Assignment: Prepare a Mini Transcript of a Fictional Debate Imagine this scenari

Question

Assignment: Prepare a Mini Transcript of a Fictional Debate

Imagine this scenario:

You are attending a local psychology conference and you find two graduate level psychology students entered in a hot debate, with a crowd of people around them. You are curious and come closer to see what everyone is interested in. You find that they are debating the work and personality of BF Skinner. One of the students, Rick Nilsen claims that Skinner was a cool headed scientist who based his opinions about the human being only on observable behavior. The other student, Blanca Alvarez, says that Skinner was not just as simple as he seemed. He believed in behaviorism, just like other people believed in Marxism or any other –ism.


• What points would each one make? Would they bring in other behaviorists’ theories? Consider Hull and Thorndike’s ideas.
• How would each one refute the other's points?

Explanation / Answer

Arguments and counterarguments between Rick and Blanca:

While Rick says that Skinner believed in the fact that observation was the key to interpreting the behavior of the subject, Blanca may assert that Skinner wasn’t just another scientist who would rather look at (in fact, assume) the underlying cause of behavior. Instead, he was someone with a firm belief that behavior must be studied carefully before coming down to a conclusion. For Sinner, quite unlike any other contemporary as well as modern scientists, genetics didn’t always play a role in determining a person’s behavior. His radical approach towards behaviorism was labeled as radical behaviorism.

Referring to E.D. Thorndike, Blanca may further discuss the law of effects that says while rewards strengthen and improve behavior and punishment, on the other hand, may easily inhibit one’s behavior. Blanca may further talk about the great scientist and psychologist named J.B. Watson who also studied about human life and animals‘behavior. AS per Watson, we must also include innovation, mind, mental states, imagery and perception as well as sensation should also be considered while analyzing the behavior of a person. Skinner, on the other hand strongly argued saying that internal motives can’t be used to gauze the behavior of a person since they don’t have empirical evidences and are difficult to prove.

Rick may suggest that Skinner believed in the use of Scientific Behaviorism for interpreting behaviorism. To this Blanca may say that while this may help interpret their behavior, it can simply not explain why it was don’t in the first place. For skinner, science is all about attitude, intellectual honesty, order and lawful relationship, cumulative responses and behaviors. Blanca may discuss about conditioning – both classical conditioning and operant conditioning as suggested by Skinner.

Similarly they may discuss about stimulus generalization, reinforcement (both positive and negative), effects of punishment, extinction, cultural evaluation, etc.

For skinner, our behavior reflects who we are and what we think. What we do clearly suggests who we are and what we think or do. For this scientist, it is our behavior that fetches us punishment or rewards. The two participants may argue on these and other points they find sensible for the discussion.

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