Skinner and Staats
The Challenge of Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a complex theory of aspects of learning, when applied to
personality theory, describes personality as an accumulation of learned
responses. Skinner’s form is called radical behaviorism and Arthur Staats’
form is called psychological behaviorism, since it incorporates other
psychological principles beyond pure learning and observable behavior.
Staats also explores language and cognition, emotion and motivation, and
sensory-motor behaviors.
Radical Behaviorism: B.F. Skinner devised a theory of behavior based on
behavior being shaped by its consequences and outcomes- rewards gained or
punishers suffered. Skinner primarily worked with animals but never
hesitated to generalize his animal findings to human behavior.
Biography
Skinner was born in 1904 in Pennsylvania to a middle-class family.
He had a happy childhood and showed a lot of interest in invention of
devices. His primary interest was in writing, so he majored in English at
college. While he gained some notice for his poetry, when he took a year off
to write his novel, he couldn’t find anything significant to write about. He
believed understanding human behavior would be more rewarding than
writing about it after the fact. So he went to Harvard for grad school in
psychology, making up for his deficiencies (he had had no classes in
psychology) by extensive reading of primary sources. He began
investigating the processes of learning after developing the Skinner box to
measure animal responses. Learning had been studied up to that time in
mazes, but many aspects of learning were confounded in such a system. He
earned his doctorate in 1931, married in 1936 and took a teaching job at
University of Minnesota. He had 2 daughters, one of whom was raised in an
apparatus he designed called the air crib, which controlled her environment.
During World War II he trained pigeons to guide missiles to targets, which
kept soldiers from such dangerous duty. It was successful, but the
government abandoned the project as the focus shifted to the atomic bomb.
Skinner continued to study principles of conditioning, and applied these
principles to society, as he wrote a novel called Walden Two. This book
showed how behaviorist principles could be used to design an idyllic
society. Skinner ultimately returned to Harvard in 1948 to continue his
research. He died from leukemia in 1990, after receiving the APA
Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology award. He did
significantly impact the direction of psychology, with his movement being
called the second wave of psychology, following psychoanalytic theory. It
did push psychology into the mainstream of hard science, as he only studied
observable phenomena, and found infinite numbers of ways to control and
predict these behaviors. Later behaviorists added the cognitive aspects to
human behavior to understanding, as Skinner’s version of understanding the
human being left out the very humanity for which humans are noted.
Behavior as the Data for Scientific Study- Skinner didn’t suggest causes
of behavior as coming from within the person, as a result of personality
differences. He thought personality theories up to then had been
contaminated by circular reasoning; that personality was not scientifically
measurable, so was of no interest to science. (Traits are inferred from
behavior, so they are simply summary descriptions of behavior.) Skinner
only wanted to know what controlled behavior, so he concentrated on
changing things in the environment to see how they affected behavioral
outputs. So he focused on the environmental explanations, rewards and
punishments to explain behavior. They were easier for scientists to
manipulate and observe. Since Skinner eschewed any internal explanations
for behavior, his theory was called radical behaviorism. He believed one
didn’t need to understand any internal variables (intervening cognitive
variables) to manipulate behavior, so they were unnecessary to study. Yet
we know that thoughts often cause behavior- we act on thoughts. Everything
that was ever created by man was first a thought. Yet Skinner was not
interested- it was enough to study the observable results- behavior. He
believed thoughts were merely collateral products of environmental factors
that also cause behavior. He also stressed means of control of behavior.
 The evolutionary context of operant behavior- Humans are so
successful as a species because we have learned to adapt to changing
environments. This skill came to us through evolution, as the most
adaptive humans survived to reproduce most successfully. Operant
conditioning is the selection of behavior due to its consequences.
 The rate of responding shows the effectiveness of learning. As
animals learn a behavior, they display it more rapidly and effectively
to gain their rewards. So Skinner used lower animals to control their
environments more completely and ascertain what affects rates of
response. He developed the Skinner box, an apparatus which can be
adjusted to provide rewards at a pace desired by the researcher, and
allow the animal to respond according to its learning speed. These
responses are called operant responses, responses freely emitted by
the animal, that were recorded on a print out. Rat responses were level
presses, while pigeons’ responses were disk pecking. So Skinner built
on the animal’s natural response repertoire.
Learning Principles: rates of responding can be increased by
reinforcement, and decreased by punishment/ extinction.
 Reinforcement: Increasing the Rate of Responding
o Positive reinforcer is any stimulus that strengthens the
behavior it follows.
o Base rate of response is first ascertained in a study- what does
the subject do without any particular response in the
environment? This base rate must be known in order to measure
any response increase or decrease after reinforcers are used.
o Primary reinforcers are innate gratifying results- food when
hungry, water when thirsty, sex when deprived. Nothing must
be learned for these to be reinforcing.
o Secondary reinforcers are things whose value has been
learned- praise, money, attention. People have varying
responses to these secondary reinforcers. The same thing which
triggers one person to work into a frenzy doesn’t affect another
person much at all. The effects must be noted to understand
whether a consequence is reinforcing or not. So Skinner
actually developed an idiographic approach to study of
personality- one must understand the unique reinforcement
history of the subject to understand his particular response
pattern.
o Negative reinforcer is any stimulus that increases a response
by being withdrawn. So the behavior increases when the
aversive stimulus ends or is escaped. This is not the same as
punishment, which is designed to get the subject to stop
responding.
Punishment and Extinction: Decreasing the Rate of Responding
 Punishment reduces the rate of responding. It is an aversive that
appears upon response. Unfortunately this is the most common
parental discipline tool, yet it is not the most effective. Even religions
use it to threaten the faithful into behaving themselves virtuously &
controlling their lustful desires. There are unintended negative effects,
though, such as developing fears/ anxieties in the children, resistance
to the authority figure, & hidden rebellions in other places. It really
only works if the authority figure is around to enforce the
consequences, so the value is not internalized within the child.
Skinner did not believe punishment was an effective means of
behavior control. He believed positive reinforcement was much more
effective, as it trained the child toward a positive goal instead of
focused him/her on avoidance of a negative behavior.
 Extinction is a means of eliminating a behavior by simply no longer
reinforcing it- by ignoring a distressing behavior, it will decline. Even
after a behavior is eliminated, though, it may recur, as the child tests
the environment to see if a reward might still be forthcoming. The
problem with extinction in parenting is that children have more energy
to continue a behavior than parents have in ignoring it! Also a
distressing behavior often gets reinforcement from peers, siblings, not
just parents.
Additional behavioral techniques
 Shaping is a way of training in a new behavior that the animal or
person has never done before. It relies on reinforcing successive
approximations of the desired response. In the beginning of toilet
training, the child is rewarded for simply sitting on the toilet.
Gradually a response is emitted and rewarded and increases in
frequency and accuracy. Then reinforcement is reduced until the
behavior is learned and no longer needs reinforcement.
 Chaining is a means of training in complex sequences of behaviors.
Generally it starts with the end behavior in mind and works
backwards. Animal training may begin as simply as rewarding the
killer whale for swimming over a stick lying in the bottom of the pool.
The whale learns that the stick is significant and swims over it more
determinately. Finally the stick is raised gradually until the whale
begins leaping out of the water to get over the bar and receive a
reward. Animals (and people) have been trained to do incredibly
complex behaviors in such a painstaking manner of reward. The
behaviors serve as triggers for the following behaviors, producing a
chain of behaviors only rewarded at the final effort.
 Discrimination learning occurs when people/ animals learn a
behavior in response to a stimulus in the environment. So when the
pigeon saw a light go on, it knew to peck the key and it would be
rewarded. If the light was off, there was no point in pecking the key.
 Discriminative stimuli are the environmental signals to respond.
People respond to a variety of environmental signals with predictable
behavior- stop on red, go on green. When they don’t, there is havoc.
The problem may come if the discriminative stimulus is similar to
other stimuli in the environment, producing confusion. Dogs were
triggered to experience severe neurosis by training them to salivate in
response to a circle, meaning they would get food, and not salivate to
an oval, which offered no food (and in some experiments was
associated with shock). As the oval and circle became more alike, the
dogs were sent into whimpering, crying, and withdrawing to the
corner of the cage when they couldn’t discriminate what might happen
next. This can be used to understand hypervigilance in abuse children,
anxiety and depression in victims of abuse, as they try to scan the
environment for cues to what may happen to them.
 Generalization occurs when discriminative stimuli resemble other
stimuli in the environment, and the animal responds to the other
stimuli as if they were discriminative. This principle of generalized
response allows us to learn behaviors and spread their usefulness into
a variety of venues. So we don’t have to learn new behaviors every
time we are faced with a new environment. This also explains much
personality stability, as people act similarly across situations and
differences in responses to other people and circumstances.
Schedules of reinforcement are the contingencies that are set up between
response and reinforcement. Even lower animals can discover the
contingencies of reinforcement and behave accordingly. Penguins at the zoo
come to the door for feeding on a regular time schedule, although the
penguins aren’t reading clocks!
 Continuous reinforcement schedule is the best way to train in a new
behavior- every response is reinforced quickly. They produce quick
learning, but rapid extinction if the reward is discontinued.
 Partial reinforcement schedules are various ways of reinforcing
responses in order to produce more long-term learning/ behaving.
Usually these schedules are put in place after continuous
reinforcement has established the behavior- it’s called leaning out the
reinforcement schedule.
o Fixed ratio reinforce after a fixed number of responses. The
faster the responses are emitted, the more reinforcements given.
This can work people to death if they are paid on a piecework
basis. It’s also the source of workaholism in doctors, lawyers,
and other people who get paid according to how many hours
they bill.
o Variable ratio is a reinforcement pattern that reinforces around
an average of responses. It produces a high rate of response and
is more resistant to extinction than FR. So the pigeon may have
to peck 5 times, 15 times, 45 times, but the average is 25 times.
o Fixed interval is reinforcement based on time- the pigeon will
get a reward after 15 minutes, as soon as he pecks after that
time. This produces a scalloped response pattern, with few
responses after a reinforcement, but many as the time is up.
This is what students do when they know there is an exam
every Friday- they begin studying on Thursday night!
o Variable interval reinforces around an average time, so the
scalloped effect smoothes out a bit, producing more regular
responses. (when the teacher uses regular, but unexpected pop
quizzes.)
Applications of Behavioral Techniques
 Therapy
o Behavior modification applies learning principles to change an
undesirable behavior.
o Functional analysis is first made to identify the stimuli and
reinforcers that keep this negative behavior in place. What are
the environmental triggers for the behavior? It may be hard to
find the specific triggers and rewards that have produced the
behavior, but sometimes it is very clear- when a child cries in
the store for candy and the mother gives him candy to get him
to stop crying, he learns he can always get candy at the store if
he will just cry repeatedly. Many parents don’t realize the
power of intermittent reinforcement in producing undesirable
behavior (even in their partners!) Then an intervention is
planned- it may require changing the situation to eliminate the
trigger, reinforcing more desirable behavior instead, or ignoring
the behavior to begin extinction.
o Token economies are using tokens for desired reinforcers.
Tokens can stand for privileges, money, food, freedom, but they
are manageable means of reward in a challenging environment,
such as the classroom. They also allow for a menu of rewards to
be used, which are variably appealing to numbers of children.
The downside of using this controlling reward system is that
children begin behaving only to gain reward, not because they
want to learn a behavior or get good at a skill. It depletes the
internal incentive to learn. These techniques are especially
useful for people who don’t use language or respond to more
social rewards- people with Alzheimer’s’, autism, language
disability. It can produce rapid success in overcoming habits
such as overeating, smoking, etc.
 Education- Skinner developed a teaching machine to present material
in small increments, with rapid answers available to get feedback for
one’s responses. He called it programmed instruction, which could
allow a student to develop skills at her own pace. The problem is
Skinner’s workbooks were incredibly boring and children hated them
after awhile. The learning goals were so small in increments that the
children quit before making a lot of progress. He never intended them
to replace teachers or to deal with complex ideas of learning, just to
learn specific skills. Today they have morphed into computer
programs to aid students in learning skills in math or writing, reading.
Radical Behaviorism and Personality Theory
Skinner’s theory as applied to personality was criticized as
insufficiently oriented toward human cognition, or inherited temperament.
Social relationships are very complex and difficult to understand according
to simple learning principles. The other criticism of Skinners’ theory has to
do with the idea that people are truly not free to make their own life choices,
as they are just a bundle of learned responses. Skinner said that a society
could be developed according to learning principles which allowed
maximum freedom of members, who had been trained to voluntarily behave
as good citizens. This was the concept described in Walden Two. Some
communities were actually developed on Skinner’s principles, but they
rarely lasted long. Language was also an area of study for Skinner, but it
caused great controversy with other researchers. Skinner called language
“verbal behavior” and simply thought it was a component operant behavior.
Language and thought were simply combinations of operants. Chomsky
disagreed, saying there were cultural universals in the acquisition of
language that showed it was an outcome of a specific part of the brain
designed for language in humans. Children even produced unique words to
express themselves, words which had not been used by anyone around them,
but which were meaningful and understandable to others. These unique
expressions could not have been learned through reinforcement. As a
personality theory, Skinner’s theory is really only useful as an alternative to
other internal personality theories.
Psychological Behaviorism: Staats unlike Skinner, translated personality
concepts into behavioral language. His psychological behaviorism
incorporates biological influences, as well as social interaction, child
development and measurement of traits. He did agree with Skinner that
personality is built by learning, even more so than biology.
Biography
Arthur Staats was born in New York in 1924 of Jewish parents only
recently in the US from Russia. He had a generally happy childhood, and he
read a lot and was very athletic. His family was liberal and progressive, so
he developed a world view that often separated him from others. This
difference contributed to his original thought about the nature of human
personality. He acquired a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at UCLA. He
began teaching at Arizona State University, where he began his own human
behavioral program. His discoveries applied to behavior modification,
behavior therapy, and behavioral assessment. Much of his work has been
incorporated in cognitive behavior therapy & personality assessment. He
married his assistant, who collaborated on his research program, and they
had a daughter in 1960. He raised his daughter and son according to training
procedures developed in his lab. He was the developer of time-out
procedures and token reinforcement. His theory is called unified positivism,
which combines findings from biology and philosophy and social sciences.
Reinforcement – since behavior is maintained by reinforcement, he
developed 2 interventions to help produce more advantageous behaviors:
 Time-out procedure is the removal of a child from a reinforcing
environment. This is commonly used today in parenting and school,
since it is effective in reducing problematic behavior without using
punitive measures.
 Token reinforcement program
 The other concept he developed had to do with the idea that rewards
produce positive emotional responses and punishers produce negative
emotional responses. So anything we feel emotional about can provide
incentives to behave in a certain way, or avoid specific environments.
So our own emotionality can be rewarding and determine behavior.
This concept made it sensible to include classical conditioning in
behaviorism. The theory became broader & more informative.
Basic Behavioral Repertoires (BBRs) are behavioral chains that are built
early in life, and continue for decades into adulthood. So behavioral
repertoires lead to different behaviors. The most important repertoires are
stepping stones for later, more complex learning. Staats did believe that
personality (BBRs) is a cause of behavior. So, like the psychoanalytic
theorists, Staats believed early human learning has special importance for
personality. Learning is long-term, cumulative and complex, resulting from
combinations of behaviors. If the basics aren’t learned early in life, later,
more complex learning might not occur. Interventions can remediate early
learning failures, & this can include social deficits. These BBRs come in 3
forms:
 The Emotional-Motivation Repertoire includes emotional responses
to various stimuli. Some responses are built in by biology, such as
positive emotional responses to food and negative responses to pain.
Other emotional connections to other stimuli are made through
classical conditioning. Fears & phobias are also developed in this
way. Attachment to parents is formed through associations of parent
with the comfort of food, holding, soft stroking. Then the parent may
display displeasure, with frowning, yelling, and a child will associate
negative feelings with whatever produced that reaction in the parent.
So emotional learning all forms the emotional-motivational repertoire,
which will partly determine behavior in a variety of life situations in
the future. People approach pleasant stimuli and avoid negative,
painful stimuli, based on past learning. The stronger the emotion, the
stronger the tendency to approach or avoid. Once a parent’s frown is
associated with negative feelings, the child will learn from the
parent’s instruction. An abusive parent will teach maladaptive
response patterns. So all the varieties of parenting styles will produce
children with varied personalities, hobbies, interests and talents. The
unique pattern of biological abilities and environmental triggers and
reinforcers make for individual differences. Values developed early in
life predispose people toward different careers, or even prejudices. So
early basic emotional-motivational responses build the foundation for
mature behavior.
 The Language-Cognitive Repertoire recognizes that language is
primarily cognitive. One’s thoughts and self-directed speech can
direct behavior, as does one’s expectations and biases. Children, who
are encouraged to visualize words while they read, have an easier time
understanding what they read. These children also develop stronger
skills in reading and math. Once language for objects is in place, more
abstract concepts can build on that basis.
 The Sensory-Motor Repertoire has to do with bodily-kinesthetic
skill building. Body movements even reflect our beliefs about
masculinity and femininity, and personal confidence. Practice can
build competent behavior, not just in the athletic arena. Early motor
development is clearly influenced by learning, as in some cultures, the
parents engage in a complex physical routine in order to develop
independent locomotion at an early age. This is thought to be a
survival skill for people who live in threatening environments.
Situations can affect behavior in 3 ways (three function learning theory, or
A-R-D theory): Situations can arouse feelings and attitudes (A), having been
associated with happiness or threat in the past. They can provide
reinforcements (R) such as positive attention of peers, or an audience. They
can direct behavior (D) by programming the next logical step at each point
of learning.
Psychological Adjustment requires much healthy learning. People who
show maladjustment have failed to learn the basics of social functioning,
personal responsibility, empathy toward others, etc. Deficits can lead toward
pathologies: phobias, emotional illnesses such as anxiety or depression,
autistic behaviors relating to affection and physical connections to others,
language deficits for those with mental retardation or schizophrenia. One of
the important aspects of developing ideally is learning to make positive,
helpful self-statements. This relates to forming a positive self-concept,
lightening one’s mood in the face of trials, balancing reasonable
expectations while learning new things, and even self-reinforcement for
difficult efforts toward improvement. Social learning can include
understanding one’s effects on others, and learning to share and take cues
from other people re: appropriate behavior. Other social behavior repertoires
lead to healthy relationships with others, intimacy, successful work, and
even leadership skills. Even the defense mechanisms that people use are
learned. Defense mechanisms that don’t include learning from past failures
can preclude any useful adaptation from failures or difficulties, and they
won’t help the person improve in his weak areas. Perfectionism can be seen
as an unhealthy form of learning unreasonable expectations, rigidity around
rules, or even about cleanliness. So the positive aspect of this is if the
pathological behaviors can be learned, they can be unlearned through
appropriate behavioral internventions.
The Nature-Nurture Question according to Staats is not a questionevolution gave us the ability to learn in new environments so we can
survive. We adapt through learning and biology made this possible.
Learning can influence biology, as it can restructure synaptic connections in
the brain, develop our bodies, & give us skills to live longer lives. Learning
is stored in biological representations, so biology impacts rate of learning
and storage of new information and skill patterns. Some biologically based
disorders (Down’s syndrome) can impact the ability to learn, but they can
learn with the right environment. Staats described many specific ways of
interacting with children to enhance their intellect, with counting games and
language usage. He demonstrated how children from deprived backgrounds
can develop improved reading, writing and math skills and show an average
IQ gain of 12 points with the right interventions. He believed temperamental
difficulties could be reduced with the right parenting skills. He even showed
how cuter babies received more affection and positive interactions with
parents than less attractive babies. This is certainly something that can be
changed once noted.
Personality Assessment
 The Act-Frequency Approach to Personality Measurement was
developed out of the idea that behaviors could be used to measure
personality. The approach uses systematic procedures for assessing
the frequency of common, prototypical behaviors to infer certain
personality traits. This approach is more accurate than using people’s
own self-reports, as they are obviously more subjective.
 Contributions of Behaviorism to Personality Theory and
Measurement – these theorists remind us that we cannot understand
personality separate from the environment in which the person is
behaving. People learn to behave in specific situations, and behavior
differs in various environments. Staats’ theory is more
comprehensive and unified than Skinner’s radical behaviorism.