B.F.

Skinner

1) B.F. SKINNER

While Freud invented psychoanalysis from scratch, Skinner´s ideas were already there by scholars like John
Watson. He came late into the field, but he expanded them and presented them as an articulated theory.

Behaviorism has three main claims:

 Emphasis on learning: rejection of innate ideas or innate traits. Everything we know and are is the
result of our experiences.
There´s no human nature. We are very malleable. We can be anything. Our race and gender don’t
matter, just our environment. So, there´s no innate knowledge.
 Anti-mentalism: behaviorists are very interested on doing science. It´s the backlash against the
excesses of Freud, who invented invisible theories like super-ego and defense mechanisms that are
internal to the head and only revealed an exceedingly direct way.
Behaviorism wants to do real science, getting away from many abstract ideas, and focusing on things
we can observe like stimulus, responses, feature on the environment…
We can explain mental life themes just through principles that link up stimulus and response.
 There are no interesting differences across species. A rat can't learn as quickly as a human, but the
principles of learning proposed by Behaviorists are whole across all species.
In essence, the only difference between a person and a rat lies in the situation in which we are raised.
The way humans learn is no different in principle from how animals learn.

2) HABITUATION

There are three main learning mechanisms intended to explain everything we come to know about the world:
One is habituation: a declining tendency to respond to stimuli that are familiar due to repeated exposure. We
get used to things and we might react strongly to something that we experienced for the first time, but if we
experience that same thing over and over, we might react less strongly. For example, if someone says boo for
the first time, it scares us, but then we get used to it.
This is an incredible useful psychological mechanism because it keeps us focused on novelty. Something new
could be important or dangerous, so it´s important to attend it. On the other hand, something that’s has been
already there doesn’t capture our attention because we already know about it.
Without habituation, we couldn’t survive in the world.

3) CLASSICAL CONDITIONING

The second learning mechanism is classical conditioning, which is the learning of an association between one
stimulus and another stimulus. Ivan Pavlov made an experiment of this with dogs, bells and saliva. There are
certain steps:

 Before conditioning:
o We start with a neutral stimulus, which doesn't produce a consistent response – for example
a bell.
o Then comes an unconditioned step, which produces an unconditioned response – for
example, food and the saliva it produces on dogs.
Prior to the learning it can be innate, it´s built-in or it´s been learned in the past.

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 During conditioning: we put together the neutral stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus. Then we
have an unconditioned response and a neutral stimulus will be paired with the unconditioned
stimulus.
 After stimulus: if we have this repeatedly over time, we will find that there is a conditioned stimulus
that produces a conditioned response. For example, every time the dog hears the bell, he´ll produce
saliva.

There are two responses:

 Repeated pairings of neutral stimulus into a conditioned stimulus, can cause a conditioned response.
Behaviorists talk about reinforced trials: trials when conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus
are brought together, like the dog´s saliva experiment, which increase the connection.
 There are also unreinforced trials: when the conditioned stimulus happens without the unconditioned
stimulus, and this decreases the connection of learning and gradually the connection goes away. For
example, we repeatedly ring the bell, without providing food to the dog. He´ll produce less and less
saliva every time, until he stops producing saliva.

The world changes and, because of that, we don’t experience the same things every time. This is called
extinction.
Classical conditioning has considerable range of application. We can apply classical conditioning to any
creature, by provoking reactions to certain unassociated stimuli, like lights or sounds.
On people, classical conditioning has been argued to play a role in all sorts of things, like an acquisition of
phobias. We can become afraid to something if we associate it with a painful experience.
Example: A Clockwork Orange, where the main character is exposed to torture while hearing Beethoven.
Classical conditioning is the logic underlying some treatment of phobias – systematic desensitizations:
exposing pictures of spiders in safe environments while pairing theses with relaxation techniques or, in some
cases, drugs that relax us. Over time, these stimuli evoke the same response of relaxation as the drug or
technique.
Then, stimuli that were originally aversive can come to have different connotations.
Commercials produce classical conditioning: when we look at them, we become hungry or craving for
addictions like cigarettes or alcohol.

This has observations:

 It doesn't explain why we become conditioned to specified things, but not other. For example, certain
people, while having sex, can think and get pleasure by thinking of shoes seen in commercials, but
they don’t get the same response while looking at clocks or pillows.
 For classical conditioning to work we need repeated exposure. It´s hard to imagine how that’s going
to happen. It has been argued that classical conditioning has some role in sexual delight and sexual
satisfaction. One treatment to pedophiles could be training to them to have controlled fantasies during
masturbation to shift the association of sexual pleasure away from dominance and violence in
children to more appropriate and moral interactions.

Classical conditioning is an adaptive mechanism that gives us sensibility to cues that are an event that is about
to happen. This allows us to prepare for that event.
We´re sensitive to cues to something to allow us to prepare for that something. This explains two things:

 What´s the optimal timing between the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus.

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It´s not best when they're simultaneous. It´s better when the conditioned stimulus comes immediately
before the unconditioned stimulus. The neurological system underlying classical conditioning is built
so that we can prepare and anticipate.
 Moreover, conditioned response is often preparation for the unconditioned stimulus. For example,
when de dog hears the bell, he fills his mouth with saliva.

Classical conditioning is a mechanism of preparation and an adaptive and clever way for the mind to have
evolved to deal with the world and how to cope best with it.

4) INSTRUMENTAL CONDITIONINIG

It´s also known as operant conditioning. Is learning the relationship between actions and rewards and
punishment.
Is learning which actions lead to positive responds and not.
It´s different to classical conditioning, which is passive and implies looking how stimuli and reactions interact
and the co-occurrence between them, which teaches us to learn things.
Instrumental conditioning is based on our own actions – we act to the world and then the way the world treats
our actions shapes the nature of our future actions.
Skinner didn’t devise the idea of instrumental conditioning, built on it and was his mayor theoretical and
experimental research program.

The theoretical foundations for operant conditioning were established by Edward Thorndike in animal studies:
they don’t learn through sudden insight, but rather through a series of random activities that they get better and
better at. He made experiments with cats escaping cages: the more they try the experiment, the better they
get.
First, they escape the cage by accident, by doing all sorts of actions until they figure out which works by trial
and error, but then they learn the way to get their reward. If an action brings a reward, that actions gets
stamped in the mind.
Behavior changes because of the consequences – this is called the Law of Effect. The tendency to perform an
action is increased if rewarded and weakened if not.

Skinner expanded the principles of operant conditioning. There are two kinds of reinforcements in order to
perform instrumental conditioning:

 Positive reinforcement: giving the subject something it wants.

 Negative reinforcement: releasing something aversive, which implies removing that thing when he
performs the desired action.

Shaping: for example, we want a pig to dance, but it´s never danced before. When the pig moves in a certain
way that approximates dancing, when we reward it, and so on. As the pig gradually approximates the behavior
we desire, we reward it. This happens in complex behaviors, and so we can train animals and humans to do
complex things.

The reinforcements and punishments were instinctively reinforcing or punishing. Things like food. But in reality,
we can reinforce or punish in all sorts of ways, even to animals that don’t correspond to things that are built in
reinforce or punishments.
For example, humans work for money – we combine classical an operant conditioning:

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 We use classical conditioning to take something which is a neutral thing, like money. We associate it
with a positive unconditioned stimulus. Soon, the money, through classical conditioning, will tend to
have rewards and qualities.
For example, every time someone works, we give him money.
 Then comes the operant conditioning, when we give money as a reward.

But real life doesn't work this way. There´s all sorts of partial reinforcements in the world. We get reinforced
some of the time, but not all of the time.

 Fixed versus response: reward after nth response. Is a fixed ratio reinforcement.
There is a reward after every such and so responses.
For example, pigeons that are not rewarded every time they do the desired action, but rather every
nth time, for example, hundreds of times.
 Variable ratio reinforcement: reward on average once in every n response.
The reinforcement is every n time. For example, a slot machine: it doesn't give out money every 100
time because then people would get rich of it. Roughly gives money every 1000th time. It’s roughly.
 Fixed interval reinforcement: reward after every y seconds (or minutes, hours…)
For example, in an ideal world I check my email and once in a while I get a positive email, and so I
get fixed.
 Variable interval reinforcement: reward one in every second (or minute, hours…). In the real world, I
check my email and sometimes get a positive mail. This is more likely variable – every time a get a
positive email, so who cares? Why would you want to do scheduled reinforcement that were partial
and weren’t right away?

The answer is partial reinforcement effect: if we stop rewarding, the effect goes away.
If we reinforce it partially every time, its behavior will stick around for a long time. If we reinforce very time,
people understand they will get the benefit. If we never reinforce, people will stop doing what we want. But if
we reinforce occasionally, then we continue to do the reaction because eventually we´ll get the desired benefit.
If we want to make a behavior last, don’t reinforce it every time, but rather intermittently.
Example: children with tantrums:

 If we reward the kid every time, he has a tantrum, it will last a very long time because he understands
he´ll get an immediate response.
 If we stop reinforcing, he´ll stop doing it.
 If we reward him occasionally, he might think his reinforcement could come because he´ll eventually
get reinforced.

Skinner said a good society would use behavior techniques to make people better. To stop crime, we should
reinforce good behaviors and punish bad ones.

5) SCIENTIFIC ASSESTMENT OF SKINNER

The three Skinner´s claims are no longer believed and psychologists agree that, at least to some extent, they
are mistaken.

 Emphasis on learning:
o There's a lot evidence of unlearned knowledge. There is also an innate contribution to
different capacities like learning languages, understanding numbers, certain aspects of
sexual preference…

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o When it comes to learning, different animals have different learning mechanisms. For
example, the way birds learn song is different from our way of learning language, or develop
cooperative cooperation. Natural selection took creatures into different paths.
 Anti-Mentalism:
o It's possible to talk about certain things without observing them. For example, scientists
have spoken about genes without even knowing what one of them looked like, or string
theory.
o To explain even the most basic of human behaviors, like thinking or dreaming, we need to
appeal to internal representations. It´s not possible to “see” everything. We can't observe
everything, like they intend to.
 No difference across species:
o Sometimes, animals get better and better about learning something without reinforcement
and punishment. Tolman invented the term latent learning, which consists on learning
without any sort of feedback.
o The idea thar reinforcement is always needed is wrong. For example, there are animals
have already maps in their heads.

Noam Chomsky made a review of behaviorism. He claims behaviorism is shaped by reinforcement and
punishment. He also says that, when it comes to humans, behaviorism notions are either fat wrong or so
vague as to be unclassifiable and uninteresting.
Skinner says we always do things like create art or give bad news to an enemy because of reinforcement.
It´s not literally true that these things are reinforcing. We don’t always get prizes or reinforcements for things
we do. For example, when we talk to ourselves, we don’t get reinforcement or prizes. Or when we fantasize.
Skinner would say we get a more abstract reinforcement, but Chomsky says that when we make reinforcement
so abstract, you lose any explanatory power. We just say we like it because we like it.
If Skinner says we create art because it´s reinforcing because we like creating art, Chomsky would say it goes
down to the claim thar we create art because we like creating art, which is true, but psychologically
uninteresting.

Skinner´s theory of punishment and reinforcement is a great theory for animal learning and training of animals,
but fails when explaining why humans do what they do.

Is wrong to say our actions and behavior depend on the law of effect because sometimes we actually come to
insights – when we face troubles, we don’t go and fail away and do 100 things different, but we model things in
our heads and act upon it.

Behaviorism gave us understanding of very important learning mechanisms – besides all critics, it´s true we
have a capacity for habituation, classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
Also, behaviorism gave powerful tools for training and teaching for children, but also for non-verbal creatures.
But this theory fails at underestimating the scope and power of human mental life. This theories fail to explain
the richness of human mental life – its ideas are no sufficient to address.