Skinner

[jolly]

"The behaviourists saw all human actions (both
physiological and psychological) in terms of stimulus and response. 
That is  what behaviourism meant in the context of experimental science"
 
That is another mostly incorrect and simplifed assumption. If you have managed to pass Psych. 101 or read Beyond Freedom and Dignity you learn that Skinner departed from Watson and Pavlov and strict S-R theory; Skinner postulated the "operant", which is sort of a range of possible responses to given stimuli within certain environments, which may differ  depending on environmental factors.  (Yet S-R still does account for much unconscious human action).  Skinner acknowledged that predicting consistent human operants, and conditioning the "proper" operant  could be very difficult. Yet with well-defined environmental controls and conditioning the behaviorist schema can be made to work quite effectively. -A behaviorist- oriented psychologist such as Jensen, who also took into account genetic factors, derived very accurate measurements of human performance, though his findings were not very  PC..
 
 

"Respondent reactions like salivations and eye-blinks,
 which can be dealt with reasonably well by classical
conditioning theory, are indeed reactions which can
be correlated with stimuli. But they are not, strictly
speaking, actions; they are events that happen to us.
When, however, we pass to Skinner's operants, to
things done as instrumental to an end, we are entering
the sphere of action proper. Such actions, at the human
level at any rate, cannot either be described or ex-
plained as mere movements exhibited at the reflex
level." 


			
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