Psychological Behaviorism and Behaviorizing Psychology

Abstract

Paradigmatic or psychological behaviorism (PB), in a four-decade history of development, has been shaped by its goal, the establishment of a behaviorism that can also serve as the approach in psychology (Watson's original goal). In the process, PB has become a new generation of behaviorism with abundant heuristic avenues for development in theory, philosophy, methodology, and research. Psychology has resources, purview and problem areas, and nascent developments of many kinds, gathered in chaotic diversity, needing unification (and other things) that cognitivism cannot provide. Behaviorism can, within PB's multilevel framework for connecting and advancing both psychology and behaviorism.

Predictors of Health Behavior from a Behavior-Analytic Orientation

“…The finding that the three covert positive reinforcers and the three negative reinforcers were highly correlated is quite consistent with the suggestion of Staats (1994;Bums & Staats, 1991) that stimuli can act as reinforcers and as emotion elicitors. Staats's theory of psychological behaviorism holds that classiDownloaded by [University of Iowa Libraries] at 23:12 15 March 2015 cally conditioned emotional reactions to stimuli are closely related to their operant reinforcing function.…”

A study in the founding of applied behavior analysis through its publications

“…Also, Staats credits himself with founding ''the field of child behavior analysis'' (www2.hawaii.edu/,staats/clinical. htm; see also Staats, 1994Staats, , 1996. These claims, though, are not well supported in the literature and are sometimes disputed (e.g., Plaud, 1995;Rutherford, 2009, p. 168), but resolving them is beyond the scope of our study.…”

Exploring green criminology: toward a green criminological revolution

“…unlike other psychological views, behaviorism is held out as the science of behavior rather than as the science of the mind, with the latter view being associated with methodological behaviorism (Day, 1983). psychological or radical behaviorism holds that behavior can be explained without reference to psychological processes and mental states, and that behavior is instead driven by responses to external stimulus (Staats, 1994). These latter views are also expressed in analytic or logical behaviorism which argues that psychological referents used to explain behavior should be replaced by behavioral categories (putnam, 1965).…”