Behavioral Psychology and Science

Behaviorism or behavioral psychology differs from psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology in terms of its relationship to science. The main objective of behavioral psychology is to make psychology a science, shifting the focus from the mind to the scientific and mathematized study of behavior. In many respects, medical criteria are used like laboratory research, with statistical tests and analyses.

In this text, you will be able to learn more about the relationship between science and human behavior, as well as the definition of the five main characteristics of a scientific investigation.

Before talking specifically about the relationship between behaviorism and science, it is convenient to first describe what science is, or rather what its main characteristics are:

The five characteristics of a scientific investigation are:

1) Deal with empirical events

Science deals with natural phenomena (objects and events that can be verified through observation and experimentation) that produce data, and those that are reliable, objective and quantitative are considered adequate.

Data are objective if relevant events can be observed by different people, while subjective are those that cannot be observed. They are considered reliable when there is agreement between the observers about the occurrence of events and quantitative if they can be scaled in physical units along one or more dimensions (called parameters).

2) Scientific understanding is mainly achieved by revealing the order relationships between classes and events

What characterizes scientific analysis is the way in which information is collected and organized. Understanding an event often involves specifying the variables that allowed it to occur, the relationship between dependent and independent variables,

3) Prediction and control are the goals of scientific analysis

When verifying that an independent variable is functionally related to a dependent variable, it is possible to obtain the prediction and control of this dependent variable.

The value of the independent variable determines the value of the dependent variable, thus enabling its prediction. If A occurred, then B is likely to occur. Knowing this allows one to predict when B will occur. Also, the independent variable value can be controlled by selecting the independent variable value.

The practical relevance of science lies, in large part, in the isolation of independent variables that can be manipulated and that change important parts of the world (ie, dependent variables) in order to benefit humanity.

4) Science presupposes an organized and deterministic reality

Scientific prediction is only possible thanks to an organized world, in which relationships revealed in the past will recur. Furthermore, it requires a deterministic world, in which the value of some events depends on the value of other events.

5) Scientific claims are experimental and testable

Observations of actual events are the foundation of science. The relationships between such observations are considered the basis of scientific laws. The relationship between the laws occurs through principles and concepts of a higher order.

However, scientists recognize that observations are necessarily inaccurate and that important relationships between variables are not easy to detect or summarize meaningfully. In this way, scientific assertions do not reflect absolute truth; they are therefore experimental and subject to revision.

So these are the main features of science.

BF Skinner, one of the leading authors of behavioral psychology, gives his definition of science and the relationship to the discipline it helped to establish:

“Science is more than the mere description of events as they occur. It is an attempt to discover order, to show that certain events are orderly related to others.

No practical technology can be based on science until these relationships have been discovered. But order is not just a possible final product; it is a concept of work that must be adopted from the beginning.

The methods of science cannot be applied in matters presumed to be dictated by whim. Science not only describes, it predicts. It deals not only with the past, but also with the future. Nor is prediction its last word: as long as the relevant conditions can be changed, or somehow controlled, the future can be manipulated.

If we are going to use the methods of science in the field of human affairs, we must assume that behavior is ordered and determined. We should expect to discover that what man does is the result of conditions that can be specified and that, once determined, we can anticipate and to some extent determine actions” (Skinner, 1998, p. 7).

These words were written by BF Skinner in the book Science and Human Behavior. Through what has been said, it is clear that behavioral psychology considers that it is possible to make psychology a science like the others: like physics, chemistry, biology.

The scientific method, with its characteristics, is then used in behavioral psychology. Just as in medicine, laboratory animals are used for experiments, in behavioral psychology animals such as pigeons and rats are also used – for example.

In the same way that graphs and statistics are used in physics and chemistry, the behavioral psychologist makes use of these possibilities of science to confirm or deny a working hypothesis.

With this, we note that behavioral psychology considers itself a science. Unlike psychoanalysis, which does not see this possibility and describes its knowledge not as scientific, but as being in the field of ethics.

We will soon see how humanistic psychology understands its relationship with science – which is still different from psychoanalysis and behavioral psychology.

Bibliographic reference

Skinner, BF Science and Human Behavior. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1998

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