The Behaviorisms of Skinner and Quine: Genesis, Development, and Mutual Influence

Verhaegh, Sander

doi:10.1353/hph.2019.0074

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the development of behaviorism entered a new phase. Influenced by P. W. Bridgman’s call for operational definitions of theoretical concepts as well as the increasing popularity of logical positivism in the United States (Carroll, 2017; Walter, 1990; Verhaegh, 2019), behaviorists like Hull, Skinner, and Tolman started to develop more rigidly formulated variants of behaviorism; even though their deductive (Hull), inductive (Skinner), and purposive (Tolman) approaches strongly differed from each other 4 . As a result, most historians distinguish between classical behaviorism and neobehaviorism in their views about the development of mid-20th-century American psychology (DeGrandpré & Buskist, 2000; Parot, 2001; Smith, 1986).…”

Section: Behaviorism: the Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

“…4It should be noted that although Skinner’s early work was heavily influenced by operationism and logical positivism, he started to dismiss these views about the nature of science from the mid-1940s onward. See Skinner (1945a, 1945b), Allen (1980), and Verhaegh (2019).…”

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“…It should be noted that although Skinner's early work was heavily influenced by operationism and logical positivism, he started to dismiss these views about the nature of science from the mid-1940s onward. SeeSkinner (1945aSkinner ( , 1945b,Allen (1980), andVerhaegh (2019). This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.…”

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The rise and fall of behaviorism: The narrative and the numbers.

Braat¹,

Engelen²,

Gemert³

et al. 2020

History of Psychology

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The history of 20th-century American psychology is often depicted as a history of the rise and fall of behaviorism. Although historians disagree about the theoretical and social factors that have contributed to the development of experimental psychology, there is widespread consensus about the growing and (later) declining influence of behaviorism between approximately 1920 and 1970. Because such wide-scope claims about the development of American psychology are typically based on small and unrepresentative samples of historical data, however, the question arises to what extent the received view is justified. This article aims to answer this question in two ways. First, we use advanced scientometric tools (e.g., bibliometric mapping, cocitation analysis, and term co-occurrence analysis) to quantitatively analyze the metadata of 119,278 articles published in American journals between 1920 and 1970. We reconstruct the development and structure of American psychology using cocitation and co-occurrence networks and argue that the standard story needs reappraising. Second, we argue that the question whether behaviorism was the “dominant” school of American psychology is historically misleading to begin with. Using the results of our bibliometric analyses, we argue that questions about the development of American psychology deserve more fine-grained answers.

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Section: Behaviorism: the Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

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The rise and fall of behaviorism: The narrative and the numbers.

Braat¹,

Engelen²,

Gemert³

et al. 2020

History of Psychology

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Psychological operationisms at Harvard: Skinner, Boring, and Stevens

Verhaegh

2020

J History Behavioral Science

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Contemporary discussions about operational definition often hark back to Stanley S. Stevens' classic papers on psychological operationism. Still, he was far from the only psychologist to call for conceptual hygiene. Some of Stevens' direct colleagues at Harvard-most notably B. F. Skinner and E. G. Boring-were also actively applying Bridgman's conceptual strictures to the study of mind and behavior. In this paper, I shed new light on the history of operationism by reconstructing the Harvard debates about operational definition in the years before Stevens published his seminal articles. Building on a large set of archival evidence from the Harvard University Archives, I argue that we can get a more complete understanding of Stevens' contributions if we better grasp the operationisms of his former teachers and direct colleagues at Harvard's Department of Philosophy and Psychology.

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Scientific, Philosophical, and Psychological Views of the Purpose of Life

Ramrattan

Szenberg

2022

The Purpose of Life in Economics

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The Behaviorisms of Skinner and Quine: Genesis, Development, and Mutual Influence

Cited by 8 publications

References 32 publications

The rise and fall of behaviorism: The narrative and the numbers.

The rise and fall of behaviorism: The narrative and the numbers.

Psychological operationisms at Harvard: Skinner, Boring, and Stevens

Scientific, Philosophical, and Psychological Views of the Purpose of Life

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