Behaviorism wanted to control and predict behavior: What applications stand out?

Watson’s manifesto promised that behaviorism would help in the “prediction and control of behavior”, and the applied value of such a behavioral science was proposed to be a central benefit of the approach. So what sort of applications were created based on behavioristic principles? Read about three examples below.

Project Pigeon

Like many behaviorists, Burrhus Skinner conducted extensive basic research work on animals, such as pigeons. In the 1940s, Skinner attempted to demonstrate the utility of operant conditioning by helping the US Navy train pigeons to act as “pilots” for a bombing device. Pigeons were trained by operant conditioning to recognize a target and would peck at the screen to control the device. The “killer pigeons” seem to have performed reasonably well but were seen as impractical and the project was eventually cancelled (Skinner, 1986).

Behavioral Therapy

Joseph Wolpe was trained as a physician and started practicing therapy using psychodynamic techniques but became disappointed with poor patient outcomes based on these. Wolpe eventually turned to experimental work with animals to find treatment alternatives. Wolpe (1958) demonstrated that aversive stimulation delivered to restricted animals could produce neurotic symptoms and then tested different “cures” systematically. The principles of conditioning led him to the idea of systematic desensitization, a technique now widely used to help human patients effectively overcome phobias and other anxiety disorders based on principles of classical conditioning. A person is exposed to a stimulus at a low level, and once no negative reaction is present, a stronger version of the negative stimulus is given.

Token Economies

Point systems have been in use informally for decades, if not centuries, in which students or prisoners can trade points for items or privileges. The concepts of operant conditioning and reinforcement, however, gave this practice additional theoretical standing, and by the 1960s the first “token economy” was systematically studied in a mental health context (a psychiatric ward; Ayllon & Azrin, 1965). A token economy is a system of contingency management based on the systematic reinforcement of target behaviors (e.g., cleaning, sorting laundry), in which the reinforcers are tokens (e.g., plastic chips) that can be exchanged for other reinforcers (e.g., food, leisure time). It is therefore based on the principles of operant conditioning using a generalized conditioned reinforcer, that is, a conditioned reinforcer that obtains its power from several sources of reinforcement. The original program by Ayllon and Azrin was effective in maintaining the desired behaviors but only as long as the reinforcement procedures were in effect.

What do you think?

What do you see as the main advantages of the examples supplied above? Can you think of conceptual, practical, or ethical limitations of some of the approaches?

Skinner, like Thomas More, used fiction to provide us with a thought experiment on a socio-political model. Skinner’s book, Walden Two (1948), described a fictional community run by the principles of behavioral analysis, including the systematic development and testing of different evidence-based interventions. But is a society in which individuals’ behaviors are fully determined by controlled environmental variables a utopia or a dystopia?
(CC BY-SA 4.0; this is the woodcut of Utopia’s map as it appears in Thomas More’s Utopia, printed by Johan Froben in March 1518)

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References

Ayllon, T., & Azrin, N. H. (1965). The measurement and reinforcement of behavior of psychotics. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 8(6), 357–383. http://doi.org/10.1901/jeab.1965.8-357

Skinner, B.F. (1948). Walden two. Hackett Publishing Company.

Skinner, B. F. (1986). Some thoughts about the future. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 45(2), 229–235. http://doi.org/10.1901/jeab.1986.45-229

Wolpe, J. (1958). Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Stanford University Press.

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