Psychology As the Behaviorist Views It

Psychology as the behaviorist views it 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 refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist's total scheme of investigation.It has been maintained by its followers generally that psychology is a study of the science of the phenomena of consciousness.It has taken as its problem, on the one hand, the' analysis of complex mental states (or processes) into simple elementary constituents, and on the other the construction of complex states when the elementary constituents are given.The world of physical objects (stimuli, including here anything which may excite activity in a receptor), which forms the total phenomena of the natural scientist, is looked upon merely as means to an end.That end is the production of mental states that may be 'inspected' or 'observed.'The psychological object of observation in the case of an emotion, for example, is the mental state itself.The problem in emotion is the determination of the number and kind of elementary constituents present, their loci, intensity, order of appearance, etc.It is agreed that introspection is the method par excellence by means of which mental states may be manipulated for purposes of psychology.On this assumption, behavior data (including under this term everything which goes under the name of comparative psychology) have no value per se.They possess 158