Problems of Teaching the Behaviorist Perspective in the Cognitive Revolution

Abstract

This article offers some personal reflections on the difficulty of teaching the behaviorist perspective in the psychology classroom. The problems focus on the inadequacy of introductory textbooks—which mischaracterize behaviorism, only present the most extreme behaviorist positions, make no mention of the neobehaviorist perspective, fail to discuss that there is no accepted criteria for determining what type of behavior is cognitive, and provide a definition of cognition that is, not only inconsistent across texts, but so broad as to overshadow the behaviorist contributions. Suggestions are provided for instructors on how to present to their students an accurate portrayal of behaviorism.

Studies of learned helplessness in honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica).

“…Our results show that learned helplessness can be studied in honey bees, and that, because of their unique lack of a tonic immobility response and the advancement of invertebrate neurobiological research methods, honey bees are uniquely suited to advancing our understanding of learned helplessness. We also provide operant and respondent 29 explanations for our results, and we believe that the usual cognitive explanations of learned helplessness in terms of "expectancies" or "cognitive sets" are not only unwarranted at this time, but may hinder our understanding of more fundamental mechanisms (Abramson, 2013). We hope that future research will explore the molecular and physiological mechanisms of learned helplessness, and other related behavior phenomena, while maintaining a parsimonious approach that only advocates cognitive explanations when other explanations have been exhausted.…”

A crisis in comparative psychology: where have all the undergraduates gone?

“…Examples include the work of Washburn (1908); Watson (1914); Keller (1937); Warden (1928), and those of the neo-behaviorists such as Abram Amsel, Clark Hull, Neal Miller, O. H. Mower, Kenneth Spence, and Edward Tolman, (Abramson, 2013). A similar connection can be found in the comparative texts of Warden et al (1935); Stone (1951); Denny and Ratner (1970); Razran (1971); Lester (1973) and the out of print Comparative Psychology: A Handbook edited by Greenberg and Haraway (1998).…”

A New Experimental Method for Generating Locus of Control using a Wooden Labyrinth

“…Locus of control provided an outwardly simple explanation for interpreting behavior, but instead of building upon previous research, much of the literature that followed focused on individual differences (Rotter, 1990). Second, the cognitive revolution shifted psychological thinking from a primary behavioral perspective to a cognitive perspective (Abramson, 2013). The outcome resulted in researchers not fully considering the theoretical framework needed to understand the concept, which led to misinterpretations, biases and distorted views on locus of control.…”