By now, you should have a better working knowledge of behavior modification, its concepts, theories, and applications. Therefore, you are to engage in “reciprocal thinking” for this assignment. That is, you are to assume you are a behaviorist and explain why each of the following statements about behavior modification or behavior theory is untrue.
Remember, each of the statements is FALSE. You may want to give in to your tendencies as non-behaviorists and agree with the statement. Fight that impulse and provide a reason or rationale for why the statement is false. You will need to use most of the material we have read or discussed in class to rebut these statements. Refer to specific elements of behavioral theory to support your rebuttal. The examination is worth 75 points, so please make sure your responses are complete and comprehensive.
I will begin each statement with “It”. By this, I am referring to behavior modification/behavior therapy or behavioral theory according to individual theorists we have covered, most notably B.F. Skinner. For consistency, begin each of your explanations with “This statement is false because….” .
The Final Examination
Exam Statements:
1. It ignores consciousness, feelings, and states of mind.
2. It neglects innate endowment and argues that all behavior is acquired during the lifetime of an individual.
3. It formulates behavior simply as a set of responses to stimuli, thus representing a person as an automaton, robot, puppet, or machine.
4. It does not attempt to account for cognitive processes.
5. It has no place for intention or purpose.
6. It cannot explain creative achievements–in art, for example, or in music, literature, science, or mathematics.
7. It assigns no role to a self or sense of self.
8. It is necessarily superficial and cannot deal with the depths of the mind or personality.
9. It limits itself to the prediction and control of behavior and misses the essential nature of being a human.
10. It works with animals, particularly with white rats, but not with people and its picture of human behavior is therefore confined to those features which human beings share with animals.
11. Its achievements under laboratory control cannot be duplicated in daily life, and what it has to say about human behavior in the world at large is therefore unsupported meta-science.
12. It is oversimplified and naive and its facts are either trivial or already well known.
13. It is scientistic rather than scientific. It merely emulates the sciences.
14. Its technological achievements could have come about through the use of common sense.
15. If its contentions are valid, they must apply to the behavioral scientist himself and what he says is therefore only what he has been conditioned to say and cannot be true.
16. It dehumanizes man. It is reductionistic and destroys humans from being human.
17. It is concerned with only general principles and therefore neglects the uniqueness of the individual.
18. It is necessarily antidemocratic because the relationship between experimenter and subject is manipulative, and its results can therefore be used by dictators but not by men of good will.
19. It regards abstract ideas such as morality or justice as fictions.
20. It is indifferent to the warmth and richness of human life, and it is incompatible with the creation and enjoyment of art, music, literature and respect and regard for one’s fellow man.
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