Control: A History of Behavioral Psychology

2. From Apogee to Perigee: Radical Behaviorism Appears but Fails to Take Root

2 From Apogee to Perigee Radical Behaviorism Appears but Fails to Take Root Typically, the classical neobehaviorisms of the post–World War II period are assigned a continuous history, originating in the empiricism and associationism of Locke and Hume, which culmi­ nated in the mature psychological associationism of Alexander Bain and in Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary associationism, from which arose, via Darwin’s speculations about the evolutionary origins of mind, a widespread and wide­ranging comparative psychology. John B. Watson, who became America’s leading comparative psychologist, is the main actor in this dramatic tale. Supposedly the insights de­ rived from his animal work formed the imaginative core of a fully fledged, fully comprehensive behaviorist theory, which eventually (and inevitably) became a group of research­based, theoretically so­ phisticated neobehaviorisms. Certainly by the early 1920s “behav­ iorism” had come to mean the doctrines of John B. Watson.1 By the middle of the decade Watson was advancing a form of behaviorism in which he dismissed mental, spiritual, or, indeed, abstract qualities as unworthy of serious study. He was also propounding a social technology whereby social agents (especially mothers) formed chil­ dren’s personalities, capabilities, and propensities very early in life; more to the point, he exhorted socializing agents to use their powers to produce human beings with predetermined characteristics. How­ ever, this socially oriented and crudely speculative behaviorism is a far cry from the highly sophisticated and technical work of the neobehaviorists. I will devote most of this chapter to establishing Watson’s true role in behaviorism’s history. Most of the rest of the chapter will be devoted to the behaviorism of Edwin Guthrie. He did not share the limelight with Watson in the 55 56 | From Apogee to Perigee 1920s; nevertheless he bridged the gap between early, theoretical be­ haviorism and neobehaviorism. However, he did almost no research and his theory retained the speculative character of early behaviorism. Hence he was powerless to overcome the temporary decline in behav­ iorism’s fortunes in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The authors of the first textbooks on the history of psychology claimed that psychological behaviorism had its origins in the Ameri­ can comparative psychology of the first two decades of this century.2 It is certainly true that Watson was America’s preeminent early com­ parative psychologist and that he eventually became a behaviorist. It is also true that America’s first comparative psychologist, Edward Lee Thorndike, invented instrumental learning, one of the two constitu­ tive paradigms of behaviorist learning theory. However, there is no clear line of descent from Watson’s animal work to his behaviorism, while Thorndike, although he briefly flirted with behaviorism, soon renounced it. Finally, neobehaviorist learning theory was almost ex­ clusively animal science; in its first manifestation, behaviorism was a human science. Others have dealt fully with Watson’s contributions to comparative psychology.3 Robert Boakes concludes that Watson, to a very large ex­ tent, allowed others to set his agenda for him.4 He does, however, pin­ point some themes distinguishing Watson’s work from that of his con­ temporaries. First, Watson gave some priority to psychological devel­ opment, starting with his doctoral research, published in 1903. One of his students, J. Allen, carried out a further developmental study a year later. During his fieldwork on the Dry Tortugas Watson studied the behavioral development of young terns. Watson’s work on the psychological development of animals came to an end in a study with Karl Spencer Lashley.5 Boakes suggests that Watson pursued this re­ search theme in his work with human infants and that it is only there that we see a continuity between Watson’s animal and human work. Second, Watson did some work on the relationship between instinct and learning in terns. Third, Watson knew that if one was to make ef­ fective comparisons between the psychological abilities of higher ani­ mals and those of people, one had to develop complex learning tasks, such as delayed reaction and multiple­choice. However, he did no sus­ tained work there. Oddly enough, during his period of animal re­ search Watson showed little interest in the processes of habit acquisi­ tion.6 From Apogee to Perigee | 57 As an animal researcher, Watson was a classical functionalist (that is, he believed that mind played an adaptive role in animal life). Al­ though he never mentioned the evolutionary psychologist James Mark Baldwin...