Behaviorism (English behavior — behavior) in a broad sense — a direction in psychology that studies human behavior and ways to influence human behavior.
Behaviorism in the narrow sense, or classical behaviorism, is the behaviorism of J. Watson and his school, which studies only externally observable behavior and makes no distinction between the behavior of humans and other animals. For classical behaviorism, all mental phenomena are reduced to the reactions of the body, mainly motor ones: thinking is identified with speech-motor acts, emotions — with changes within the body, consciousness is not studied in principle, as it does not have behavioral indicators. The main mechanism of behavior is the connection between the stimulus and the response (S->R).
The main method of classical behaviorism is the observation and experimental study of the reactions of the body in response to environmental influences in order to identify correlations between these variables that are accessible to mathematical description.
Representatives: Edward Thorndike, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, John Brodes Watson, Edward Chase Tolman, Burres Frederick Skinner.
The mission of behaviorism is to translate the speculative fantasies of the humanities into the language of scientific observation. Behaviorism was born as a protest against the arbitrary speculative speculations of researchers who do not define concepts in a clear, operational way, and explain behavior only metaphorically, without translating beautiful explanations into the language of clear instructions: what needs to be done specifically in order to get the desired change in behavior from oneself or another.
“Your irritation is caused by the fact that you do not accept yourself. What annoys you in others is what you cannot accept in yourself. You need to learn to accept yourself! — This is beautiful, it may be true, but, firstly, it is not verifiable, and secondly, the algorithm of actions for solving the problem with irritation is incomprehensible.
John Watson — founder of behaviorism
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Behaviorism became the ancestor of the behavioral approach in practical psychology, where the focus of the psychologist is human behavior, and more specifically “what is in behavior”, “what do we want to change in behavior” and “what exactly should be done for this”. Over time, however, it became necessary to distinguish between behavioral and behavioral approaches. The behavioral approach in practical psychology is an approach that implements the principles of classical behaviorism, that is, it works primarily with externally visible, observable human behavior and considers a person only as an object of influence in full analogy with the natural science approach. However, the behavioral approach is broader. It includes not only behavioral, but also cognitive-behavioral and personal-behavioral approaches, where a psychologist sees in a person the author of both external and internal behavior (thoughts and emotions, the choice of a particular life role or position) — any actions for which he is the author and for which he is responsible. See →
The behavioral approach fits well with other approaches of modern applied psychology. Many modern behaviorists use elements of both the Gestalt approach and elements of psychoanalysis. Modifications of behaviorism are widespread in American psychology and are represented primarily by the social learning theory of A. Bandura and D. Rotter.
In psychotherapy, the behavioral approach is one of many commonly used approaches.
If the client is afraid of flying, the psychoanalyst will look for childhood traumatic experiences associated with flying, and the Freudian psychoanalyst will try to find out what associations the patient has with the long fuselage of the aircraft. In such a case, a behavioral psychologist will start a standard desensitization procedure — in fact, he will begin to develop a conditioned reflex of calm relaxation to the stressful situation of the flight. See Basic Approaches in Practical Psychology
As far as efficiency is concerned, in general it can be said that the behavioral approach has about the same efficiency as other approaches. The behavioral approach is more suitable for simple cases of psychotherapy: getting rid of standard phobias (fears), unwanted habits, the formation of desirable behavior. In complex, confusing, «personal» cases, the use of behavioral methods gives a short-term effect. There are historical preferences: America prefers behavioral approaches to all others, in Russia behaviorism is not honored. Look →