Behaviorism
Behaviorism
The doctrine which limits psychology to the study of human behavior. It discards consciousness and mental processes accessible only to personal experience; rejects introspection, and admits the method of observation and experimentation only. Its aim is to forecast what will be the response of any human being to a given stimulus of action, and to improve human conduct and conditions. Its chief concern is the study of inherited instincts and acquired habits. Behaviorism inconsistently rejects consciousness, yet employs conscious observation, whereas consciousness is an essential part of true psychology; declaring that mental and organic processes are identical, it becomes the philosophy of materialism.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Behaviorism
The contemporary American School of psychology which abandons the concepts of mind and consciousness, and restricts both animal and human psychology to the study of behavior. The impetus to behaviorism was given by the Russian physiologist, Pavlov, who through his investigation of the salivary reflex in dogs, developed the concept of the conditioned reflex. See Conditioned Reflex. The founder of American behaviorism is J.B. Watson, who formulated a program for psychology excluding all reference to consciousness and confining itself to behavioral responses. (BehaviorAn Introduction to Comparative Psychology, 1914.) Thinking and emotion are interpreted as implicit behaviorthe former is implicit or subvocal speech; the latter implicit visceral reactions. A distinction has been drawn between methodological and dogmatic behaviorismthe former ignores “consciousness” and advocates, in psychology, the objective study of behaviour; the latter denies consciousness entirely, and is, therefore, a form of metaphysical materialism. See Automatism. — L.W.