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On Behaviorism, Introspection, Psychology and Economics

José M. Edwards

p h a r e - g r e s e, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne[**]

On Behaviorism, Introspection, Psychology and Economics......

1.Introduction: on the history of psychology and economics......

2.From Wundt’s laboratory to early American psychology......

3.Early behaviorism......

4.Neobehaviorism and learning: from animal psychology to social control......

5.American behaviorism meets European psychology......

6.Introspection in early British psychology and economics......

7.On the rise and fall of (behaviorist) institutionalism......

8.From introspection to cognition......

9.Bypassing control as an economic subject......

10.References......

Key Words: Behaviorism, Introspection, Psychology, Economics, Control.

JEL Classification: A12, B20, B40, B59.

  1. Introduction: on the history of psychology and economics

The history of psychology and economics has been repeatedly read as one of common birth from moral philosophy, separation with the so-called ordinal revolution, and meeting again with the development of behavioral economics in the late twentieth century (Hands, 2007). Within this tale, economics is supposed to have escaped from psychology by getting rid of mentalism (i.e. refusing introspection) and focusing on the observation of economic choice. This move has often been claimed to be “positivist” or even “behaviorist” (Lewin (1996), Asso and Fiorito (2003, 2004), Bruni and Sugden (2007), Angner and Loewenstein (forthcoming)). Recent “economics and psychology” accounts on the emergence of behavioral economics (Sent (2004), Bruni and Sugden (2007), Agner and Loewenstein (forthcoming)) focus mainly on recent issues providing only quick lectures on the earlier history of the two disciplines.

As “psychology” is being considered as a sort of homogeneous entity, the lectures just mentioned overlook several important elements in its history, namely the rise and fall of (American) behaviorism during the first half of the twentieth century and its opposition to other (European) schools of psychology. The following pages provide a lecture focused on the conflict between behaviorist and introspective (and cognitive) approaches to human behavior. This gives a different account of the history of psychology and economics than the standard lecture. Decision theory, the paper claims, has been both “far away from”, and “strongly opposed to” behaviorismall along its history, for the economists’ traditional purposive accounts of behavior (focused on rationality and consciousness) prevented it from adaptive-type accounts coming from behaviorist-type research methods.

Only recently, economics seems to be giving space to adaptive-type elements within the core of decision theory (Rabin (1998), Angner and Loewenstein (forthcoming)). However, the recent emergence of behavioral economics as a mainstream subfield (Sent, 2004) is being read as the result of a cognitive revolution manifestation happening through behavioral decision research (BDR) analysis between the 1960s and 1970s. The following pages provide a lecture focused on behaviorism as a main element. They explain the late reception of adaptation theory in economics as the consequence of the decline of control as a subject matter in psychology. The decline of control, a founding stone of behaviorist-type research, seems to have opened the doors of economics to adaptive-type behavior accounts as promoted, namely by Harry Helson (1964), Kahneman and Tversky (1979) and their followers. Recent contributions to behavioral economics seem to be based as much on stimulus-response analysis coming from Adaptation-Level Theory (Helson, 1964), as on BDR analysis as the lectures just mentioned claim.

The paper is structured in two parts:

(1) Sections 2 to 5 are focused on behaviorism and its opposition to introspective and cognitive psychology starting by an overview of Wilhelm Wundt’s founding program and its transmission to America in the late nineteenth century (Section 2). The narrative then turns to the development of early behaviorism (Section 3) and the subsequent transition to neobehaviorism in the 1930s (Section 4) and to cognitive approaches to human behavior after WWII (Section 5).

(2) Sections 6 to 9 deal with introspective accounts of behavior as defended by British psychologists in the late nineteenth century (Section 6), and by economists opposed to (behaviorist) institutionalism in the first part of the twentieth (Section 7). The narrative of the paper then turns to the switch made from introspective to cognitive accounts of behavior in after-war economics (Section 8) supporting the paper’s thesis about economics by-passing control (i.e. behaviorism) as an economic subject, and concluding (Section 9).

  1. From Wundt’s laboratory to early American psychology

The development of American social sciences in the late nineteenth century (psychology in particular) was strongly supported by scholars trained in German universities (Boring and Boring (1948), Ben-David and Collins (1966), Sokal (1984), Mandler (2007)). As Wilhelm Wundt’s pioneering Leipzig laboratory founded in 1879 was the main training place for American psychologists, Wundt’s influence was quite strong in America by the turn of the century.

“[P]ractically all influential psychologists at the turn of the century, Mandler writes, were students of Wundt’s or were students of his students. Experimental psychology was defined by the experiences of the Leipzig Laboratory, and American laboratories were generally opened by his students with imported German instruments.” (Mandler, 2007, p. 59)[1]

The early development of the field in Germany was strongly marked by Wilhelm Dilthey’s [1833-1911] distinction “between sciences of the mind (Geisteswissenschaften) and of nature” (Mandler, 2007, p. 54) brought to psychology by Wundt[2] who made a “strict distinction between experimental psychology, on the one hand, and ethnopsychological and social psychological topics that were not subject to experimental investigation, on the other hand” (Mandler, 2007, p. 56).

Experimental psychology was supposed to be a natural science (naturwissenschaften) and was restricted to sensory analysis. “Mental products” such as thinking were considered too complex to be studied by experimentation. The analysis of mental variables was considered the object of social psychology (Völkerpsychologie), which was not a natural science, for Wundt considered human thought as the result of social and historical contexts[3]. Wundt, Mandler writes, was responsible of creating an “experimental psychology that was not social and a social psychology that was not experimental” (Mandler, 2007, p. 59).

By the turn of the century, American psychology avoided, in general, the study of complex figures such as “thought”, “memory”, or “emotion”. Though one important exception to this general setting was William James’ program[4], the major part of American psychology was “German in origin and method” (Mandler, 2007, p. 140).

  1. Early behaviorism

Besides the German influence, behaviorism was the main force shaping early American psychology. This arose “not within psychology itself but within American society from about the 1880s onward”(Mills, 1998, p. 2). As American scientists in general, behaviorists were influenced by pragmatism, which consisted in conceiving theories as tools to be “used to make socially useful predictions” (ibid.). As behaviorism dealt with human and social issues, predictions meant social control.In Mills’ words:

“Because Americans characteristically view science pragmatically, [they] used what they read as the basis for programs of remedial social actions. Those programs, in their turn, provided material for further analysis for the social scientists and, above all, provided the early institutional basis for the growing social sciences. The essence of behaviorism is the equating of theory with application, understanding with prediction, and the workings of human mind with social technology. Those same equations formed the foundations of the thought of early American social scientists.” (Mills, 1998, p. 2)

John B. Watson’s Psychology as the behaviorist views it(1913) was the starting point of the development of behaviorism as a movement[5]. Psychology as the behaviorist views it, Watson wrote:

“is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness. The behaviorist, in his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, recognizes no dividing line between man and brute. The behavior of man, with all of its refinements and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist’s total scheme of investigation.” (Watson, 1913, p. 158)

Though diverse in its form (Mills, 1998), behaviorism was the dominant school in American psychology between the 1910s and 1960s. Behaviorists shared the goal of prediction and control of behavior, and the rejection of both introspection as a scientific tool, and the study of mental concepts (i.e. related to consciousness). Comparative psychology (animal v/s human analysis) was central to the discipline and animal experimentation was present all over the period.

Watson’s manifesto was supposed to give American psychology the status of a natural science. To reach this status it was supposed to rely on experimental methods. Rather than “observing” consciousness by introspection, Watson thought psychologists should narrow the object of the discipline in order to capture observable outcomes. Mentalism was to be avoided for the study of consciousness, Watson thought, would delude psychology instead or reinforcing it:

“Psychology, as it is generally thought of, has something esoteric in its methods. If you fail to reproduce my findings, it is not due to some fault in your apparatus or in the control of your stimulus, but it is due to the fact that your introspection is untrained […]. If you can’t observe 3-9 states of clearness in attention, your introspection is poor. If, on the other hand, a feeling seems reasonably clear to you, your introspection is again faulty. […] The time seems to have come when psychology must discard all reference to consciousness; when it need no longer delude itself into thinking that it is making mental states the object of observation.” (Watson, 1913, p. 163)

Psychology as Watson viewed it was restricted to observable concepts. Stimulus-response analysis and habit formation research in animals were central to the development of the new approach.

“I believe we can write a psychology, Watson wrote, define it as [science of behavior], and never go back upon our definition: never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively verifiable, imagery, and the like. […] It can be done in terms of stimulus and response, in terms of habit formation[6], habit integrations and the like. […] organisms, man and animal alike, do adjust themselves to their environment by means of hereditary and habit equipments. These adjustments may be very adequate or they may be so inadequate that the organism barely maintains its existence […]. In a system of psychology completely worked out, given the response the stimuli can be predicted; given the stimuli the response can be predicted. Such a set of statements is crass and raw in the extreme, as all such generalizations must be.” (Watson, 1913, pp. 166-167)

  1. Neobehaviorism and learning: from animal psychology to social control

Neobehaviorism as developed by Edward C. Tolman [1886-1959], Clark L. Hull [1884-1952] and Burrhus F. Skinner [1904-1990][7], was influenced by outsider research programs as Gestalt psychology, logical positivism and operationism. Unlike early behaviorism, neobehaviorists were animal scientists producing “highly sophisticated and, in some cases, comprehensive psychological theories” (Mills, 1998, p. 4). They shared “the behaviorist commitment to social application” but produced “empirically tested theories, whose ultimate derivation was the highly controlled environment of the animal laboratory” (ibid.)[8]. In this form, behavioral science “enjoyed its heyday in the America of the 1950s and 1960s” (ibid.). The new behaviorisms, Mills writes, consisted in “precisely formulated and conceptually rigorous theories”. These were:

“radically different from their predecessors. Empirically, neobehaviorism derived its support from extensive work in animal laboratories, so that there was a complete contrast with the speculative behaviorisms of the 1920s. A new movement demanded a new set of paradigms, a new core speciality from which the rest of psychology could be invaded, and a new epistemological basis. The paradigms were provided by the now familiar tasks that had to be solved by rats in mazes, shock boxes, and Skinner boxes and by pigeons in Skinner boxes. The new speciality was learning theory. The new epistemological basis was the doctrine of operationism; the rise of operationism was closely tied to the emergence of learning theory.” (Mills, 1998, p. 83)

Watson’s original program was thus extended by neobehaviorists who started to deal with learning as a central feature (Boring, 1961). As mentalism was still rejected as a subject matter, learning was taken as the habituation resulting from repeated stimulus-response activity. In other words, learning was seen a process by which one acquires “a disposition to behave in particular ways given the occurrence of a situation that appropriately triggers the disposition” (Mills, 1998, p. 87).Learning accounts were supported by operationism as a methodology[9].

For B. F. Skinner, as for behaviorists in general, behavior should be explained in terms of observable phenomena. Within this framework, the “history of past reinforcements” was supposed to model the way an individual behaved. This consisted in showing how “seemingly cognitively controlled behaviors could be patiently shaped in the Skinner box” (Mills, 1998, p. 124). Skinner’s position was thus clearly against the approach of cognitive psychologists. While Skinner appealed to the history of pas reinforcements, Mills writes:

“a cognitivist appeals to representations, decisions, and intentions […]. Radical behaviorists believe that those who say that human or animal actions are guided by wants, desires, intentions, or beliefs are mistaken. For a radical behaviorist, to want or desire something is to seek that which has secured positive reinforcement in the past; to intend to do something is to be guided by one’s history of past reinforcements; and to believe something is to produce verbalizations (whether explicit or implicit) that reflect one’s past history of reinforcements.” (Mills, 1998, p. 139)[10]

Response and reinforcement were central objects in Skinner’s project. Animal work was controlled by reinforcement schedules and the animal laboratory, Mills writes, “was a precise simulacrum of society. Its work, Skinnerian views of society.”(Mills, 1998, p. 149)

The behaviorist’s conception of social control promoted social efficiency, productivity, and “appropriate modes of socialization” as settings leading to “humanist goods (such as a healthy and well-balanced psychic life)” (Mills, 1998, p. 153). As American progressives and social scientists of his time did, Skinner “believed that science should serve the good of society”. He also thought that “it was possible to develop social technologies to shape human beings” to serve this end[11].

Skinner’s ideas were spread to the general public in his Walden Two (1948) novel. Skinner’s 1976 account on his novel reveals the spirit of his ideas about psychology as a science. The 1950s, Skinner wrote,

“saw the beginnings of what the public has come to know as behavior modification. There were early experiments on psychotic and retarded persons, and then on teaching machines and programmed instruction, and some of the settings in which these experiments were conducted were in essence communities. And in the sixties applications to other fields, such as counseling and the design of incentive systems, came even closer to what I had described in Walden Two.” (Skinner, 1976, pp. vi-vii)

What the American society needed, Skinner thought, was “not a new political leader or a new kind of government but further knowledge about human behavior and new ways of applying that knowledge to the design of cultural practices” (Skinner, 1976, p. xvi)[12].

  1. American behaviorism meets European psychology

While behaviorism was being successfully developed, the European tradition (E. B. Titchener [1867-1927] being the main exception in America[13]) continued to produce introspective accounts dealing with mentalism as a psychological subject. Far away from pragmatism, European accounts were focused on the understanding (rather than the control) of “complex” subject matters such as memory and thought. The major advances in the field, Mandler writes, were made by:

“the German successors to the Würzburg school, such as Gestalt theory[14], as well as the advances in the francophone countries.” (Mandler, 2007, p. 109) […] “As in Germany, French psychology was focused on mental concepts rather than behavior. Intelligent behavior was the object of French psychologists as Alfred Binet and Jean Piaget (ibid., p. 99).solve solve

Although American psychology had born out of the German tradition, second generation German psychology became stranger to the behaviorist environment in America[15]. This might be explained by theoretical incompatibilities as the following:

“one of the reasons that stimulus-response behaviorism and research on human memory and thought were incompatible was the physicalism of the S-R position. The eliciting stimuli were defined in terms of their physical characteristics, and, in principle were either skeletal/muscular events or their equivalents in theoretical terms.” (Mandler, 2007, p. 106)[16]

However, the main forces shaping psychology as a discipline between the 1930s and 1950s were the National Socialist regime’s impact on German sciences and World War II. The departure of German psychologists, mainly the Gestalt theory leaders “with the advent of the National Socialist regime in 1933”, Mandler writes, led German mentalism to the American side (Mandler, 2007, p. 126). By that time, however, behaviorism was “too new, too successful, too exciting an enterprise not to fight back spiritedly against the foreign invaders” (ibid., p. 143). Settled mainly at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Yale, and Chicago, American psychologists firmly opposed to incoming second generation German psychology.

Though Gestalt psychology flourished briefly in America, the scientific break imposed by WWII modified the scene in such a way the movement finally ended up being no more than “an important set of ideas that unified an immigrant group that might have fallen apart much faster had it not been held together by the common experience of the immigration” (Mandler, 2007, p. 163)[17].

“By becoming part of the American scene in the long run, Mandler writes, the German immigrants pushed a young science to greater maturity in an atmosphere conducive to such development […]. In the long run, the Gestalt immigrants added to the brew of information-processing, cognitive, and constructivist psychologies that made up the “cognitive revolution” within a generation of their arrival” (Mandler, 2007, p. 164).

The dominance of behaviorism decayed in the 1960s in part because of limitations proper to animal experimentation in psychology. The decay of animal science undermined the basis of the neobehaviorist program living space to the so-called cognitive revolution to which the paper comes back in the last two sections.

  1. Introspection in early British psychology and economics

Tracing back the history of the use of introspection in economics one finds the British nineteenth century response to German (physiological) psychology. This episode reveals the values and the science conception defended within the British tradition. The use of introspection came from moral philosophy and spread to economics mainly through utilitarianism as read by early (British) marginalists[18]. British psychology was also based on introspection as promoted namely by William Hamilton [1788-1856].