" Skinner did not advocate the use of punishment. His research suggested that punishment was an ineffective way of controlling behavior, leading generally to short-term behavior change, but resulting mostly in the subject attempting to avoid the punishing stimulus instead of avoiding the behavior that was causing punishment. A simple example of this, he believed, was the failure of prison to eliminate criminal behavior. If prison (as a punishing stimulus) were effective at altering behavior, there would be no criminality, since the risk of imprisonment for criminal conduct is well established, Skinner deduced. However, he noted that individuals still commit offences, but attempt to avoid discovery and therefore punishment. He noted that the punishing stimulus does not stop criminal behaviour; the criminal simply becomes more sophisticated at avoiding the punishment. Reinforcement, both positive and negative (the latter of which is often confused with punishment), he believed, proved to be more effective in bringing about lasting changes in behavior. " LINK
Is anyone here familiar with B.F skinner's work or with Behaviorism in general? Of all the schools of psychology I tend to lean more towards behaviorism and Social Learning Theory. I'am wondering if anyone has tried to rehabilitate criminals based on Skinner's theories?
I think a certain amount can be discovered through the behaviourist approach, observation is undoubtedly an important tool in any psychological research however I don't believe you can ignore internal mental states when studying behaviour and in that way I think it lacks a bit
Yeah,that's where the Social Learning Theory of Albert Bandura and Julian Rotter come in. Both were behavorist,but acknowledeged for example that the effectivness of reinforcers was influenced by the value people placed on them.
I know that behaviourists do take into account an individual's environment but what I meant is that behaviourists tend to ignore the workings of the brain. I think behaviourism is valuable when it's combined with other approaches. I just read a bit about the social learning theory you mentioned, they combine behaviourism with a look at cognitive processes, that seems more accurate to me than behaviourism in it's original form I never understand people sticking rigidly to one approach, people are complex, influenced socially, mentally and vary greatly in experience but at this point i have no answers hehe
Here's an interesting article I found. The author argues that behavioral approaches have been more effective,influential and has become more mainstream than most people realize. " Why the enthusiasm? Because behavioristic analyses work! We know how to alleviate or eliminate phobias through extinction-based therapies; we know the power of a token economy in regulating behavior on a mental ward; we can reduce problematic behaviors and increase the probability of desired behaviors by judiciously providing and withholding reinforcements. Even for problems that cognitively oriented psychologists study, behavioristic therapies are the treatments of choice. For an autistic child, Lovaas's behavioristic techniques provide the greatest (indeed, so far the only) hope. (Theory of mind debates about autism are fine, but not if you want therapies and treatment - go to behaviorism). Similarly, for stuttering and aphasia, as interesting as their analysis by psycholinguists may be, the treatments come largely from the behaviorists' labs. In the field of neurobiology of learning, the central paradigm is classical conditioning and the main theoretical model is the Rescorla-Wagner model. And behavioristic analyses exist in self-management programs, in industry (Organizational Behavior Management), in sports, in parenting guides, and of course in animal training programs for pets and for zoos. Anywhere that prediction and control of overt behavior is critical, one finds behavioristic analyses at work. In sum, this answer maintains that, although most psychologists don't know it, behaviorism still is alive and thriving, albeit perhaps not as much in the mainstream of the field as it once was. " " Perhaps the most radical answer to the question I posed is that behaviorism is less discussed and debated today because it actually won the intellectual battle. In a very real sense, all psychologists today (at least those doing empirical research) are behaviorists. Even the most cognitively oriented experimentalists study behavior of some sort. They might study effects of variables of pushing buttons on computers, or filling out checklists, or making confidence ratings, or patterns of bloodflow, or recalling words by writing them on sheets of paper, but they almost always study objectively verifiable behavior. (And even subjective experiences, such as confidence ratings, can be replicated across people and across conditions). This step of studying objectively verifiable behavior represents a huge change from the work of many psychologists in 1904. Today the fields of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience are highly behavioral... " Behaviorism's influence
