Week 4: Theories of Learning: Behaviorism

I started off this week's readings with Driscoll's chapter on Radical Behaviorism, and I have to say it left a bad taste in my mouth. I have difficulty reading clinical trials that include food deprivation and shock delivered for animals merely to elicit certain behaviors. Is that type of research, unethical as it seems, actually contributing to the improvement of learning in humans? Certainly we (I would dearly hope) will not be depriving children of food or administering negative reinforcement via physical pain in order to determine how to modify their behavior. I felt Dr. Mayer's words on behaviorism in his guest lecture resonating strongly (edited for clarity): "I don't really care what parts of the brain are working to create learning, I'm more interested in delving into the theories." After reading Driscoll's article, I heartily agree. I don't care what parts of the brain are involved in processing learning, particularly if we're in part getting that data from torture and food deprivation. Just because the subjects are rats doesn't make it any less revolting. My teenage self, who loved a pet rat named Bella, is so horrified I might have burned Driscoll's chapter if I'd been reading it on paper instead of on my desktop. When I turned to Foshay's article next, in attempt to alleviate my disgust, I admit I was disappointed the the article didn't bury behaviorism. I'd have liked to provide a shovel. The article did, however, cause me to reflect on my previous readings and posts for this course - I had, before this week, been viewing the various principles and theories from an ideologist's clean room. I hadn't had occasion to think more deeply as to how some of these theories were developed. Given psychology's unsavory history of human testing on disadvantaged people (and animals), I'm more leery to delve deeper or unerringly support one theory over another. It seems to me that behaviorism itself must have ignored the harsh realities of its own development in order to continue, and I found that cleansed, clinical language striking in Driscoll's descriptions of behaviorism. What I took from this week's readings is that learning does not happen merely clinically, or in a vacuum - the repercussions of our behaviors, our attitudes, our social context weigh heavily on applications of behaviorism and other theories, and as human beings we should weigh our need to measure clinical data against ethical behavior. Please, let us move as a scientific community away from torturing small animals.