Behavior theory and the social sciences

Abstract

The evolution of behavioral theory can be largely described in terms of what is assumed to happen between “stimulus” and “response.” In any case these supposed events are generally not directly observable—they take place within a black box. Nine-teenth-century psychologists filled the black box with “faculties,” “motives,” and “instincts.” Early behaviorists refused to speculate about its contents altogether. Later behaviorists gradually introduced hypothetical “intervening variables,” whose supposed nature and assumed relations became the identifying marks of various psychological theories and schools. The recent focusing of interest on the symbolic process and attempts at constructing an “exact” theory of such processes provide an opportunity of combining in psychology the rigorous methods of natural science with the characteristic non-physical content of psychological phenomena.

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