The most prominent representatives of behaviorism are. What is behaviorism, who is the founder

Behaviorism defined the face of American psychology in the 20th century. Its founder John Watson (1878-1958) formulated the creed of this direction as follows: "The subject of psychology is behavior." Hence the name: from English. behavior- behavior. Term behaviorism can be translated as behavioral psychology.

Analysis of behavior should be strictly objective and limited to externally observable reactions. Everything that is not amenable to objective registration is not subject to study, that is, thoughts, human consciousness cannot be considered, because they cannot be measured. It is impossible to study what is happening inside a person, therefore, a person acts as a “black box”. Only external actions of a person and those stimuli, situations that they cause are objective. And the task of psychology is to determine the probable stimulus from the reaction, and to predict a certain reaction from the stimulus.

Personality, from the point of view of behaviorists, is nothing more than a set of behavioral reactions inherent in a given person. The formula "stimulus-response" (S-R) was the leading one in behaviorism. Thorndike's law of effect clarifies: the relationship between S and R intensifies if there is reinforcement. It can be positive (praise, getting the desired result, material reward, etc.) or negative (pain, punishment, failure, criticism, etc.). Human behavior most often results from the expectation of positive reinforcement, but sometimes the desire to avoid negative reinforcement, i.e., punishment, pain, etc., prevails.

Thus, from the position of behaviorism, a personality is everything that an individual possesses, his disposition to one or another reaction: skills, consciously regulated instincts, socialized emotions, as well as plasticity that helps to form new skills, and the ability to retain and preserve them in order to adapt to the environment. This means that a person is an organized and relatively stable system of skills. The latter form the basis of relatively stable behavior, they are adapted to life situations, whose change leads to the formation of new skills.

Behaviorists understand a person as a reacting, acting, learning creature, programmed for certain reactions, actions, behavior. By changing incentives and reinforcements, you can program it for the desired behavior.

Social practice

Behaviorism laid the foundation for the emergence and development of various psychological and psychotherapeutic schools, such as neobehaviorism, cognitive psychology, behavioral psychotherapy, rational-emotional-behavioral therapy. There are many practical applications of behavioral psychological theory, including in areas far from psychology.

Behaviorism is significant in the field of pedagogy. So in the US education system, approaches based on the ideas of behaviorism are popular, which are used both to improve indicators - academic achievement, discipline, attendance for all children, and for the inclusion of children with disabilities and problems with socialization (for example, with ASD) in general education classes. The most developed is the applied analysis of behavior - the technological implementation of the functional analysis of behavior: methods for parsing and changing conditions in order to correct behavior. Applied Behavior Analysis has become the only specific methodology recommended for use in schools by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, 2004.

Now such research is continued by the science of the behavior of animals and humans - ethology, which uses other methods (for example, ethology attaches much less importance to reflexes, considering innate behavior more important for study).

24. MAIN IDEAS AND REPRESENTATIVES OF GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY, POSSIBILITIES OF APPLICATION OF THEIR VIEWS IN SOCIAL PRACTICE

Gestalt psychology- a science that has become the most productive option in solving the problem of maintaining the integrity of Austrian and German psychology. The main representatives of Gestalt psychology, such as M. Wertheimer, W. Koehler and K. Koffka, K. Levin, created science to resist structuralism.

They put forward the following ideas of Gestalt psychology:

The subject of Gestalt psychology is consciousness, the understanding of which should be based on the principle of integrity;

Consciousness is a dynamic whole where everything interacts with each other;

The unit of analysis of consciousness is the gestalt, i.e. integral figurative structure;

The main method of studying gestalts was direct and objective observation and description of the contents of one's own perception;

Perception does not come from sensations, since they do not exist in reality;

Visual perception is the most important mental process, which is able to determine the level of development of the psyche, which has its own laws;

Thinking cannot be viewed as a set of certain knowledge and skills formed by trial and error. Thus, thinking is the process of determining and solving the conditions of the problem, through the structuring of the field in real time. Experience gained in the past has no bearing on the solution of the problem.

Gestalt psychology is a science that has explored holistic structures consisting of a mental field, developing the latest experimental methods. Representatives of Gestalt psychology believed that the subject of this science is undoubtedly the study of the psyche, the analysis of all cognitive processes, the dynamics and structure of personality development. The methodological approach to the study of this science is based on the concept of mental field, phenomenology and isomorphism. Mental gestalts have similar physical and psychophysical characteristics, i.e. the processes occurring in the cerebral cortex are similar to the processes occurring in the external world and realized by us in experiences and thoughts. Each person is able to realize their own experiences and find a way out of this situation. At present, almost all properties of perception are revealed thanks to the research. The importance of this process in the formation and development of imagination, thinking and other cognitive functions has also been proven. This type of thinking is a complete process of forming figurative ideas about the world around us, allowing us to reveal the most important mechanisms of creative thinking.

Basic ideas, facts and principles of Gestalt psychology

One of the most important representatives of Gestalt psychology is the philosopher Max Wertheimer. His work was devoted to the study of visual perception experimentally. The data obtained in the course of his research laid the foundations for an approach to perception (and later to other psychological processes) and stimulated criticism of associationism. Thus, the principle of integrity, according to which concepts and images are formed, became the main principle of the formation of the psyche. Conducting research and perception made it possible to discover the laws of perception, and later the laws of gestalt. They made it possible to reveal the content of mental processes during the interaction of stimuli throughout the body, correlating, structuring and preserving individual images. At the same time, the correlation of objective images should not be static, immobile, but should be determined by changing relationships established in the process of cognition. Further experimental studies by Wertheimer made it possible to establish that there are many factors on which the stability of the figure and its perfection depend. This includes the commonality of color, the rhythm in the construction of rows, the commonality of light, and much more. The action of these factors obeys the main law, according to which the actions are interpreted as a desire for stable states at the level of electrochemical processes.

Since perceptual processes are considered innate, while explaining the features of the functioning of the cerebral cortex, the necessary objectivity arises, turning psychology into an explanatory science. An analysis of problem situations, as well as ways to solve them, allowed Wertheimer to distinguish several stages of thinking processes:

The emergence of a directed feeling of tension, mobilizing the creative forces of each person;

Conducting an analysis of the situation and awareness of the problem to create a unified image of the current situation;

Solving the existing problem;

Decision-making;

Execution stage.

Wertheimer's experiments revealed the negative impact of habitual methods of perceiving structural relations. The published publications consider the analysis of creative thinking (its mechanisms) and the problems of creativity in science.

Ticket 25

The main ideas of humanistic psychology and their influence on the theory and practice of providing psychological assistance.

Humanistic psychology is a branch of psychology that recognizes as its main subject the personality as a unique integral system capable of self-actualization inherent only in man. (Maslow, Allport, Murray)

*Humanistic psychology-protest to behaviorism (behavioral) and psychoanalysis (unconscious) Subject of analysis: values, creativity, love, freedom, responsibility, self-actualization of personality.

Key Ideas A: 1) Each person is unique; 2) Human life should be considered as a single process of becoming and being of a person; 3) A person is endowed with the potential for continuous development and self-realization; 4) A person has a certain degree of freedom from the external due to meanings and values; 5) Man is an active, creative being.

* Under certain conditions, a person can independently and fully realize his potential, therefore the work of a humanistic psychologist is aimed at creating favorable conditions for the reintegration of the personality in the process of therapeutic means. *Healing factors are client support, empathy, stimulation of choice and decision making. *The most important basic statement of humanist specialists is that EVERYONE contains the potential for recovery.; the person is unique.

Ticket 26

Psychophysiological foundations of human mental activity: features of the functioning of the nervous system, types of higher nervous activity and their influence on human mental activity.

Human mental activity- all activities carried out with the participation of various forms of consciousness.

Nerve fibers, Nervous system, Nerve cells(conductors of irritations), (collection point for irritations) Central Peripheral(bundles, nerves), (brain, medulla oblongata, spinal cord); sympathetic(communication with the brain with the help of nerves); halvesleft right(images, intuition, feeling), (language, logic). At the heart of mental activity is a mechanism for meeting the needs of different levels (physiological, psychological, social, spiritual). Types of higher nervous activity- an innate, natural feature of the nervous system, which is "those or other complexes of the basic properties of the nervous system." Pavlov, conducting experiments with dogs, revealed that the basis of individual differences in the nervous activity of animals is the manifestation and correlation of two main nervous processes - excitation and inhibition. Thus, three properties of the processes of excitation and inhibition were identified, which they began to study when determining the type of higher nervous activity: 1. The strength of the processes of excitation and inhibition. 2. The balance of the processes of excitation and inhibition. 3. Mobility (replacement) of the processes of excitation and inhibition - the ability to quickly respond to changes in the environment.

Types of nervous systems: 1 .Strong (strong excitation, inhibition, mobility); 2 .Unrestrained (strong excitation, mobility, weak inhibition); 3 .Inetrny (strong excitation, inhibition, weak mobility); 4 .Weak (weak excitation, inhibition, mobility).

The ability of a person to carry out a particular activity depends on his NS. It is easier for a strong type to quickly get involved in work than for a weak one, and it is more difficult for an unrestrained type to switch than for an inert one.

Behaviorism

The most important categories of behaviorism are stimulus, which is understood as any impact on the body from the environment, including this, the current situation, reaction and reinforcement, which for a person can also be a verbal or emotional reaction of people around. At the same time, subjective experiences are not denied in modern behaviorism, but are placed in a position subordinate to these influences.

In the second half of the 20th century, behaviorism was replaced by cognitive psychology, which has dominated psychological science ever since. However, many ideas of behaviorism are still used in certain areas of psychology and psychotherapy.

Story

One of the pioneers of the behaviorist movement was Edward Thorndike. He himself called himself not a behaviorist, but a "connectionist" (from the English "connection" - connection).

That the intellect is of an associative nature has been known since the time of Hobbes. That intelligence ensures the successful adaptation of an animal to its environment became generally accepted after Spencer. But for the first time, it was Thorndike's experiments that showed that the nature of the intellect and its function can be studied and evaluated without recourse to ideas or other phenomena of consciousness. Association no longer meant a connection between ideas or between ideas and movements, as in previous associative theories, but between movements and situations.

The entire learning process was described in objective terms. Thorndike used Wen's idea of "trial and error" as the regulative beginning of behavior. The choice of this beginning had deep methodological grounds. It marked a reorientation of psychological thought towards a new way of deterministically explaining its objects. Although Darwin did not specifically emphasize the role of "trial and error", this concept was undoubtedly one of the premises of his evolutionary doctrine. Since the possible ways of responding to the constantly changing conditions of the external environment cannot be foreseen in advance in the structure and modes of behavior of the organism, the coordination of this behavior with the environment is realized only on a probabilistic basis.

The evolutionary doctrine required the introduction of a probabilistic factor acting with the same immutability as mechanical causality. Probability could no longer be regarded as a subjective concept (the result of ignorance of causes, according to Spinoza). The principle of "trial, error and random success" explains, according to Thorndike, the acquisition of new forms of behavior by living beings at all levels of development. The advantage of this principle is quite obvious when compared with the traditional (mechanical) reflex circuit. A reflex (in its pre-Sechenian understanding) meant a fixed action, the course of which is also determined by methods strictly fixed in the nervous system. It was impossible to explain with this concept the adaptability of the organism's reactions and its ability to learn.

Thorndike took as the initial moment of a motor act not an external impulse that sets in motion a bodily machine with pre-prepared ways of responding, but a problematic situation, that is, such external conditions for adaptation to which the body does not have a ready-made formula for a motor response, but is forced to build it by its own efforts. So, the “situation-reaction” connection, in contrast to the reflex (in its only mechanistic interpretation known to Thorndike), was characterized by the following features: 1) the starting point is a problem situation; 2) the organism resists it as a whole; 3) he is active in the search for choice; and 4) is learned by exercise.

The progressiveness of Thorndike's approach in comparison with that of Dewey and other Chicagoans is obvious, because they took the conscious striving for a goal not as a phenomenon that needs explanation, but as a causal principle. But Thorndike, having eliminated the conscious striving for the goal, retained the idea of the active actions of the organism, the meaning of which is to solve the problem in order to adapt to the environment.

Thorndike's works would not have been of pioneering significance for psychology if they had not discovered new, proper psychological patterns. But no less distinct is the limitation of behavioral schemes in terms of explaining human behavior. The regulation of human behavior takes place according to a different type than Thorndike and all subsequent supporters of the so-called objective psychology, who considered the laws of learning to be the same for man and other living beings, imagined. This approach has given rise to a new form of reductionism. The laws of behavior inherent in man, having socio-historical foundations, were reduced to the biological level of determination, and thus the opportunity to study these laws in adequate scientific terms was lost.

Thorndike, more than anyone else, prepared the emergence of behaviorism. At the same time, as noted, he did not consider himself a behaviorist; in his explanations of learning processes, he used concepts that later behaviorism demanded to be expelled from psychology. These were concepts related, firstly, to the sphere of the mental in its traditional understanding (in particular, the concepts of the states of satisfaction and discomfort experienced by the body during the formation of connections between motor reactions and external situations), and secondly, to neurophysiology (in particular, "law of readiness", which, according to Thorndike, involves a change in the ability to conduct impulses). Behavioral theory forbade the researcher of behavior to address both what the subject experiences and physiological factors.

The theoretical leader of behaviorism was John Brodes Watson. His scientific biography is instructive in the sense that it shows how the formation of an individual researcher reflects the influences that determined the development of the main ideas of the direction as a whole.

The motto of behaviorism was the concept of behavior as an objectively observed system of reactions of the organism to external and internal stimuli. This concept originated in Russian science in the works of I. M. Sechenov, I. P. Pavlov and V. M. Bekhterev. They proved that the area of mental activity is not limited to the phenomena of the subject's consciousness, cognizable by internal observation of them (introspection), because with such an interpretation of the psyche, the splitting of the organism into soul (consciousness) and body (organism as a material system) is inevitable. As a result, consciousness was separated from external reality, closed in a circle of its own phenomena (experiences), placing it outside the real connection of earthly things and inclusion in the course of bodily processes. Rejecting such a point of view, Russian researchers came up with an innovative method of studying the relationship of an integral organism with the environment, relying on objective methods, interpreting the organism itself in the unity of its external (including motor) and internal (including subjective) manifestations. This approach outlined the prospect for revealing the factors of interaction of the whole organism with the environment and the reasons on which the dynamics of this interaction depends. It was assumed that knowledge of the causes would make it possible in psychology to realize the ideal of other exact sciences with their motto "prediction and control."

This fundamentally new view met the needs of the time. The old subjective psychology everywhere exposed its inconsistency. This was clearly demonstrated by experiments on animals, which were the main object of research by American psychologists. Reasoning about what happens in the minds of animals when they perform various experimental tasks turned out to be fruitless. Watson came to the conclusion that observations of states of consciousness are as little needed for a psychologist as for a physicist. Only by abandoning these internal observations, he insisted, would psychology become an exact and objective science. In Watson's understanding, thinking is nothing more than mental speech.

Under the influence of positivism, Watson argued that only that which can be directly observed is real. Therefore, according to his plan, all behavior must be explained from the relationship between the directly observable effects of physical stimuli on the organism and its also directly observable responses (reactions). Hence the main formula of Watson, perceived by behaviorism: "stimulus - reaction" (S-R). From this it was clear that the processes that take place between the members of this formula - be it physiological (nervous), be it mental, psychology must eliminate from its hypotheses and explanations. Since various forms of bodily reactions were recognized as the only real in behavior, Watson replaced all traditional ideas about mental phenomena with their motor equivalents.

The dependence of various mental functions on motor activity was firmly established in those years by experimental psychology. This concerned, for example, the dependence of visual perception on the movements of the eye muscles, emotions on bodily changes, thinking on the speech apparatus, and so on.

Watson used these facts as evidence that objective muscular processes can be a worthy substitute for subjective mental acts. Proceeding from such a premise, he explained the development of mental activity. It was argued that man thinks with muscles. Speech in a child arises from disordered sounds. When adults associate a certain object with some sound, this object becomes the meaning of the word. Gradually, the child's external speech turns into a whisper, and then he begins to pronounce the word to himself. Such inner speech (inaudible vocalization) is nothing but thinking.

All reactions, both intellectual and emotional, can, according to Watson, be controlled. Mental development is reduced to learning, that is, to any acquisition of knowledge, skills, skills - not only specially formed, but also arising spontaneously. From this point of view, learning is a broader concept than learning, since it also includes knowledge purposefully formed during training. Thus, studies of the development of the psyche are reduced to the study of the formation of behavior, the connections between stimuli and the reactions arising from them (S-R).

Watson experimentally proved that it is possible to form a fear response to a neutral stimulus. In his experiments, children were shown a rabbit, which they took in their hands and wanted to stroke, but at that moment they received an electric shock. The child frightenedly threw the rabbit and began to cry. The experience was repeated, and for the third or fourth time the appearance of a rabbit, even in the distance, caused fear in most children. After this negative emotion was fixed, Watson tried once again to change the emotional attitude of the children, forming in them an interest and love for the rabbit. In this case, the child was shown a rabbit during a delicious meal. At first, the children stopped eating and started crying. But since the rabbit did not approach them, remaining at the end of the room, and delicious food (chocolate or ice cream) was nearby, the child calmed down. After the children stopped crying when the rabbit appeared at the end of the room, the experimenter moved it closer and closer to the child, while adding tasty things to his plate. Gradually, the children stopped paying attention to the rabbit and in the end they calmly reacted when it was already near their plate, and even took it in their arms and tried to feed it. Thus, Watson argued, emotional behavior can be controlled.

The principle of behavior control gained wide popularity in American psychology after the work of Watson. Watson's concept (like all behaviorism) came to be called "psychology without the psyche." This assessment was based on the opinion that only the evidence of the subject himself about what he considers to be happening in his mind during "internal observation" refers to mental phenomena. However, the realm of the psyche is much broader and deeper than what is directly perceived. It also includes the actions of a person, his behavioral acts, his actions. The merit of Watson is that he expanded the scope of the mental, including in it the bodily actions of animals and humans. But he achieved this at a high cost, rejecting as a subject of science the vast wealth of the psyche, which is irreducible to externally observable behavior.

Behaviorism inadequately reflected the need to expand the subject of psychological research, put forward by the logic of the development of scientific knowledge. Behaviorism acted as an antipode to the subjective (introspective) concept, which reduced mental life to "facts of consciousness" and believed that beyond these facts lies a world alien to psychology. Behavioral critics later accused its proponents of being influenced by its version of consciousness in their attacks against introspective psychology. Taking this version as unshakable, they believed that it can either be accepted or rejected, but not transformed. Instead of looking at consciousness in a new way, they preferred to do away with it altogether.

This criticism is fair, but not sufficient for understanding the epistemological roots of behaviorism. Even if we return to consciousness its object-figurative content, which in introspectionism has turned into ghostly “subjective phenomena,” then even then it is impossible to explain either the structure of a real action or its determination. No matter how closely related action and image are, they cannot be reduced to one another. The irreducibility of an action to its subject-shaped components was the real feature of behavior that appeared exaggeratedly in the behaviorist scheme.

Watson became the most popular leader of the behaviorist movement. But one researcher, no matter how bright he may be, is powerless to create a scientific direction.

Among Watson's associates in the crusade against consciousness, prominent experimenters William Hunter (1886-1954) and Carl Spencer Lashley (1890-1958) stood out. The first invented in 1914 an experimental scheme for studying the reaction, which he called delayed. The monkey, for example, was given the opportunity to see which of the two boxes contained a banana. Then a screen was placed between it and the boxes, which was removed after a few seconds. She successfully solved this problem, proving that animals are already capable of a delayed, and not just an immediate response to a stimulus.

Watson's student was Carl Lashley, who worked at the Universities of Chicago and Harvard, and then at the Yerkes primate laboratory. He, like other behaviorists, believed that consciousness is completely reduced to the bodily activity of the organism. Lashley's well-known experiments on the brain mechanisms of behavior were built according to the following scheme: a skill was developed in an animal, and then various parts of the brain were removed in order to find out whether this skill depended on them. As a result, Lashley came to the conclusion that the brain functions as a whole and its various parts are equipotential, that is, equivalent, and therefore can successfully replace each other.

All behaviorists were united by the belief in the futility of the concept of consciousness, in the need to do away with "mentalism". But unity in the face of a common enemy - an introspective concept - was lost when solving specific scientific problems.

Both in experimental work and at the level of theory in psychology, changes were made that led to the transformation of behaviorism. Watson's system of ideas was no longer the only variant of behaviorism in the 1930s.

The collapse of the original behavioral program spoke of the weakness of its categorical "core". The category of action, one-sidedly interpreted in this program, could not be successfully developed with the reduction of image and motive. Without them, the action itself would lose its real flesh. The image of events and situations, to which action is always oriented, turned out to be reduced by Watson to the level of physical stimuli. The motivation factor was either rejected altogether, or appeared in the form of several primitive affects (such as fear), which Watson had to turn to in order to explain the conditioned reflex regulation of emotional behavior. Attempts to include the categories of image, motive and psychosocial attitude in the original behaviorist program led to its new version - neobehaviorism.

1960s

The development of behaviorism in the 60s of the 20th century is associated with the name of Skinner. The American researcher can be attributed to the flow of radical behaviorism. Skinner rejected mental mechanisms and believed that the technique of developing a conditioned reflex, which consists in reinforcing or weakening behavior due to the presence or absence of reward or punishment, can explain all forms of human behavior. This approach was used by an American researcher to explain the most diverse forms of behavior, from the learning process to social behavior.

Methods

Behaviorists have used two main methodological approaches to the study of behavior: observation in laboratory, artificially created and controlled conditions, and observation in the natural habitat.

Behaviorists carried out most of the experiments on animals, then the establishment of patterns of reactions in response to environmental influences was transferred to humans. Behaviorism has shifted the focus of the experimental practice of psychology from the study of human behavior to the study of animal behavior. Experiments with animals made it possible to better exercise exploratory control over the connections between the environment and the behavioral response to it. The simpler the psychological and emotional make-up of the observed being, the greater the guarantee that the connections under study will not be distorted by the accompanying psychological and emotional components. It is impossible to achieve this degree of purity in an experiment with humans.

Later, this methodology was criticized, mainly for ethical reasons (see, for example, the humanistic approach). Behaviorists also believed that due to the manipulation of external stimuli, it is possible to form different behavioral traits in a person.

IN THE USSR

Development

Now such research is continued by the science of animal and human behavior - ethology, using other methods (for example, ethology attaches much less importance to reflexes, considering innate behavior more important to study).

Notes

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Theory of behaviorism

Such concepts as "awareness" and "experience" of the new direction of psychology have lost all significance. The theory of behaviorism recognizes only a specific action and no less specific stimulus that is visible to everyone around. All internal emotions are considered subjective. One person is worried “for a broken cup”, the other believes that the time has come to replace the dishes. Anyway, both go and buy a new cup. This is the basic principle underlying the theory of behaviorism, stimulus generates response, everything else is temporary and superficial.

In addition, behaviorism believes that all incentives should be subject to documentary confirmation, fixed by external objective means. The psychologist should not rely on self-observation in any case. The founder of the doctrine of behaviorism, John Watson, derived the formula: stimulus - response. Only the stimulus induces a person to any action and determines his character. Conclusion: you need to do as many experiments as possible with data recording and further in-depth analysis of the information received.

Bezeviorizm, as a doctrine of behavior, also extends to the animal world. Therefore, behaviorists welcomed the teachings of Pavlov and used his results.

A new direction of behaviorism gained popularity, as it was distinguished by its simplicity and accessibility of understanding. But, soon, it turned out that not everything is so simple. Some stimuli cause not one, but several reactions at once. The doctrine needed updating.

Directions of behaviorism

The behavioral crisis was resolved by introducing an additional variable into the classical formula. Now it began to be considered that not everything can be fixed by objective methods. The stimulus fires only with an intermediate variable.

Behaviorism, like any other doctrine, has undergone modifications. Thus, new trends appeared:

neobehaviorism;
Social behaviorism.

The founder of neobehaviorism was Scanner. The scientist believed that studies that did not have objective confirmation were unscientific and should not be carried out. The new behaviorism does not set the task of educating the personality, but directs efforts to "programming" the individual's behavior in order to achieve the most effective result for the customer. The practice of the “carrot method” in research has confirmed the importance of a positive stimulus that produces the best results. Scanner, while conducting research, repeatedly fell into a mess, but the scientist believed that if behaviorism cannot find an answer to any question, then such an answer does not exist at all in nature.

The main direction of behaviorism in social terms studies human aggression. Adherents of social behaviorism believe that a person makes every effort to achieve a certain position in society. The new word behaviorism in this current is a mechanism of socialization, which provides not only for gaining experience on one's own mistakes, but also on other people's mistakes. Based on this mechanism, the foundations of aggressive and cooperative behavior are formed. In this regard, the experience of behaviorism in psychology of the Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura is noteworthy, who took three groups of children and presented them with the same feature film. It showed a boy beating a rag doll. However, different endings were filmed for each group:

Positive attitude towards the actions of the boy;
Punishing a boy for a "bad deed";
Complete indifference to the actions of the main character.

After watching the movie, the children were brought to a room where there was exactly the same doll. The children, who saw that the doll was punished for beating, did not touch it. Babies from the other two groups showed aggressive qualities. This proves, from the point of view of behaviorism, that a person is actively influenced by the society in which he is located. As a result of the experience, Albert Bandura proposed that all scenes of violence in films and the media be banned.

Basic fallacies of behaviorism

The main mistakes of adherents of behaviorism are to completely ignore the personality:

Failure to understand that the study of any action is impossible without reference to a specific person;
Misunderstanding that in the same conditions, different personalities may have several reactions, and the choice of the optimal one always remains with the person.

Behavioral psychologists argue that "respect" is built solely on fear. Such a statement cannot be considered true.

Behaviorism defined the face of American psychology in the 20th century. Its founder, John Watson (1878 - 1958), formulated the creed of behaviorism: "The subject of psychology is behavior." Hence the name - from English behavior- behavior (behaviorism can be translated as behavioral psychology). Analysis of behavior should be strictly objective and limited to externally observable reactions. Everything that happens inside a person cannot be studied; the person acts as a "black box". It is possible to objectively study, register only reactions, external actions of a person and those stimuli, situations that these reactions cause. And the task of psychology is to determine the probable stimulus from the reaction, and to predict a certain reaction from the stimulus.

And the personality of a person, from the point of view of behaviorism, is nothing more than a set of behavioral reactions inherent in a given person. Formula "stimulus - reaction" S-> R was a leader in behaviorism. Thorndike's Law of the Effect elaborates: the relationship between S and R is strengthened if there is a reinforcement. Reinforcement can be positive (praise, material reward, etc.) or negative (pain, punishment, etc.). Human behavior stems most often from the expectation of positive reinforcement, but sometimes the desire to avoid negative reinforcement in the first place prevails.

Thus, from the position of behaviorism, personality is everything that an individual possesses, and his possibilities in relation to reactions (skills, socially regulated instincts, socialized emotions + the ability of plasticity to form new skills + the ability to retain, save skills) to adapt to the environment, those. Personality is an organized and relatively stable system of skills.

A person in the concept of behaviorism is understood primarily as a reacting, acting, learning being, programmed for certain reactions, actions, behavior. By changing incentives and reinforcements, a person can be programmed for the desired behavior.

In the depths of behaviorism itself, the psychologist Tolman (1948) questioned the scheme S-> R as too simplistic and introduced an important variable between these members I- the mental processes of a given individual, depending on his heredity, physiological state, past experience and the nature of the stimulus, S-> I-> R.

Later, one of Watson's followers, Skinner, developing the concept of behaviorism, proved that any behavior is determined by its consequences, formulated the principle of operant service - "the behavior of living organisms is completely determined by the consequences to which it leads. Depending on whether these consequences are pleasant, indifferent or unpleasant, the living organism will tend to repeat the given behavioral act, attach no importance to it, or avoid its repetition in the future. Thus, it turns out that a person is completely dependent on his environment, and any freedom of action that he thinks he can enjoy is pure illusion.

In the 70s, behaviorism presented its concepts in a new light - in the theory of social learning. According to Bandura (1965), the main reason that made us what we are is due to our tendency to imitate the behavior of other people, given how favorable the results of such imitation can be for us. Thus, a person is influenced not only by external conditions: he also must constantly anticipate the consequences of his behavior by self-assessment.

According to the theory of social learning by D. Rotter, social behavior can be described using the following concepts:
1) behavioral potential - each person has a certain set of actions, behavioral reactions that have been formed during life;
2) human behavior is influenced by the subjective probability with which, in the opinion of a person, a certain reinforcement will be after a certain behavior in a certain situation;
3) a person's behavior is influenced by the nature of the reinforcement, its value for a person (someone appreciates praise more, someone - money, or is more sensitive to punishment);
4) a person's behavior is influenced by his "locus" of control: whether he feels like a "pawn" or believes that the achievement of his goals depends on his own efforts.

Behavioral potential, according to Rotter, includes 5 main blocks of behavioral responses:
1) behavioral responses aimed at achieving success;
2) behavioral reactions of adaptation, adaptation;
3) protective behavioral reactions (these are such reactions as denial, suppression of desires, depreciation, etc.);
4) avoidance techniques - withdrawal, flight, rest, etc.;
5) aggressive behavioral reactions - both real physical aggression and symbolic forms of aggression: mockery directed against the interests of another person.

According to the concept of the American psychologist McGuire, the classification of human behavior and actions should be carried out depending on goals, needs, situations. A need is a perceived and perceived state of a person's need for something. The goal shows what a person is striving for, what result he wants to get. The same goal can be set based on different needs (for example, three students set a goal to study at 5, but one - from the need for new knowledge, the other - from ambitious needs to make a career, the third - because of material needs: father promised him in case of excellent studies to buy a motorcycle).

Based on this approach, 16 types of behavior can be distinguished.
1. Perceptual behavior- the desire to cope with information overload due to categorization, as a result of which the variety of information is classified, simplified and can lead to both a clearer understanding of what is being assessed and the loss of meaningful information.
2. Protective behavior- any real or imaginary actions of psychological defense that allow you to maintain a positive opinion of a person about himself. Defensive behavior allows a person to protect himself from those problems that he cannot yet solve. But if time passes, and the person does not solve the problem, then this protective mechanism can be an obstacle to personal growth - a person hides his real problem, replacing it with new "pseudo-problems". Freud identified 7 defense mechanisms:
1) suppression of desires - the removal of desires from consciousness, because he "cannot" be satisfied; suppression is not final, it is often the source of bodily diseases of a psychogenic nature (headaches, arthritis, ulcers, asthma, heart disease, hypertension, etc.);
2) denial - withdrawal into fantasy, denial of any event as "untruth";
3) rationalization - the construction of acceptable moral, logical justifications, arguments to explain and justify unacceptable forms of behavior, desires;
4) inversion - the substitution of actions, thoughts that meet a genuine desire, with a diametrically opposite behavior, thoughts (the child wants to receive his mother's love for himself, but, not receiving this love, begins to experience the exact opposite desire to annoy, anger his mother);
5) projection - attributing to another person one's own qualities, thoughts - "distance of the threat from oneself";
6) isolation - separation of the threatening part of the situation from the rest of the mental sphere, which can lead to a split personality, to an incomplete "I";
7) regression - a return to an earlier, primitive way of responding, stable regressions are manifested in the fact that a person justifies his actions from the position of a child's thinking, does not recognize logic.
The manifestation of defense mechanisms from time to time is inherent in every person, but the abundance of stable defense mechanisms, stable isolation from reality are most typical of neurotic personalities.
3. Inductive behavior- people's perception and evaluation of themselves based on the interpretation of the meaning of their own actions.
4. Habitual behavior- satisfaction from positive reinforcement creates a greater likelihood of reproducing familiar behaviors in appropriate situations.
5. Utility behavior- the desire of a person to solve a practical problem with the maximum achievement of success.
6. Role behavior in accordance with role requirements, circumstances that force a person to take some action.
7. Script behavior- a person is an executor of a set of rules of permissible "decent" behavior corresponding to his status in a given culture, society.
8. Modeling behavior- options for the behavior of people in small and large groups (imitation, suggestion), but it is difficult to control both the person himself and other people.
9. Balancing behavior- when a person has simultaneously conflicting opinions, assessments and tries to "reconcile" them, harmonize them by changing their assessments, claims, memories.
10. Liberating Behavior- a person seeks to "secure himself" from real or apparent "negative conditions of existence" (to avoid possible failures, rejection of averagely attractive goals, compliance).
11. Attribute behavior- active elimination of contradictions between real behavior and subjective system of opinions, elimination of dissonance between desires and real actions, bringing them to mutual correspondence.
12. Expressive behavior- in those areas where a person has achieved a high level of skill and satisfaction, while maintaining a consistently high self-esteem, the constant reproduction of which is the main regulator of everyday social behavior.
13. Autonomous behavior- when a feeling of freedom of choice (even the illusion of such a choice) creates a person's readiness to overcome any barriers on the way to achieving the goal (perception of oneself as an active "doer", and not an executor of someone's orders, someone's will).
14. Assertive Behavior- experiencing one's actions as the fulfillment of one's plans with the maximum use of internal conditions.
15. Exploratory Behavior- striving for the novelty of the physical and social environment, the willingness to "tolerate" information uncertainty, to which the previously mastered methods of its processing are applicable.
16. Empathic behavior- accounting, a large coverage of sensory information underlying the interpersonal interaction of people, the ability to understand the emotional and mental state of another person.
Psychoanalytic theories based on Freudianism describe and predict human behavior in categories 2,6,10. Behavioral theories describe categories of behavior 2,4,10,12. Cognitive theories - categories 1,3,9,11. Humanist theories predict behavior 7,13,14. All theories are correct within their applicability.