

• 04 Oct 2022

Have Managers Underestimated the Need for Face-to-Face Contact?

COVID-19 made remote work and instant delivery mainstays of life for many people, but will the need for community erode these concepts after the pandemic ends? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 14 Jul 2022

When the Rubber Meets the Road, Most Commuters Text and Email While Driving

Laws and grim warnings have done little to deter distracted driving. Commuters routinely use their time behind the wheel to catch up on emails, says research by Raffaella Sadun, Thomaz Teodorovicz, and colleagues. What will it take to make roads safer?

• 15 Sep 2021

Don't Bring Me Down: Probing Why People Tune Out Bad News

People often go out of their way to avoid unpleasant information, but not always for the reasons you might expect. Research by Christine Exley and colleagues. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 13 Jul 2021

Outrage Spreads Faster on Twitter: Evidence from 44 News Outlets

When it comes to social sharing, doom-and-gloom tweets beat sunshine and rainbows, says research by Amit Goldenberg. Is it time to send in the positivity police? Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 09 Jun 2021

How Tennis, Golf, and White Anxiety Block Racial Integration

White people often take steps to avoid interacting with people of other races, whether it's at home, work, or even on a golf course, says research by Jon Jachimowicz. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 08 Jun 2021

Tell Me What to Do: When Bad News Is a Big Relief

Why would anyone hope for the worst? Research by Serena Hagerty and colleague sheds light on just how far people will go to dodge a tough decision. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 16 Feb 2021
• Working Paper Summaries

Information Avoidance and Image Concerns

People avoid information that might compel them to behave more generously. While many people avoid information due to concerns about their self-image, there is a substantial role for other reasons, such as inattention and confusion.

• 06 Jan 2021

Unexpected Exercise Advice for the Super Busy: Ditch the Rigid Routine

Itching to get off the COVID couch? New research by John Beshears bucks conventional wisdom about what it takes to make exercise a habit. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 01 Jul 2020

Scaling Up Behavioral Science Interventions in Online Education

Online courses can lack support structures that are often bundled with traditional higher education. Short pre-course interventions can have short-term benefits, but more innovation throughout the course is needed to have sustained impact on student success.

• 19 May 2020

Global Behaviors and Perceptions at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

An online survey of more than 110,000 people in 175 countries conducted at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic found that most respondents believe that their governments and fellow citizens are not doing enough, which heightens their worries and depression levels. Decisive actions and strong leadership from policymakers change how people perceive their governments and other citizens, and in turn improve their mental health.

• 14 May 2019

Ethics Bots and Other Ways to Move Your Code of Business Conduct Beyond Puffery

Digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics allow companies to create more effective codes of business conduct, says Eugene Soltes. But technology isn't the only solution. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• 10 April 2024

How to supercharge cancer-fighting cells: give them stem-cell skills

• Sara Reardon 0

Sara Reardon is a freelance journalist based in Bozeman, Montana.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

A CAR T cell (orange; artificially coloured) attacks a cancer cell (green). Credit: Eye Of Science/Science Photo Library

Bioengineered immune cells have been shown to attack and even cure cancer , but they tend to get exhausted if the fight goes on for a long time. Now, two separate research teams have found a way to rejuvenate these cells: make them more like stem cells .

Both teams found that the bespoke immune cells called CAR T cells gain new vigour if engineered to have high levels of a particular protein. These boosted CAR T cells have gene activity similar to that of stem cells and a renewed ability to fend off cancer . Both papers were published today in Nature 1 , 2 .

The papers “open a new avenue for engineering therapeutic T cells for cancer patients”, says Tuoqi Wu, an immunologist at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas who was not involved in the research.

Reviving exhausted cells

CAR T cells are made from the immune cells called T cells, which are isolated from the blood of person who is going to receive treatment for cancer or another disease. The cells are genetically modified to recognize and attack specific proteins — called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) — on the surface of disease-causing cells and reinfused into the person being treated.

But keeping the cells active for long enough to eliminate cancer has proved challenging, especially in solid tumours such as those of the breast and lung. (CAR T cells have been more effective in treating leukaemia and other blood cancers.) So scientists are searching for better ways to help CAR T cells to multiply more quickly and last longer in the body.

Cutting-edge CAR-T cancer therapy is now made in India — at one-tenth the cost

With this goal in mind, a team led by immunologist Crystal Mackall at Stanford University in California and cell and gene therapy researcher Evan Weber at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia compared samples of CAR T cells used to treat people with leukaemia 1 . In some of the recipients, the cancer had responded well to treatment; in others, it had not.

The researchers analysed the role of cellular proteins that regulate gene activity and serve as master switches in the T cells. They found a set of 41 genes that were more active in the CAR T cells associated with a good response to treatment than in cells associated with a poor response. All 41 genes seemed to be regulated by a master-switch protein called FOXO1.

The researchers then altered CAR T cells to make them produce more FOXO1 than usual. Gene activity in these cells began to look like that of T memory stem cells, which recognize cancer and respond to it quickly.

The researchers then injected the engineered cells into mice with various types of cancer. Extra FOXO1 made the CAR T cells better at reducing both solid tumours and blood cancers. The stem-cell-like cells shrank a mouse’s tumour more completely and lasted longer in the body than did standard CAR T cells.

Master-switch molecule

A separate team led by immunologists Phillip Darcy, Junyun Lai and Paul Beavis at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia, reached the same conclusion with different methods 2 . Their team was examining the effect of IL-15, an immune-signalling molecule that is administered alongside CAR T cells in some clinical trials. IL-15 helps to switch T cells to a stem-like state, but the cells can get stuck there instead of maturing to fight cancer.

The team analysed gene activity in CAR T cells and found that IL-15 turned on genes associated with FOXO1. The researchers engineered CAR T cells to produce extra-high levels of FOXO1 and showed that they became more stem-like, but also reached maturity and fought cancer without becoming exhausted. “It’s the ideal situation,” Darcy says.

Stem-cell and genetic therapies make a healthy marriage

The team also found that extra-high levels of FOXO1 improved the CAR T cells’ metabolism, allowing them to last much longer when infused into mice. “We were surprised by the magnitude of the effect,” says Beavis.

Mackall says she was excited to see that FOXO1 worked the same way in mice and humans. “It means this is pretty fundamental,” she says.

Engineering CAR T cells that overexpress FOXO1 might be fairly simple to test in people with cancer, although Mackall says researchers will need to determine which people and types of cancer are most likely to respond well to rejuvenated cells. Darcy says that his team is already speaking to clinical researchers about testing FOXO1 in CAR T cells — trials that could start within two years.

And Weber points to an ongoing clinical trial in which people with leukaemia are receiving CAR T cells genetically engineered to produce unusually high levels of another master-switch protein called c-Jun, which also helps T cells avoid exhaustion. The trial’s results have not been released yet, but Mackall says she suspects the same system could be applied to FOXO1 and that overexpressing both proteins might make the cells even more powerful.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01043-2

Doan, A. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07300-8 (2024).

Article   Google Scholar  

Chan, J. D. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07242-1 (2024).

Download references

Reprints and permissions

Related Articles

• Medical research

ROS-dependent S-palmitoylation activates cleaved and intact gasdermin D

Article 10 APR 24

Blocking cell death limits lung damage and inflammation from influenza

News & Views 10 APR 24

FOXO1 enhances CAR T cell stemness, metabolic fitness and efficacy

Biological age surges in survivors of childhood cancer

Research Highlight 11 APR 24

FOXO1 is a master regulator of memory programming in CAR T cells

The PARTNER trial of neoadjuvant olaparib in triple-negative breast cancer

Article 08 APR 24

mRNA drug offers hope for treating a devastating childhood disease

News 03 APR 24

Diabetes drug slows development of Parkinson’s disease

Junior Group Leader Position at IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology

The Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) is one of Europe’s leading institutes for basic research in the life sciences. IMBA is located on t...

Austria (AT)

IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology

Research Group Head, BeiGene Institute

A cross-disciplinary research organization where cutting-edge science and technology drive the discovery of impactful Insights

Pudong New Area, Shanghai

BeiGene Institute

Open Rank Faculty, Center for Public Health Genomics

Center for Public Health Genomics & UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center seek 2 tenure-track faculty members in Cancer Precision Medicine/Precision Health.

Charlottesville, Virginia

Center for Public Health Genomics at the University of Virginia

Husbandry Technician I

Memphis, Tennessee

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (St. Jude)

Lead Researcher – Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation & Cellular Therapy

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Help | Advanced Search

Electrical Engineering and Systems Science > Image and Video Processing

Title: benchmarking the cell image segmentation models robustness under the microscope optical aberrations.

Abstract: Cell segmentation is essential in biomedical research for analyzing cellular morphology and behavior. Deep learning methods, particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs), have revolutionized cell segmentation by extracting intricate features from images. However, the robustness of these methods under microscope optical aberrations remains a critical challenge. This study comprehensively evaluates the performance of cell instance segmentation models under simulated aberration conditions using the DynamicNuclearNet (DNN) and LIVECell datasets. Aberrations, including Astigmatism, Coma, Spherical, and Trefoil, were simulated using Zernike polynomial equations. Various segmentation models, such as Mask R-CNN with different network heads (FPN, C3) and backbones (ResNet, VGG19, SwinS), were trained and tested under aberrated conditions. Results indicate that FPN combined with SwinS demonstrates superior robustness in handling simple cell images affected by minor aberrations. Conversely, Cellpose2.0 proves effective for complex cell images under similar conditions. Our findings provide insights into selecting appropriate segmentation models based on cell morphology and aberration severity, enhancing the reliability of cell segmentation in biomedical applications. Further research is warranted to validate these methods with diverse aberration types and emerging segmentation models. Overall, this research aims to guide researchers in effectively utilizing cell segmentation models in the presence of minor optical aberrations.

Submission history

Access paper:.

• Other Formats

References & Citations

• Google Scholar
• Semantic Scholar

BibTeX formatted citation

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Code, data and media associated with this article, recommenders and search tools.

• Institution

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The influencing mechanism of scenic spot online attention and tourists&#39; purchase behavior: an aisas model based investigation.

• 1 School of Business Administration and Tourism Management, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
• 2 Student Competitions, Stockholm, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

In the era of the Internet, online digital traces have become a new way to study the online attention of scenic spots and tourists' purchase behavior. The public's information search on major search platforms is a series of manifestations of potential tourists' attention and interest in scenic spots, but there are few studies on how attention, interest and information search affect potential tourists to generate real purchase behavior. Method: This paper selects four dimensions of short video platform, travel website, search engine and social media to comprehensively measure the online attention of high-quality scenic spots in Yunnan Province, and then establishes a grey association analytic hierarchy process based on the relevant variables of the AISAS model to empirically analyze the primary and secondary factors affecting tourists' purchase behavior. Results: (1) From the perspective of the online attention of scenic spots on different platforms, the intensity of the public's scenic spots online attention on the four types of media platforms is in the order of travel websites, search engines, short videos and social media. (2) From the perspective of spatial distribution characteristics, the online attention of high-quality scenic spots in Yunnan Province is unevenly distributed, that is, there is a big difference between the attention of higher star scenic spots and their star rating and popularity, while the attention of low-star scenic spots is not much different from their star rating and popularity. (3) From the perspective of spatial agglomeration characteristics, the comprehensive online attention of high-quality scenic spots in Yunnan Province presents the spatial agglomeration characteristics of "the multi-core linkage of high-density in the east and north, and sub-high-density in the south". (4) The factors influencing the purchase behavior of potential tourists are sharing experience, attracting attention, generating interest and searching information.

Keywords: Online attention, high-quality scenic spots, Purchase behavior, AISAS model, Yunnan Province

Received: 15 Feb 2024; Accepted: 12 Apr 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Hong, Ying, Qin and Yi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: ZHAO S. Hong, School of Business Administration and Tourism Management, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China Kong Y. Ying, Student Competitions, Stockholm, Sweden

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

• U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

• Virtual Tour
• Staff Directory
• En Español

You are here

The nih director.

July 6, 2023

Dr. Jane M. Simoni selected as Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, NIH

I am pleased to announce the selection of Jane M. Simoni, Ph.D., as NIH Associate Director for Behavioral and Social Sciences Research and Director of the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). She will join NIH on July 30, 2023, to lead OBSSR’s efforts to advance and coordinate behavioral and social sciences research at NIH, working closely with NIH Institutes and Centers.

Dr. Simoni brings more than 25 years of experience in research focused on health disparities and resilience among populations that have been socially marginalized, including persons with HIV and other chronic illnesses, Latinx, LGBT and Indigenous peoples. Her intervention research has examined behavioral aspects of chronic illness, using mixed methods and clinical trials to evaluate strategies such as peer support, medical record alerts, provider training and counseling and mHealth to promote treatment engagement and health outcomes. Her work capitalizes on cutting-edge behavioral and social science methods and theory to inform the development, efficacy and implementation of health promotion and disease prevention programs.                                              

A clinical psychologist, Dr. Simoni joins NIH from the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle where she is Professor and Director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology and has served on the faculty since 2001. She is the founding director of the UW Behavioral Research Center for HIV and co-directs the UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research, where she also is Associate Director of the Behavioral Science Core and Senior Advisor to the eHealth Scientific Working Group. She earned her B.A. at Princeton and her Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles. She also completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Southern California and Columbia University. A fellow in four divisions of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Simoni has been a frequent grant reviewer and chair for NIH study sections.

Dr. Simoni has led more than two dozen research projects, including NIH-funded studies in New York City, Seattle, the U.S.-Mexico border, Beijing, Shanghai, Haiti, and Kenya. She has authored more than 300 publications, and two of her medication adherence-promotion strategies (involving peer support and electronic reminders) are included in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Compendium of Evidence-Based Interventions and Best Practices for medication adherence. Dr. Simoni has collaborated on research and training awards on HIV, mental health, substance use, trauma, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and pediatric overweight treatment in the U.S. and globally. Her current work examines the acceptability of long-acting antiretroviral treatment for HIV infection and digital technology to enhance intervention impact and dissemination. Dr. Simoni actively trains a diverse and interdisciplinary group of students and early career investigators. She has been a mentor on more than 50 training awards, including as a sponsor for individual trainees and as part of the leadership or mentoring faculty for NIH-funded research education programs.

Please join me in welcoming Dr. Simoni. I want to thank Christine R. Hunter, Ph.D., for her service as OBSSR Acting Director, from January 2022 to May 2023, and Wendy B. Smith, Ph.D., for her service as OBSSR Acting Director in the interim.

Lawrence A. Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D. Acting Director, NIH

Connect with Us

• More Social Media from NIH

Watch CBS News

Zoo animals got quiet, exhibited nighttime behavior during total solar eclipse

By Aliza Chasan

Updated on: April 9, 2024 / 5:08 AM EDT / CBS News

Scientists and zookeepers watched Monday as giraffes, gorillas, lions, macaws and flamingoes exhibited unusual behavior during the total solar eclipse . 

Because total eclipses happen so infrequently , researchers don't know much about how they impact animals. They studied animals on Monday at several zoos situated along the eclipse path of totality , such as the Fort Worth Zoo in Texas. Animals were largely calm at the Fort Worth Zoo, though some, including the gorillas, lions and lemurs, showed increased signs of vigilance and curiosity. 

"Most importantly, we did not observe any signs of increased anxiety or nervous behaviors," a Fort Worth Zoo spokesperson said. "And by the time totality had passed, things went back to normal, almost immediately!"

Several animals at the Fort Worth Zoo made their way toward their barn doors, which is where they go at night, as the skies darkened during the eclipse, the zoo spokesperson said. The Aldabra tortoises, giraffes, elephants, kudu, bonobos, coatis and gorillas all headed toward their barns. 

Zoos were also able to observe some unique daytime behavior from nocturnal animals. At the Fort Worth Zoo, a ringtail cat and two owl species showed increased activity during the day.

Also in Texas, zookeepers at the Dallas Zoo saw giraffes and zebras run around during the eclipse. Chimpanzees patrolled the outer edge of their habitat at the zoo while all but one of a bachelor group of gorillas went to the door they use to go in at night. 

An ostrich at the Dallas Zoo laid an egg during the eclipse. Other birds got louder before totality, then went silent. Flamingos and penguins huddled together. 

Birds also showed unique behavior at the Indianapolis Zoo, a zoo spokesperson said. Macaws, budgies and other birds got quiet and roosted up high, which is nighttime behavior.

"You can hear they're totally silent now - not a peep, and no movement," Indianapolis Zoo President and CEO Dr. Robert Shumake said in a video recorded during totality. 

Flamingos at the zoo huddled together and also got quiet. Cheetahs and a warthog displayed behavior normally seen during the evening. The cheetahs paced at the highest point of their grassy yard during the eclipse while a warthog waited at its back gate. 

At the Philadelphia Zoo, which was not on the path of totality, visitors observed the animals during the partial eclipse, CBS Philadelphia reported. Visitors were able to sign up with zoo staff, pick an animal to observe and use their phones to track behavior before, during and after the eclipse. Most of the zoo's animals seemed pretty unfazed by the partial eclipse.

Researchers also studied zoo animals during the 2017 solar eclipse . In a study published in 2020, researchers noted they'd reviewed the behavior of 17 species — mammals, birds and reptiles — at the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, during the eclipse. They said around 75% of species showed a change of some sort in response to the eclipse. They largely exhibited behaviors usually seen in the evening or at night, with some animals showing signs of anxiety.

Zookeepers and researchers in the U.S. won't get a chance to do this kind of research during a total eclipse again until 2044 , when the next total eclipse in the contiguous U.S. will happen. Just three states are on the path of totality for the Aug. 23, 2044 eclipse, according to  The Planetary Society .

Aliza Chasan is a digital producer at 60 Minutes and CBSNews.com. She has previously written for outlets including PIX11 News, The New York Daily News, Inside Edition and DNAinfo. Aliza covers trending news, often focusing on crime and politics.

More from CBS News

Key players to know in Trump's "hush money" trial, set to begin Monday

Transcript: IMF director Kristalina Georgieva on "Face the Nation," April 14, 2024

Transcript: Sen. Mark Kelly on "Face the Nation," April 14, 2024

Salman Rushdie on coming to terms with the attempt on his life

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Transformations That Work

• Michael Mankins
• Patrick Litre

More than a third of large organizations have some type of transformation program underway at any given time, and many launch one major change initiative after another. Though they kick off with a lot of fanfare, most of these efforts fail to deliver. Only 12% produce lasting results, and that figure hasn’t budged in the past two decades, despite everything we’ve learned over the years about how to lead change.

Clearly, businesses need a new model for transformation. In this article the authors present one based on research with dozens of leading companies that have defied the odds, such as Ford, Dell, Amgen, T-Mobile, Adobe, and Virgin Australia. The successful programs, the authors found, employed six critical practices: treating transformation as a continuous process; building it into the company’s operating rhythm; explicitly managing organizational energy; using aspirations, not benchmarks, to set goals; driving change from the middle of the organization out; and tapping significant external capital to fund the effort from the start.

Lessons from companies that are defying the odds

Idea in Brief

The problem.

Although companies frequently engage in transformation initiatives, few are actually transformative. Research indicates that only 12% of major change programs produce lasting results.

Why It Happens

Leaders are increasingly content with incremental improvements. As a result, they experience fewer outright failures but equally fewer real transformations.

The Solution

To deliver, change programs must treat transformation as a continuous process, build it into the company’s operating rhythm, explicitly manage organizational energy, state aspirations rather than set targets, drive change from the middle out, and be funded by serious capital investments.

Nearly every major corporation has embarked on some sort of transformation in recent years. By our estimates, at any given time more than a third of large organizations have a transformation program underway. When asked, roughly 50% of CEOs we’ve interviewed report that their company has undertaken two or more major change efforts within the past five years, with nearly 20% reporting three or more.

• Michael Mankins is a leader in Bain’s Organization and Strategy practices and is a partner based in Austin, Texas. He is a coauthor of Time, Talent, Energy: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017).
• PL Patrick Litre leads Bain’s Global Transformation and Change practice and is a partner based in Atlanta.

Partner Center

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

6 in 10 U.S. Catholics are in favor of abortion rights, Pew Research report finds

Jason DeRose

Pope Francis remains popular among U.S. Catholics, with 75% having favorable views of him, according to a Pew Research report. But many self-identified Catholics disagree with various teachings of their church. Andrew Medichini/AP hide caption

Pope Francis remains popular among U.S. Catholics, with 75% having favorable views of him, according to a Pew Research report. But many self-identified Catholics disagree with various teachings of their church.

Catholics in the U.S., one of the country's largest single Christian groups, hold far more diverse views on abortion rights than the official teaching of their church.

While the Catholic Church itself holds that abortion is wrong and should not be legal, 6 in 10 U.S. adult Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a newly released profile of Catholicism by Pew Research .

Catholic opinion about abortion rights, according to the report, tends to align with political leanings: Fewer Catholic Republicans favor legal abortion than Catholic Democrats. And Pew says Hispanic Catholics, who make up one-third of the U.S. church, are slightly more in favor of legal abortion than white Catholics.

Despite church prohibitions, Catholics still choose IVF to have children

Pew found that 20% of the U.S. population identifies as Catholic, but only about 3 in 10 say they attend mass regularly. Opinions about abortion rights appear to be related to how often someone worships — just 34% of Catholics who attend mass weekly say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, whereas that number jumps to 68% among those who attend mass monthly or less.

Most U.S. Catholics are white (57%), but that number has dropped by 8 percentage points since 2007, according the new report. About 33% identify as Hispanic, 4% Asian, 2% Black, and 3% describe themselves as another race.

Pew Research also found that as of February, Pope Francis remains highly popular, with 75% of U.S. Catholics rating him favorably. However, there is a partisan divide, with Catholic Democrats more strongly supporting him.

About 4 in 10 U.S. Catholics view Francis as a major agent of change, with 3 in 10 saying he is a minor agent of change.

Catholic Church works to explain what same-sex blessings are and are not

Pew reports that many U.S. Catholics would welcome more change. Some 83% say they want the church to allow the use of contraception, 69% say priests should be allowed to get married, 64% say women should be allowed to become priests, and 54% say the Catholic Church should recognize same-sex marriage.

In December 2023, the Vatican issued guidance to priests that they may bless people in same-sex relationships. But the church insists those blessings not be construed in any way to be a form of marriage or even take place as part of a worship service.

• Pope Francis
• Abortion rights
• Catholic church
• Pew Research

2024 solar eclipse may spark behavioral changes in pets, other animals

On Aug. 21, 2017, a solar eclipse shrouded The Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, South Carolina, in near-total darkness for 2½ minutes.

In the time leading up to the darkness, during it, and after, zoo personnel observed and documented the behavior of many of the animals to see if the meteorological event would spark any changes. Oh did it.

Three female gorillas approached the den enclosure entrance as if it were time to go in for the evening, while the one male gorilla became unusually aggressive. The seven giraffes all stopped eating to huddle at the back of their enclosure, swaying with anxiety. The four Galapagos tortoises displayed the most novel behavior — just prior to totality, a pair of tortoises began mating, during totality all four tortoises "became more active, moved faster than had been seen during baseline observations and dispersed in various directions to different sections of the enclosure. Following totality, all tortoises gazed up at the sky."

Those findings are outlined in a March 31, 2020, article, "Total Eclipse of the Zoo: Animal Behavior during a Total Solar Eclipse," published in Animals, a global, peer-reviewed open access journal devoted to zoology and veterinary sciences, published semimonthly online. The Riverbanks Zoo's study documented that three-fourth of the animals at the zoo exhibited some behavioral response to the 2017 eclipse with the predominate response being to mimic nighttime behaviors. The next most common response was anxiety, the article said.

“There are lots of reports of animal behavior following lunar cycles and an eclipse is part of that astronomical cycle and it’s also really rare. So does it fall into that that category where it is so rare that animals don’t have a sensitivity to it? Or do they?" said Erica Cartmill, professor of anthropology, animal behavior and cognitive science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

Cartmill has not directly studied animal behavior during an eclipse, but is eager to know more and is calling on the public, in what she calls "citizen science." She wants people to observe their pets' or other animals' behavior before, during and after the April 8 eclipse this year. She's set up a website, www.observinganimals.org , for people interested in participating and recording it.

"These events are so rare we want to capture as much as information as we can," Cartmill said.

Dog owners shouldn't worry about protecting dogs' eyes from the solar eclipse, according to the American Kennel Club .

"That’s because dogs don’t naturally look up or stare at the sun, according to Dr. Jerry Klein, the chief veterinary officer for the AKC. “They know enough not to."

Most dogs only up toward the sky if something flies overhead or catches their attention, according to Klein.

How animals behave during an eclipse

The topic of animal behavior during an eclipse goes far back. During a total solar eclipse in New England in 1932, anecdotal reports claimed many domestic dogs fell silent during the eclipse, horses clustered together and began shaking their heads and tails with anxiety and several species of wild birds such as crows, gulls and sparrows stopped flying and remained silent and still, according to the article in Animals.

Cartmill has read those reports, but the only evidence of animal behavior during an eclipse that she has seen first-hand is an anecdote from the solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017. She was at Maryville College in Maryville, Tennessee, about 17 miles south of Knoxville, in a field to observe the event.

"We were near a little patch of woods and when it was like two minutes before totality and 97% of the light was blocked, it still looked like day, but it was a little bit colder," Cartmill said. "As soon as it hit totality, we heard crickets chirping and bats flew out of the woods. It was like a little slice of night and we felt like we were trespassing. It was really beautiful. One minute birds were flying and singing, and the next minute crickets were chirping and bats were out.”

Historically most reports of animal behavior during an eclipse have been inconsistent and contradictory, experts in various articles said and Cartmill agreed. For example, the anecdotal accounts of dogs growing quiet in 1932 contradicts social media reports in 2017 of dogs increasing vocalizations during the "Great American Eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017," according to a Feb. 2019 article in Animals.

Pets and animals during a solar eclipse

Cartmill offered an explanation for the conflicting reports as part of "an information cascade." That's when early reports get confirmed and then amplified.

"So if four people said, 'My dog did this thing,’ you might say, ‘I think my dog did that same thing,' " Cartmill said. "It doesn’t mean they’re lying, but we tend to remember things that align with what other people saw."

There are four things likely to happen to animal behavior during the eclipse, she said:

• Animals won't do anything unusual.
• Animals will do evening behaviors. For example, if a dog is used to a bedtime treat, he may go to the kitchen to wait for it.
• Animals will display signs of increased anxiety such as scratching, yawning, circling and pacing or if they are animals that typically flock together, they will start grouping.
• Animals display unexpected behavior.

“The eclipse is part of the natural world and the animals around us are part of the natural world," Cartmill said. "They are creatures we share the world with and they have a lot of the same desires and needs that we do. I think something that is of profound curiosity to people is how much of our experiences are shared with the animals we share the planet with.”

Social media and the Great American Eclipse

The Detroit Zoo's spokesperson Sarah Culton declined to comment on its plans for the animals during the solar eclipse on April 8 other than to say, "Animal well-being is always our top priority. Our animal care team closely monitors the animals who call the Zoo home and responds to their needs accordingly. We do this every day — and will continue to do so during the solar eclipse."

According to the February 2019 article, "Comparing Social Media Observations of Animals During a Solar Eclipse to Published Research," in Animals, the 2017 solar eclipse strongly kindled curiosity in animal behavior during an eclipse and given the eclipse "occurred over a relatively populous region of the globe, with approximately 12 million people living in the path of totality — garnering a lot of publicity — many of whom own domestic animals. This immense viewership created a unique opportunity to gather a large amount of animal observations simultaneously across the eclipse."

Scientists turned to Facebook.

A total of 685 observations of about 48 different types of animals reacting to the 2017 eclipse were studied from the March for Science Facebook page discussion, the article said. The animals most frequently reported on social media reacting to the eclipse were invertebrates, including 11 types of insects (think crickets) and the most frequently reported behavior was vocalization increasing. Whereas birds were reported to increase their activity and decrease vocalization. The most commonly observed mammal were dogs, which reportedly increased activity and vocalization during the eclipse.

The article states there are many reasons why a solar eclipse may spark behavioral changes.

"Not only is there a change in light, but also changes in air temperature and wind speed," the article state. "It is possible that the brief changes in temperature and wind speed are sensed by animals and, in combination with reduced light, are interpreted as the beginning of nocturnal changes or large storm, potentially enhancing bird and invertebrate vocalizations as instinctive behavior."

But it stated, and Cartmill agrees, that the specific response by an individual of any species depends on their specific life history and behavioral patterns associated with various nocturnal changes or events that decrease light.

More: What is the meaning of the word 'eclipse'? Here is its origin ahead of April 8 event.

Vultures and birds reactions

The 2017 eclipse also inspired two animal behaviorists to study its impact on turkey vultures at the Joseph A. Sgaggero Memorial Park in Dover Plains, New York, on Aug. 21, 2017, as documented in a March 2018 article in The Kingbird, a quarterly journal devoted to New York State ornithology .

In the Kingbird article, the authors Steven Platt of Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo and Thomas Rainwater of Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center & Belle W. Baruch Institute of Coastal Ecology and Forest Science at Clemson University, state: "Turkey Vultures began gathering above the roost shortly after the eclipse commenced."

After about a 30-minute lull in activity, some, but not all, turkey vultures left the roost. What made the findings remarkable, the authors wrote, was that the birds started roosting even when it was still light and looked like a typical August afternoon.

"The fact that our observations occurred under conditions of almost full sunlight suggests that either Turkey Vultures are sensitive to even a slight reduction in light level or were responding to as yet unrecognized stimuli," the authors wrote.

Then, on June 21, 2020, animal experts observed "clear and radical" behavioral changes in birds during another solar eclipse, according to an article in Egyptian Academic Journal of Biological Sciences by Sefi Mekonen of the Department of Biology, College of Natural and Computational Science, Debre Berhan University in Ethiopia. Mekonen wrote that before the eclipse the main activities of birds observed were foraging and courtship. But as the eclipse started, roosting increased.

"At maximum eclipse, there was a profound decrease in calling, singing, foraging and moving, and courtship," Mekonen reported.

After the eclipse, the birds went right back to foraging and flying, Mekonen wrote.

Contact Jamie L. LaReau:  [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter  @ jlareauan .