Behaviorism

Behaviorism is a theoretical approach holding that human and animal conduct should be explained through observable behavior and environmental influences rather than through unobservable mental states. It emerged in early twentieth-century psychology, when John B. Watson argued that psychology should become an objective science of prediction and control. Ivan Pavlov’s research on classical conditioning showed how stimuli become associated with responses, while Edward Thorndike’s law of effect and B. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning demonstrated that behavior is shaped by its consequences, through reinforcement and punishment. Although behaviorism is primarily a psychological school, its influence on sociology is considerable. George Homans’ exchange theory and Ronald Akers’ social learning theory of deviance apply behaviorist principles to explain social interaction and crime. Critics, including Noam Chomsky in his review of Skinner’s work on language, argued that behaviorism neglects cognition, creativity, and meaning, and symbolic interactionists such as George Herbert Mead stressed that human action is mediated by interpretation. Behaviorism nevertheless continues to inform education, therapy, organizational management, and debates about how social environments shape habits, norms, and learning.