The behaviorist manifesto PDF

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Psychology has to be scientific, and to be scientific it has to conform to the criteria and methods of the biological sciences and ultimately of the physico-chemistry. Conduct should be its object and method in observing such behaviors.
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THE BEHAVIORIST MANIFESTO The behavioral manifesto: By the end of the 19th century reality was seen as an elementalist and associative is (basic element associated with each other according to certain laws). Psychology then studies the functions (feelings, perception, memory, thought, will, etc.) in the assumption that you have found the last elements. Then we understood that behavior is a unit itself, and that it is unique and unrepeatable for each person. Also from these unique behaviors we can, through a process of abstraction and generalization, find repeatable constant forms in certain groups of people. Only by an intellectual artifice can we cut from these constants of behavior the aspects that make the recognition of the world and of itself (perception); or cut back on the aspects that make problem-solving (intelligence); or the memory of successive events (memory). This idea that first is the system and then the artificial exercise of breaking down the elements of the system is later and is not born as it might be from the social sciences, but precisely the development of the natural sciences. Scientific knowledge is not to know definitively true, but to know provisionally true: what is true for the scientific community at a given point in its development. In America, a way of understanding psychology as a natural science is being built. A science based on objective observation of the facts. While there is no objective observation of any fact, since the participation of the subjectivity of the observer is always present, at that time a psychology based on the observation of allegedly measurable units of conduct, verifiable by a external observer and able to be experimentally repeated, seemed to be the model of what should be a psychological science. Thus is born the behaviorism,a school founded by the American psychologist John Watson. It is a behavioral manifesto because Watsonian conductism is postulate as an essentially scientific and objective position. Psychology has to be scientific, and to be scientific it has to conform to the criteria and methods of the biological sciences and ultimately of the physicochemistry. Conduct should be its object and method in observing such behaviors. Today therapies to counteract habits and relearn behaviors (whether food, alcohol intake, compulsion to drug use, modification of sexual behaviors) are often based on methods that derive from behaviorism. From the point of view of its theoretical development we outline three moments: a)classic, methodological first and radical behavior then, b)-neoconductism, c)third-generation conductism. Behavior as a unit of analysis and the objective method: observation, measurement, reproduction and predictability:

Outline of objective currents in psychology: There are three authors who necessarily include themselves in what are called objective (objectivist) currents. This is Pavlov, Bechterev and Watson. De Pavlov was a Russian philosopher who researched the reflex arch and the forms of conditioning. One of his greatest discoveries is that of an instrument: stomach or salivary fistula. It is a recording tool for observing and measuring the adaptive behavior of secreting saliva versus food ingestion. He discovered psychic secretions (an original stimulus had been associated with a subsequent stimulus). How is it discriminated between stimuli? We can't ask an animal when it perceives two more or less similar stimuli in a different way, and a man does. As introspection had to be ruled out, he used animal psychology. An animal was conditioned to secrete saliva in front of a note, a sound of certain vibrations per second, and not to secrete saliva in the face of another sound of defameans vibrations. What happens when the notes, the sounds, approached each other? The amount of saliva secreted as it moved away from the salivation note was descending. The space between the two sounds corresponds to what is called the discrimination threshold. Pavlov clearly distinguished between "neurophysiology", which was his subject of interest in research, and "psychology". Who did create a psychology was Bechterev. He worked on thinking and learning. He argued that just as it was possible to think of a reflexology of individual processes it was possible to think of a collective psychology. Its system can be defined as a monistic system, since it postulates a single reality, in which the most complex systems are understood based on simple phenomena, which are conditioned reflexes. Watson stated that the mind is not only not a subject of psychology (science cannot take care of it), but it also does not exist. Although Watson is not a reflexologist, nor is Pavlov a psychologist, nor Ischterev a behaviorist, there is a theoretical connection between them, which allows them to be included in an objective current. Behavioral school formulations: Watson in one of his books says: "Consciousness is a mere assumption, with as little chance of being tested as soul, and a supposed assumption that cannot be proven is a non-scientific assumption. No science can be built on the basis of ideas if it cannot be verified." The soul, consciousness or mind are for him intangible concepts, which also necessarily imply by definition introspection as a method. Hence the request to limit the analysis of behaviors only to what can be observed externally. The E-R model (stimulus-response). Connection:

Watson understands by behavior what an organism does in the form of external, visible behavior. His problems as a scientist are three: 1)-given a response, a behavior, see what was the stimulus that provokedit;2)-given a stimulus, see what response will happen, and 3)-when that answer has not been inherited, see how that answer has been learned. Learning non-inherited behaviors is a tribute to reflexology (reflex arch and unconditional response). When the response has not been learned, the stimulus is called unconditional stimulus, unconditional response. That is, an unconditional stimulus is one that can provoke a response without prior learning. While a conditioned stimulus is one capable of arousing a response when there has previously been a learning of the subject. For example: eating could be taken as an unconditional response in a baby; but if a person likes a certain musical genre, his behavior manifests himself in feeling pleasure when he hears what he likes: a learning based on chains of conditioning that is supposed to go back to unconditional responses. Watson defines cone psychology as an objective and experimental branch of natural science, the object of which is human behavior. The psychology thus conceived would have no problem defining itself as science, because simply in a branch of the natural sciences. Its fundamental postulates derive from the three purposes already mentioned: 1)- All behavior is composed of objectively analyzeable responses and that complex human behavior can be analyzed in units of unconditional and conditioned simple responses (stimulus-response). 2)- The behavior is always composed of muscle movements and glandular secretions (the behavior can be understood as physical-chemical processes). 3)- Every stimulus follows a response and every response is a response to a stimulus. 4)- Consciousness processes cannot be scientifically studied Watson also says that when we think about what we're actually doing, it's "talk but in an inaudible, subvocal way." This means that ideas have energy. The problem of emotions: Watson argues that at birth there are three basic emotions that are unconditional answers: love,fear and anger. Love is aroused in the baby by caresses, and manifests itself in the skin because it becomes pink, the baby calms down and relaxes. Fear is aroused by the sudden loss of the support base, which produces bodily contractions, screams and anger is aroused by the holding of the baby, making it impossible for him to move, which causes him to alter visceral processes and contractures. All emotions or subsequent feelings are understood as conditionings from these basic situations.To

cure a phobia (produced by the association that the child does with one thing and a situation where the unconditional response of fear was raised) we would have to discondition that thing as a stimulus of fear and condition it with regard to behaviors of affection or love, exposing it more and more wax from it and reinforcing positive responses. The assumption is that the phonigen object (fear generator) would lose its association with an unconditional stimulus of fear and would be associated with a conditioned stimulus ofpleasure. Learning theory. Reinforcement Law and Exercise Law: To the question of why one learns, that is why an already experienced fact tends to be repeated, these theories raise two possibilities: 1). it is learned by systematic repetition of a behavior (exercise law) and 2). is learned by satisfaction derived from the gratification following the execution of a behavior (reinforcement law). The behavior followed, not of a prize but of a punishment, also tends to be learned. Neoconductism: Molar or intentional conductism : One of Watson'smost important continuators was Tolman,head of a movement known as molar or intentional conductism. Tolman started from the critical idea that Watson did a molecular analysis of behaviors, focusing on the relationships between E-R. The differentiation between molecular or molar behaviors was already raised: Tolman adds that acts of conduct have emerging properties of the reactions that are present in those acts, and that what psychology should study is precisely those emerging qualities. Tolman proposes that the object of psychology is acts, behaviors as a whole. The qualities of these acts are three: 1)- acts always tend to and come from. 2)- tending to or always come show us a certain specific pattern of interaction of the subject, both as objects purpose or medium objects. (medium objects are intermediate instruments for achieving these purpose objects). 3)- The subject has the possibility to select certain behaviors before others, which means that determinism is not absolute. The role of meaning and intent in the assessment of stimuli and responses: Tolman wonders how it is explained that every act tends to and comes from; how to explain the use of medium objects to achieve purposeful objects; how to explain the selection of possible media objects. It is clear that tending to show us some intention on the part of the organism, so this behaviorism was called intentional. But there is no intention without cognition (level of knowledge). These two will become the two explanatory concepts of acts. The determinants of behaviors are not therefore the stimuli, but the cognitions and intentions that he calls immanent determinants of the behavior, which are interiors of the organism. There is intent when a response shows docility (a tendency to occur) in relation to some purpose, or whenever a response is ready to transform or the organism is

willing to choose, gradually or suddenly, certain behaviors over others. This docility of behavior is what operationally gives an account of an intentionality. An act is characterized not only by its intentional nature but by its cognitive components by assuming that organisms "know" the objects-ends to which they are directed. The immanenet determinants can be caused by stimuli of the medium as by stimuli of the organism itself. Internal or external stimuli are called initiating causes. External Determinants Answers Immanent stimulus Internal (intention and Acts Initiating Causes Cognition) Tolman argues that: 1)- non-physiologist conductism is possible, and 2) behavioralism can resume with a new methodology the problems of previous psychology. Its fundamental concepts are three: 1)- stimulating agent: they are the independent, initiating causes of phenomena of total behavior. 2)- indication for behavior: stimuli become clues. E.g., a stimulus may be the noise of a door when it opens, which becomes a hint when that noise indicates that someone opened it. The stimuli exist in the medium and the indications imply some discrimination on the part of the subject. 3)- act of conduct: given the stimulant agents determine the indications of the conduct; based on the indications of conduct to determine the object of the conduct and given the object of the conduct to see what the act of conduct of the organism is. *Third generation conductism: ALBERT BANDURA. Theory of Social Learning: Model learning: Humans learn most of their behavior through observation, through modeling: by observing others we get an idea of how new behaviors are performed and subsequently, this coded information serves us as a guide to the action. We avoid unnecessary mistakes, learning. Observation learning processes: According to the theory of social learning, the influences of models produce learning mainly for their informative function. When exposed to a model, people who observe it acquire symbolic representations of the activities carried out by the model. These representations guide them to take appropriate action. According to this conceptualization, observational learning is led by four processes that make up it: *Attention processes: People cannot learn by observation if they do not attend to the significant traits of the behavior that serves them modeled or if they do not

perceive it properly. Attention processes determine which ones are selected from the many possible models and which aspects are drawn from their examples. The functional value of the behaviors carried out by the various models determines which models the people serve and which they do not care about. The attention we pay to a model is delimited by its interpersonal attraction. The nature of the behaviors that serve the model also determines, in part, the rate and level of learning by observation. Observers benefit more or less from the experiences observed based on their ability to process information. *Retention processes: If people did not remember the behavior that serves as a model for them, it could not influence them. The second fundamental process involved in observation learning is the retention of the activities that have served as models at a given time. When they are no longer present to guide them, the response patterns have to be represented in memory in a symbolic way. Observation learning is based on two systems of representation: image representation and verbal. Some behaviors are retained in the form of images. Sensory stimulation produces sensations that give rise to perceptions of external phenomena. When the model stimuli are repeatedly exposed, they produce lasting and recoverable images of the performances performed by the models. The second system of representation involves the verbal coding of the phenomena that serve as a model. Most cognitive behavior-regulating processes are primarily verbal, rather than visual. Observers who encode model activities into words, concise designations or vivid images, learn and retain behavior better than those who merely observe or mentally deal with other issues while contemplating the activity. In addition to symbolic coding, repetition is an important aid to memory. When people mentally repeat themselves or perform the guidelines for their model response, they tend to forget them less than if they don't think about them or practice what they have seen. In the first years, the actions of the models evoke, directly and immediately, the imitation responses of children. In deferred imitation, events that are not present must be represented internally. *Motor Reproduction Processes: The third component of modeling is the conversion of symbolic representations into appropriate actions. Behavioral reproduction is achieved when the responses are organized spatially and temporarily, according to the guidelines that serve as a model. First the answers are organized, then they are started, checked and perfected using informative feedback. There are other factors that prevent you from doing things that are learned by observation. The discrepancies between symbolic representation and execution serve as a clue to correct ingestly action. When learning complex skills, the problem arises that those who do them cannot directly observe their responses, so they have to use vague quinesthetic cues or verbal information from people who see them from the outside. *Motivational processes: In the theory of social learning we distinguish between the acquisition of a behavior and its execution, because people do not do everything

they learn. Your propensity to adopt the behaviors you learn by imitation will depend on the consequences of imitation: it will be greater when the consequences are valuable and less when they have punitive or unrewarding effects. We can produce imitative responses regardless of the underlying processes: it is enough for one model to show the desired answers over and over again, instruct others to reproduce their behaviors, help them physically when they fail, and then reward when you are right, so that most people finally make answers similar to yours. Therefore, if in a given situation an observer fails to simulate the conduct of the model, this may be due to one of the following factors: that it has not observed the relevant activities, which has improperly codified the events that served as a model for the represent them in memory, who has not retained what he learned, or who is physically unable to do so or who does not feel sufficiently incited to it. Jean Piaget's genetic structuralist approach: Piaget was a Swiss biologist, regarded as the creator of one of the most important psychological schools of our time, the school of Genetic Psychology.Piaget's is a general theory of the development of cognitive processes sustained in an epistemological framework defined as a genetic structuralism. Piaget accepts from Gestalt the definition of structure but notes that the laws that state gestaltists to account for the organization of the conceptual and cognitive field, are invariable laws and are considered independent of evolutionary development. The subject is the actor, and often the author of such structures, who adapts as they develop, through an active balance. Two basic ideas arise from these criticisms: (a)- psychological structures are not immutable, nor given once and forever, but are built along evolution; b)- the subject is active and builds its own structures. Structures do not arise from nothing or are randomly configured, but are the result of a genesis. Genesis is a certain form of transformation that starts from a state A and flows into a B state, being the B state more stable than the A. In psychology we do not know an absolute beginning and the genesis is always produced from an initial state that entails in turn, a structure. Genesis is a relatively determined system of transformations that involve a story and continuously lead from state A to state B, with the B state being more stable than the initial state. This involves conceiving psychological structures as dynamic organizations, open to successive transformations. (Piaget object). Piaget's method has two approaches: the experimental approach and the clinical approach. We could say that the former aims to "generalize", while the second aims to "individualize". The experimental method reproduces again and again the

phenomenon it wishes to observe, in order to establish regularities that allow the formulation of general laws; the clinical method, on the other hand, focuses on the in-depth and detailed study of individual cases in unrepeatable situations. This method is often called "clinical-experimental" as it has two moments. The first Piaget confronts children of different ages with problems or critical situations designed by him and watches them. On the second moment he performs a more personalized task, consisting of deepening the exploration of the data obtained at the previous moment, through dialogue with the child. In turn, clinical observations are made in two dimensions: a). longitudinal, following the evolution of a certain aspect of the behavior in the same child at different ages (Piaget made it with his own children) and b). taking a considerable number ...