领域：学术论文 · 社会科学

What is Behaviorism?
Behaviorism is a theoretical approach to psychology popularized in the 20th century by John B. Watson and B.F Skinner. This school of thought focuses only on observable behavior and the environmental stimuli that produce it. It is often tied to learning, and asserts that behaviours are learned through interaction with the environment through either classical conditioning or operant conditioning.
Behaviorism
It is no surprise that when you have a bowl of dog food in your hands, your dog becomes the best show dog on earth, effortlessly performing all the tricks it has learned. Sometimes you may even find your dog running through the list of tricks before you tell them which one to do. When you don’t have dog food in your hands, however, your furry friend will likely seem completely disinterested in performing. This behavior can be explained by behaviorism, sometimes referred to as behavioral psychology.
Behaviorism is a theory of learning; it’s based on the idea that our behavior is learned as a result of interaction with our external environment. Interaction with our external environment can include an interaction with a certain person, a certain object, or with certain surroundings.
Our behavior is learned through a process called conditioning. Conditioning is a learning process that can lead to habits and is the result of training ourselves to react a certain way in different scenarios.1 Behaviorism presents two main types of conditioning:
Classical conditioning: when a dog learns to get excited when we walk towards the bag of dog food because the dog has learned that it would mean they get to eat right away.
Operant conditioning: when a trainer successfully teaches a dog how to sit on command with the help of incentives, such as a treat every time they do it correctly.
Strong believers of behaviorism argue that with the right conditioning, anyone can be trained to do any task within their capabilities, regardless of one’s personality.
In behavioral psychology, there are two types of behavior: overt behavior, which is what everyone sees publicly, and covert behavior, which is inner and private. Behaviorism as a field of study looks only at observable external behaviors rather than internal mental states. Behaviorists argue that since thoughts and emotions cannot be objectively measured, psychology should focus instead on stimulus-response relationships (like a dog’s response to food) that can be observed and analyzed. 
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment. – Burrhus Frederic Skinner in his book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Key Terms
Behaviorism: A theory and school of thought in modern psychology stating that all types of human behavior can be learned through two key types of conditioning: classical conditioning and operant conditioning. 
Radical Behaviorism:  A theory developed by B.F. Skinner that extends traditional behaviorism. It includes not only observable behaviors but also internal events, such as thoughts and feelings, as behaviors subject to the same principles of conditioning. It views all behavior, external and internal, as shaped by the environment and past reinforcement.
Stimulus: Anything that occurs in the environment that elicits a response from an individual.
Response: Any observable action or behavior that an organism performs as a result of a stimulus. 
Classical Conditioning: A learning technique that unconsciously pairs a specific action, or stimulus, with the resulting automatic behavioral response. When the action or stimulus is repeated, the automatic behavioral response is eventually learned to be associated with the action.
Operant Conditioning: A learning technique that employs positive and negative reinforcements in the form of rewards or punishments to encourage an individual to pick up or stop a specific behavior. It’s sometimes referred to as instrumental conditioning.1 There are two types of punishment: positive, where a negative stimulus is added to discourage behavior; and negative, where a pleasant stimulus is removed to decrease undesired behavior. 
Positive Reinforcement: A consequence that aims to strengthen or encourage certain behaviors, such as providing a reward for doing something well.
Grid Cells: Cells in the brain that help us to know where we are and where we’re going. They’re found in a part of the brain called the entorhinal cortex, and they fire in patterns that form a grid. As we move through space, different grid cells light up in a repeating pattern, helping our brains track our position, even without a map or landmarks.

History
Early work on behaviorism can be traced back to 1897, when Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, conducted experiments on the digestion in dogs. Pavlov’s now-famous experiments led him to discover what we call classical conditioning.  It all started when Pavlov noticed the dogs would start salivating when presented with food. When presented with food, the lab assistant would also ring a bell (a neutral stimulus). Over time, the dogs would associate the bell with food. Eventually, the dogs associated the sight of the lab assistant’s white coat (another neutral stimulus) with food, which prompted a salivation response from the dogs even before the food was presented.
Behaviorism would not be introduced formally until 1913, when American psychologist John B. Watson presented his publication, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It. In this paper, Watson mentioned that if he provided his own specified environment for a baby to grow up in, he would be able to train them to become a specialist in any profession. Watson claimed this could include law, medicine, art, or even theft.1
Watson’s formal contribution was so influential that in the following forty years, behaviorism became the dominant school of thought in psychology. Its popularity also reflected the desire to cement psychology as a measurable science, which behaviorism’s focus on observable behavior was able to provide.
Operant conditioning was introduced by American psychologist B. F. Skinner in the 1938 book, The Behavior of Organisms. Skinner derived his theory by studying rats. He set up a box with a lever, which when pressed would drop a pellet of food onto a tray. Skinner introduced a rat into the box and observed that initially, it would wander around before accidentally pressing the bar. After the first food pellet was released, Skinner noticed that the rat’s rate of bar pressing increased dramatically. Research on Skinner’s experiment eventually led to the principle of reinforcement,2 a term used in operant conditioning to describe an action that increases the chances of certain behavior.
Towards the end of the 1900s, the cognitive psychology revolution resulted in the diminishing popularity of behaviorism as the mainstream school of thought. Psychologists started turning to cognitive science to study human behavior, due to behaviorism’s failure in considering important mental processes.6 However, many insights from behaviorism were not forgotten and are used regularly to this day.
The principles of reinforcement and punishment, for example, remain central to behavior change, influencing everything from parenting techniques to workplace motivation and educational strategies. Similarly, behavioral conditioning is still widely applied in therapy, particularly in treating phobias, anxiety, and addictions through techniques like systematic desensitization and exposure therapy.
Marketing and advertising also rely on behaviorist principles, using rewards and associations to shape consumer behavior. Take loyalty programs, for example, which use positive reinforcement to keep people coming back time and again. Each time a customer buys something, they earn a point, eventually working their way up to a free drink or a considerable discount. This operant conditioning encourages repeat purchases by associating spending with a desirable reward. 
People
Ivan Pavlov
A Russian physiologist whose groundbreaking discovery of classical conditioning in the 1980s was influential in shaping behaviorism. Sometimes referred to as Pavlovian conditioning, classical conditioning was discovered accidentally while Pavlov studied salivation in dogs. Upon realizing the significance of his conditioning discovery, Pavlov spent the rest of his career studying this type of learning.
John B. Watson
An American psychologist who was renowned for formally introducing and popularizing behaviorism. His work in this field was groundbreaking and incredibly influential, establishing behaviorism as the mainstream school of thought in psychology in the mid-1900s. Watson burned a significant amount of his letters and papers, except for some reprints of his academic work, which made it difficult to understand his earlier thoughts on behaviorism.
Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner
An American psychologist and behaviorist who is commonly referred to as the father of operant conditioning. B.F. Skinner introduced this theory in his 1938 book, The Behavior of Organisms, which was influential in reinforcing behaviorism as a mainstream school of thought in psychology.
Claude Shannon
An American mathematician and computer scientist who was dubbed the ‘father of information theory’ and played a pioneering role in the development of artificial intelligence. His most well-known work was his groundbreaking 1948 paper, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, which introduced the concept of binary digits (bits) as the fundamental unit of information. However, he’s also the creator of Theseus, the maze-solving mouse, which was an early experiment in artificial intelligence and machine learning. 
Joseph Wolpe
South African psychiatrist who was one of the most influential figures in behavioral therapy during the twentieth century. Wolpe’s main area of research was in reciprocal inhibition techniques, a behavioral therapy method based on opposites. The principle is simple: two opposing responses cannot occur at the same time, such as being relaxed and anxious simultaneously. The idea of reciprocal inhibition techniques is to weaken an undesired response (like anxiety) by pairing it with a response that is incompatible with it (like relaxation). 
Edward Tolman
An American psychologist who is best known for developing the concept of purposive behaviorism. His work rejected the stimulus-response model of behaviorism and paved the way for further developments in the field. 

翻译考点：
考点 1："theoretical approach" 应译为 "理论取向 / 理论范式"
考点 2："Classical conditioning" 应译为 "经典条件作用"
考点 3："Operant conditioning" 应译为 "操作条件作用 / 工具性条件作用"
考点 4："overt behavior" 应译为 "外显行为"
考点 5："covert behavior" 应译为 "内隐行为"
考点 6："the cognitive psychology revolution" 应译为 "认知心理学革命"
考点 7："show dog" 应译为 "表演犬 / 赛级犬"
考点 8："running through the list of tricks" 中 ”running“应译为"都过一遍"
考点 9："dubbed the 'father of information theory" 应译为 被誉为 "信息论之父"
考点 10："reciprocal inhibition techniques" 应译为 "交互抑制技术"
考点 11："purposive behaviorism" 应译为 "目的行为主义"
考点 12："instrumental conditioning" 应译为 "工具性条件作用"
考点 13："Pavlovian conditioning" 应译为 "巴甫洛夫式条件作用 "
考点 14："Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" 应译为 "《行为主义者眼中的心理学》"
考点 15："principle of reinforcement" 应译为 "强化原理"