B. F. Skinner’s theory and behaviorism.

Classical and operant conditioning as a way of understanding human learning.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner is not only one of the most important historical figures in psychology; he is, in many ways, responsible for its affirmation as a science.He is, in many respects, responsible for the affirmation of psychology as a science.

His contributions to this field are not only methodological, but also philosophical, and his radical behaviorism, although far from being hegemonic today, allowed among other things that in the second half of the twentieth century was perfecting a tool as useful as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, very inspired by this researcher. Let us see what were the main keys of B. F. Skinner's theory.

A turn towards operant conditioning

When B. F. Skinner began his studies, behaviorism was basically based on simple conditioning inherited from the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and popularized by John B. Watson.

Explained very briefly, this first approach to behavioral psychology proposed to modify behavior by making pleasant or unpleasant stimuli that were presented at the same time as other stimuli to which the individual was to develop an aversion or liking. I say "individuals" and not "people" because simple conditioning was so rudimentary that it worked even with life forms with a nervous system as simple as that of reptiles or mollusks.

For example, in Pavlov's famous dog experiments, this physiologist had the animals begin to salivate at the sound of a certain sound, since this had been associated with a certain nervous system.This sound had been associated with food in earlier experiments. The key to simple conditioning was to associate stimuli with each other.

Skinner admitted that simple conditioning could be useful in certain cases, but he ruled out the possibility that behavior could be explained only through this mechanism, among other things because the conditions for it to occur rarely occur outside a laboratory. However, he did believed that our behavior (and that of many other life forms) can be understood as a process of adaptation to pleasant and unpleasant experiences, useful and unhelpful.useful and unhelpful.

The change brought about by B. F. Skinner's theory was in another direction: instead of focusing on the way in which stimuli are associated with each other, he looked at the way in which actions are associated with each other and the consequences of these actions. What happens to us because of something we have done is itself a stimulus of which we take note. Thus, Skinner takes into account the perception-action-perception loop.

Operant conditioning

For Skinner, learning from the consequences of the way in which one interacts with the world was the main mechanism of behavior modification. Both humans and animals are always performing all kinds of actions, no matter how insignificant, and these always have a consequence for us, which we receive in the form of stimuli. This association between what we do and what we notice to be the consequences of our actions is the basis of operant conditioning, also known as instrumental conditioning, which Skinner said was the basic form of operant conditioning. according to Skinner was the basic form of learning in most forms of life..

But the fact that the mechanisms of operant conditioning were basically the same in many types of organisms does not mean that the contents on which they are produced would be the same regardless of whether we are a mouse or a human being. Members of our species have the ability to create abstract concepts and generate autobiographical memory, but for Skinner the emergence of these refined forms of thought were the tip of the pyramid of a process that began by learning from our successes and our mistakes in real time.

Moreover, the methodology to which behavioral psychologists normally resorted was based on animal models (experimentation with rats, pigeons, etc.), which in a way is a limitation.

The black box and Skinner

Behaviorists have always been well known for their conceptualization of mental processes as phenomena that occur inside a "black box", a metaphor that serves to indicate the impossibility of observing from the outside what goes on in people's minds. However, the black box of Skinner's theory was not the same as that of the early behaviorists.. While psychologists such as John B. Watson denied the existence of a mental world, Skinner did believe that the study of mental processes could be useful in psychology.

However, for B. F. Skinner, in practice it was not necessary to do so, and it was enough to start from the analysis of the relationships between measurable and directly observable actions and the consequences of these actions. The reason for his position on this issue was that he did not consider our mind to be anything more than a part of the journey from the performance of the action to the registration of the stimuli that are (or seem to be) a consequence of these actions, albeit with the added difficulty that it is practically impossible to study objectively.

In fact, the very concept of "the mind" was misleading for Skinner: it leads one to think that there is something inside us that makes thoughts and action plans appear out of nowhere, as if our psychic life were disconnected from our environment. That is why in B. F. Skinner's theory, the object of study of psychology is behavior, and not the mind or mind and behavior at the same time..

According to this behaviorist, everything that is usually called "mental process" was in reality just another form of behavior, something that is set in motion to make the fit between our actions and the expected consequences optimal.

The Legacy of B. F. Skinner's Theory

The theoretical legacy of the father of radical behaviorism entailed a total rejection of the speculative research methods of psychoanalysis and a proposal for research outside the realm of psychoanalysis and a proposal for research outside of introspection and centered only on objective and easily measurable variables.

Moreover, he pointed out the risk of transforming very abstract theoretical constructs (such as "mind" or "demotivation") into causal elements that explain our behaviors. In Skinner's view, to say that someone has committed a crime because of his feeling of loneliness is like saying that a locomotive moves forward because of movement.

Because it relied so heavily on operant conditioning, Skinner's work vindicated animal experimentation. claimed animal experimentation as a useful source of knowledge. as a useful source of knowledge, something that has been strongly criticized both by psychologists of the cognitivist current and by several philosophers, according to whom there is a qualitative leap between the mental life of non-human animals and the members of our species. Nevertheless, animal models continue to be widely used in psychology to approximate the types of behaviors present in our species.