Behaviourism can be traced back to ancient Greek atomic theory with theorists offering the first mechanistic and materialistic psychology. Over time, different scientists rediscovered, refined, and expounded on the basic idea. Advances in neurophysiology reinforced behaviorism's current philosophical foundation. Behaviourism is perceived to be an American school of thought although the predecessors were Europeans. Key ideas were assimilated from European thinkers. People like Locke and Hartley, Cabanis and La Mettrie contributed a great deal to modern behaviorism. Some of the most significant contributions were the system of Nature by d'Holbach who offered an early introduction of behaviorism. Ivan Pavlov researched on the issue moving it beyond theory into a testable model (Viney, King & Woody, 2016).
The root of modern behaviorism can be traced to Russian physiology in which the founder is Ivan Secheno (1829 – 1905) an immediate predecessor of Pavlov. He served as a military engineer before engaging in medical studies. Upon completion, he worked in a full postgraduate program together with other luminaries in psychology. He influenced other scholars, and some argue that he wrote the first objective psychology becoming the first behaviorist of modern times. According to Sechenov, the psychical activity of people finds expression in external signs (Viney, King & Woody, 2016).
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Another great contributor of behaviourism was Ivan Pavlov whose studies were centered on the physiology of circulation, higher nervous activity and digestion. He won a Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work on digestion. His conditioning research dominated his scientific life. He conducted research that moved the behavioral perspective to a testable model. His experiment on the gastric and salivary glands led to unexpected results that led to further research on higher nervous activity. According to the video showing Pavlov experiment, unconditioned stimulus food produced unconditioned response salivation. Similarly, conditioned stimulus like a bell provided conditioned stimulus, i.e., salivation. He could measure how the dog salivated during digestion. He came up with the classical conditioning. According to the video, any stimulus can elicit any reaction the organism can make (Viney, King & Woody, 2016).
Other renowned contributors of behaviorism are Skinner and John Watson. The two show empirical evidence of classical conditioning. In the first video, pigeons behave appropriately when exposed to an environment. Pecking behavior was measured on a graph. Skinner developed a schedule of reinforcement and links the behaviors with variable ratios that happen in gambling devices. In the little Albert experiment, the kid is conditioned to fear items that he previously liked. Albert developed generalization by worrying about things because of the loud noise that accompanies them. This experiment demonstrated that phobias are conditioned. The three video show how classical conditioning affects the behavior of an individual or organism (Viney, King & Woody, 2016).
Reference
Viney, W., King, D. B., & Woody, W. D. (2016). A history of psychology: ideas and context (5th ed.). New York: Routledge.
