Bad behavior?

Natural History, Sept, 2004 by Henry Schlinger, Frans B.M. de Waal

In his review "Brains and the Beast" (5/04), Frans B. M. de Waal bashes a behaviorist straw person. For example, he writes that the "so-called" law of effect states that "all behavior is conditioned by reward and punishment." But the law of effect--a bona fide law of behavior with more than sixty years of solid research behind it--does not state that "all" behavior is determined by reinforcement and punishment: as with all other laws of natural phenomena, it is subject to many limiting conditions. Mr. de Waal is incorrect when he speaks of behaviorism's "two separate languages: one for human behavior, another for animal." In fact, radical behaviorism (so named not because it is extreme, but because it includes private events in its analysis) has always assumed that there is no fundamental, qualitative dividing line between humans and animals. As radical behaviorists, I and my colleagues have not "caved in" and exempted humans from our behavior analysis. On the contrary, decades of experimental research have demonstrated that the laws and principles discovered initially with nonhumans apply even to very complex forms of human behavior, such as language and thinking, that others attribute to mind.

Henry Schlinger

California State University, Northridge

Northridge, California

FRANS B. M. DE WAAL REPLIES: True, a fragment of the behaviorist school adheres to the original notion that all organisms follow the same law of effect, and that thinking is a behavior rather than a mental process. This minority view survives in a particular school of therapy, known as Behavior Analysis. Since this school rarely if ever says much about animal behavior, it was ignored in the present discussion. The vast majority of psychology-trained students of animal behavior take a different stance. They are behaviorists only when it comes to animals, being far more liberal in their interpretations of human behavior. This double standard is reflected in questions, such as Clive D. L. Wynne's, about how we compare with animals. The question itself betrays the historical roots of psychology in philosophy and religion, because no biologist would ever ask such a question. Humans and animals are not separate categories, at least not any more than giraffes and animals are.