case study behaviorism theory

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Behaviourism

How would you solve these behaviour issues without using behaviourist techniques?

Room Profile

Non-traditional classroom with no desks and a high-risk environment with very expensive equipment and supplies.

Class Profile

Class of 30 grade 9 students consisting of 6 girls and 24 boys.
Because it’s a pandemic year, students don’t get their choice of electives so only 3 students actually chose this class as their elective
16 designations total
6 IEPs - ranging from needing written instructions to having to keep them at your side and a close eye on them for the safety of the student and those in the classroom
No EA or student aide help
2.5 hour class every day for 10 weeks

Description of Behaviours

Every other word uttered by students is a swear and they are incredibly disrespectful toward themselves, each other, the teacher, and the physical environment. One student is so keen on being in the room that they won’t let the teacher talk without interrupting with questions. Three other students keep talking to their neighbours and distracting them regardless of how many times the teacher waits for silence (which ends up about 25 minutes the first time on the first day). Two students refuse to put their phones away claiming they can be on them because of their IEPs; however, they cannot. One student won’t sit down and is physically throwing things around the classroom. This student’s IEP specifies that the teacher has to make sure they are seated very close to them and not to let the student “get away” with anything.

The teacher works on respectful language and discusses code switching, specifically how the classroom has different norms and behavioural expectations than outside of school and students must “switch” to adhere to these expectations when in the classroom. Emails are sent home about language use. The teacher also sits the class down for a minimum of 30 minutes each day to discuss appropriate behaviour and language in class (this continues for the first three weeks of the quarter as behaviour does not change enough to do any curriculum work). The teacher has the class come up with the following list of disciplinary measures increasing in severity:

1st offense: Verbal warning
2nd offense: Verbal warning and student moved from current location
3rd offense: Student sent outside of classroom
4th offense: Student sent outside and email home
5th offense: Student sent to office and email home
6th offense: Student removed from class

The space is split into two parts, the classroom area and performance area. Students are not to use the performance area due to the pandemic and cleaning load of the janitors. The teacher puts tape lines on the carpet to distinguish the classroom space, but these are ignored. Emails are sent home detailing necessary classroom boundaries for the health and safety of students in the space. Chairs are put up above the lines with signs on them noting the boundaries, but these are also ignored. Emails are again sent home and administration is notified. Despite all these efforts, the behaviour persists. .

Second week

The principal comes in to talk to the class. The behaviour continues, but the teacher notes that the use of language has gotten better.

The teacher pulls five senior students out of their classes for one day and divides the class into separate, carefully curated, groups. The teacher also arranges for a peer-tutor to come work with one student, and another is sent to the support room. Two other students are sent to the construction shop to work with the shop teacher. Everyone is successful for one hour. However, the behaviour continues when everyone is back in the classroom together. The teacher removes the students from the classroom and goes into library space with the librarian and vice principal present.

Fourth week

The Library is booked this week so the class is moved primarily outside, as it is safer to be outside during the pandemic anyway. Little to no actual classwork has happened so far.

Traditional classroom with table groups, reading area, teacher desk, and three computer stations

Class of 30 grade 6 students consisting of 10 girls and 20 boys
10 designations total
6 IEPs - ranging from needing written instructions to having to keep them at your side and a close eye on them for the safety of the student and others in the classroom

Students exhibit a wide array of disruptive behaviours. The majority of the class is running around, yelling at each other, using disrespectful language or derogatory terms to address one another, and throwing papers and materials across the room. When the teacher tries to address the students, only a handful pay attention and listen for instructions. When the teacher asks for silence, some of the students keep talking to each other, while others keep interrupting the teacher and moving around the classroom. One student with a designation refuses to stop playing games on his phone, claiming he can use it because of his IEP accommodations; however, this student’s IEP specifies that the student should be seated very close to the teacher and to not let him “get away with anything.” Despite the teacher’s efforts, the majority of students won't remain silent or still, mocking the teacher whenever they speak. It takes the teacher 25 minutes to get the students' attention and for them to be relatively quiet. The lesson is not effective since most students tend to be distracted and off-task.

The teacher works on respectful language and discusses code switching, specifically how the classroom has different norms and behavioural expectations than outside of school and students must “switch” to adhere to these expectations when in the classroom. Emails are sent home about language use and respectful behaviour. The teacher also sits the class down for a minimum of 20 minutes each day to discuss appropriate behaviour and language in class (this continues for the first three weeks of the quarter as behaviour does not change enough to do any curriculum work). The teacher has the class come up with the following list of disciplinary measures increasing in severity:

Students are not to use the computers due to the pandemic and cleaning load of the janitors. The teacher puts tape lines on the carpet to distinguish the classroom space, but these are ignored. Emails are sent home detailing necessary classroom boundaries for the health and safety of students in the space. Chairs are put up above the lines with signs on them noting the boundaries, but these are also ignored. Emails are again sent home and administration is notified. Despite all these efforts, the behaviour persists.

The teacher pulls five students out of their classes for one day and divides the class into separate, carefully curated, groups. The teacher also arranges for a peer-tutor to come work with one student, and another is sent to the support room. Two other students are sent to the library to work with the librarian. Everyone is successful for one hour. However, the behaviour continues when everyone is back in the classroom together.

The teacher decides to move the class outside as it is safer to be outside during the pandemic anyway. Little to no actual classwork has happened so far.

Behaviourism on Station 12?

Congratulations Earthling!

As one of Earth’s top teacher candidates, you have been selected to take a tour of Station 12, one of the most advanced elementary schools on Mars! As your friendly Martian tour guide, I’ll be showing you how our education system has advanced to be one of the best in the galaxy! In honesty, our progress is all thanks to you, and your fellow Earth-dwellers. You see, about 50 years ago, we received a time capsule from Earth containing tons of interesting information, sounds, and images! In addition to learning about Justin Bieber, apparently one of Earth’s greatest poets, we learned all about Behaviorism and the perils of dehumanizing our young learners through rewards and punishments. Anyways, that’s enough jibber-jabber, where are my Martian-manners! Let’s go check out Station 12 and you can see for yourself!

As you enter Station 12, you immediately notice the absence of any shiny trophy cases that commonly adorn the lobbies of schools on Earth. You think to yourself: “I guess Martians truly don’t offer rewards for certain behaviours, at least in terms of athletics.” Noticing your curiosity, your friendly Martian turns to you and says, “We don’t use any objective forms of rewards or punishments in our classrooms! We understand that if a student receives a reward or punishment for their behaviour, they may not develop intrinsic motivation for learning.”

As you continue to walk through the hallways of Station 12, you get glimpses of different classroom environments and teaching practices. Interestingly, you don’t notice any signs of grades, stars, or points systems being used in the classrooms. On the surface, the students also seem to be completely engaged and intrinsically motivated.

As you round the next corner, your tour guide invites you into a classroom where students are just about to return from recess and continue working on their independent research projects. As the students enter the classroom on time, the teacher is giving them a big, gleaming smile. After the students are settled, you begin walking around the classroom and learning about their projects. You discover that one student is learning about Earth and another about the gravity on the Moon. The students are at different stages of their projects and some are still deciding on their topics. You overhear one student inform the teacher that they have decided to study the constellations closest to Mars. As an avid astronomer, the teacher excitedly says, “I think that is a wonderful choice!” Just then, a student enters the classroom 10 minutes late from recess. The teacher lets out a quick “hmm” and shows the slightest suggestion of a frown. Your Martian tour guide turns to you and says, “Did you see that!? No detention for arriving late to the classroom!” Before you can respond, you notice another student beginning to get distracted from their work. You watch as the teacher walks over to a student sitting beside them and, with a warm smile, says, “Great job! I’m so happy you are working hard today and staying focused. I am so proud!” Interestingly, you notice the distracted student begin working again. Another student approaches the teacher and says, “I’ve decided to change my topic to the gravitational pull of the Moon!” Hearing this, the teacher says, “That's a clever idea!” and offers them a quick wink and a warm smile as the student bounces away, seemingly happy with the interaction. Just as you’re about to leave the classroom, you watch as another student explains to the teacher that they have decided to research Emily Carr and the emotions her paintings surface in both humans and Martians. Just as you exit the classroom, you watch the teacher scrunch their noise ever so slightly and say, “Oh. Okay. That’s a good choice,” before immediately moving their attention to another student.

As you leave the school, your Martian tour guide turns to you and says, “So!? What do you think? Pretty impressive, eh? We learned from the time capsule and don’t use any forms of rewards or punishments!” Before you can respond, you are awoken by one of your friends. You’re in EPSE 308 and it’s your turn to discuss your perspectives on Behaviourism. Good luck, Earth-dweller!

Possible Discussion Questions

In the classrooms on Station 12, you were informed that there were no objective forms of rewards or punishments for students' behaviour. Did you notice any subtle (maybe even unconscious) forms of behaviourism?
As a teacher candidate, you may be motivated to cultivate a classroom environment that fits your needs and values as a teacher. In this case study, the teacher did this by encouraging students to attend class on time, stay engaged in their work, and pick topics that they themselves deemed worthy. Are these subtle forms of behaviourism more or less harmful, compared to more tangible and objective rewards and punishments? Explain your reasoning.
As a future teacher, how might you become more aware of your subconscious values and goals for your classroom? How will you manage them in your classroom?
What do you see as the pros and cons of behaviourism?

Dear Colleague

I can’t imagine you have an answer to this question, but you seem to have been thinking a lot about how to motivate your students and when it comes to this, I’m at a total loss! I thought I had it all figured out, but no – my plan to motivate my students has totally backfired. Help!

I’m teaching seventh grade language arts for the first time this year, and one goal of mine going into this term was to encourage my students to become independent readers. Well, lucky for me, the school librarian, Ms. Daniels, had a program set up this year to do just that! You see, there’s a new book coming out at the end of the year – it’s the latest in a series of young adult novels that’s all the rage right now. Vampires, wizards, a dystopian world – this series has got it all. Anyway, the school librarian KNOWS that this book will be a hot commodity the moment it’s released. When the last in the series came out, she had about fifty holds on it the second she entered it into the library catalogue!

Ms. Daniels devised a system to encourage independent reading. It’s simple: each time a student reads a book from the library – any book – they fill out a worksheet to reflect on it and show they’ve read it. It's just a few questions, asking for a brief plot summary, something they liked about the book, something it made them think about – things like that. Anyway, each time a student hands in a worksheet on a book they’ve read, they get a point, or points, depending on the length of the book. You get one point if you read a book that’s at least 100 pages, two if you read a book that’s at least 200 pages, three if it’s more than 300 pages – you get the idea. The student in the school who has the most points at the end of the year wins a copy of that new young adult novel that everyone wants. It’s bound to fly off the shelves and be sold out for weeks, so they’ll be one of the first to get it!

Well, since I’m teaching language arts this year, I thought I’d supplement Ms. Daniels' competition with some extra motivation – to really get my students wanting to read. After all, not every student in my class is a fan of this series. So, I told my class that for every reading worksheet they hand in to the librarian, they'll also get a bonus mark they can add to their final assignment for the year. It would never change their grade significantly, but hopefully just enough to get them reading. Simple, right?

It all seemed to be going smoothly at first. In the beginning, Bilal was the student who was gaining the most points. He's a high achiever and has always been an avid reader, so that wasn't surprising. But then I had some unexpected runner-ups. A few students who were otherwise struggling in my class, Andy and Sobiga, started gaining more points, and fast! They were giving Bilal a run for his money.

At first, I was thrilled! But that all changed on Friday afternoon. Bilal and Andy had been close friends all term, but on Friday during class, they seemed to have a falling out. Then Bilal lingered after the bell to talk to me. Bilal declared: "Andy is cheating!" When I asked him what he meant, he explained: "He doesn't actually READ any books! He just looks at summaries online to fill out those worksheets!"

To add to my stress, I heard the next day that students in the neighbouring seventh grade class, taught by Mr. Chu, were complaining that my students had an unfair advantage over them because of the bonus marks I had promised. Mr. Chu has even gotten several calls from parents who felt that my students have an advantage over theirs.

As you can see, my plan to encourage reading has gone totally awry! What should I do now? And, most importantly, how can I motivate my students to read?

Ms. Mahmoud

Potential Reflection Questions

1. Identify and provide examples of the types of behaviourism used in the case study (positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment).

2. Going beyond the events described in this scenario, what are possible pros and cons of this teacher’s choice to establish a reward system to encourage reading?

3. What suggestions would have for this teacher and the librarian to encourage reading without relying on behaviourist strategies?

4. Assuming Bilal's allegations about Andy are true, how might you deal with this situation? What might be contributing to Andy's behaviour? How could this issue have been prevented?

Additional resources

https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/reading-incentives/
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/713/made-to-be-broken/act-two-11

When re-using this resource, please attribute as follows:

This UBC EPSE 308 Behaviourism Open Case Study was developed by Benjamin Dantzer, Lee Iskander, and Sharmilla Miller and it is licensed under a under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Post Image: Educators .co.uk, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

4 Fascinating Classical Conditioning & Behaviorism Studies

Did you experience a rumble in your stomach, even before you entered the dining hall and saw any food?

If so, your unconscious behavior was actually a real-life example of classical conditioning.

This article provides historical background and theory into classical conditioning and behaviorism. You will also learn how these theories are applied in today’s society and still hold considerable importance when learning about human behavior.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free . These science-based exercises will explore fundamental aspects of positive psychology including strengths, values, and self-compassion, and will give you the tools to enhance the wellbeing of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains:

Classical conditioning in psychology history, pavlov’s dog experiment explained, a look at the birth of behaviorism, watson’s little albert research, skinner’s conditioning studies, 4 contemporary findings and case studies, resources from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message.

To understand classical conditioning theory , you first need to understand learning. Learning is the process by which new knowledge, ideas, behaviors, and attitudes are acquired (Rehman, Mahabadi, Sanvictores, & Rehman, 2020). Learning can occur consciously or unconsciously (Rehman et al., 2020).

Classical conditioning is the process by which an automatic, conditioned response and stimuli are paired (McSweeney & Murphy, 2014). There are references in the classical conditioning literature to this being stimulus and response behavior (McSweeney & Murphy, 2014).

A famous work on classical conditioning is that by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, born in 1849. His influence on the study of classical conditioning has been tremendous. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this piece of research (The Nobel Prize, n.d.). Classical conditioning was discovered accidentally and was referred to as ‘Pavlovian conditioning’ (Pavlov, 1927).

In this related article you will find practical classroom examples of Classical Conditioning .

Technical terms

Pavlov (1927) developed the following technical terms to explain the process of classical conditioning and how it works.

The unconditioned stimulus (UCS) occurs naturally and automatically, and unconditionally triggers a response.
The unconditioned response (UCR) is the unlearned response. It occurs naturally as a response to the UCS.
The conditioned stimulus (CS) is a previously neutral stimulus that after being associated with the UCS, results in the triggering of a conditioned response.
The conditioned response (CR) is a response to the CS being associated with the UCS. The CR is a response that is made to the CS alone and without the UCS being required.

One interesting observation Pavlov made was that just before being given food, the dogs began to salivate. Sometimes this was just from the sight of the lab coats of the technicians feeding them. This made Pavlov wonder why the dogs salivated when there was no food in sight.

Pavlov decided to undertake a series of experiments with the dogs to investigate these observations. Pavlov rang a bell each time, just before feeding the dogs. At first there was no response. Then when the food came out, the dogs realized the sound of the bell meant food, and they salivated. After that, the sound of the bell on its own caused the dogs to salivate. They associated the bell with the arrival of food.

The following diagram (Figure 1) shows the different stages in the classical conditioning process in Pavlov’s (1897) dog experiments.

Classical conditioning has its roots in behaviorism. Behaviorism measures observable behaviors and events (Watson, 1913; Watson 1924).

John B. Watson, like Pavlov, investigated conditioned neutral stimuli eliciting reflexes in respondent conditioning (Watson & Rayner, 1920). Behaviorism views the environment as the primary influence upon human behavior, not genetic factors (Thorndike, 1905).

Behaviorism derived from the earlier research of Edward Thorndike (1905) and the Law of Effect in the later 19th century. This looked at consequences that strengthen and weaken behavior.

It attempted to replace depth psychology (Vladislav & Didier, 2018), considered having roots in the theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav, and Alfred Adler (Lewis, 1958). Depth psychology had difficulty testing predictions experimentally (Vladislav & Didier, 2018).

B. F. Skinner, an American psychologist, developed his own stance on the behaviorist approach, known as radical behaviorism (Schneider & Edward, 1987). He suggested that cognitions and emotions have the same variables of control as observed behavior (Mecca, 1974).

His technique was known as operant conditioning . This deals with reinforcement and punishment to increase or decrease the performance of behavior (Skinner, 1953).

Watson showed that humans can also be conditioned similarly to animals (Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009).

Watson used a small infant in his experiments referred to as Little Albert (Watson & Rayner, 1920). The child was exposed to different stimuli, including a rabbit, dog, wool, mask, monkey, and burning newspapers to see his reactions.

Little Albert showed no fear of the objects. It was not until the objects were paired with a loud noise (banging a metal bar with a hammer) that he began to cry after being shown a white rat. The child then expected to hear a frightening noise when he saw the white rat (neutral stimulus) on its own.

The white rat became the conditioned stimulus, and the emotional response of crying became the conditioned response. This is similar to the distress (unconditioned response) he initially displayed to the noise. Further studies showed Little Albert becoming distressed with furry objects and even a Santa Claus mask (Watson & Rayner, 1920).

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B. F. Skinner (1948) conducted various experiments on rats in a box known as the ‘Skinner Box.’ At first, he put a hungry rat in the box that wandered around and discovered a lever. The rat eventually realized that after it pressed the lever, food was released into the box.

The rat then pressed the lever again each time it was hungry. It then pressed the lever immediately each time it was placed in the box, which showed that it was conditioned. Pressing the lever is the operant response, and the food is the reward (Skinner, 1948).

This type of experiment is also known as instrumental conditioning learning (Ainslie, 1992). The response is instrumental in receiving food. This experiment highlighted positive reinforcement (Skinner, 1948).

Skinner then undertook another experiment with rats. He put the rat in a similar box, and this time an electric current was used. As the rat became distressed and ran around the box, it accidentally knocked the lever. This automatically stopped the electric current.

The rat then learned to head first to the lever to prevent the discomfort of the electric current. Pressing the lever is the operant response, and stopping the electric current is its reward. This experiment highlighted negative reinforcement (Skinner, 1951).

Let’s take a look.

1. Classical conditioning and phobias

The classical and operant conditioning models developed by Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner are very relevant in contemporary society today. They can help explain the etiology and treatment of phobias in humans (Davey, 1992).

A phobia is a persistent and irrational fear to a specific situation, object, or activity (American Psychological Association, n.d.).

As an example, consider aerophobia, which is the fear of flying. People who have this phobia have an intense fear and anxiety around flying, sometimes at the mere thought of an airplane.

People with this phobia may avoid flying as much as possible to limit their distress. A closer look at the reason why people develop a fear of flying shows that a bad experience of taking off, terrible weather when flying, or turbulence may have been a crucial factor in the past (Clark & Rock, 2016).

We can think back to Pavlov’s dog experiments to understand more. It seems that the sight or thought of a plane has become the conditioned stimulus, and the fear of flying is the conditioned response.

Effective treatments for a phobia of flying often use the same principles of classical conditioning and learning (Rothbaum, Hodges, Lee, & Price, 2000). Therapists might activate the fear structure by exposing the person to the feared stimuli. This will elicit a fearful response (Rothbaum et al., 2000).

Once the exposure has been undertaken several times, in a process known as habituation (Bouton, 2007), the phobia is no longer reinforced (known as extinction) and eventually disappears (Miltenberger, 2012). In this way, a phobia can be reversed with the same principles of classical conditioning.

2. Classical conditioning and social anxiety

Social anxiety disorder is an anxiety disorder that has characteristics of extreme and persistent social anxiety that causes distress and prevents someone from participating in social activities (American Psychological Association, n.d.).

Social anxiety disorder may be triggered by some kind of stressful event early in a child’s life, such as being bullied, family abuse, or some type of public embarrassment (Erwin, Heimberg, Marx, & Franklin, 2006).

The dominant psychological treatment for anxiety disorders also involves repeated exposure, similar to the treatment of phobias described above.

Systematic desensitization is a gradual exposure to the phobic stimulus, perhaps including a gradual exposure to social situations.

Flooding is an alternative approach and not gradual. It is an immediate exposure to the most frightening aspect of the situation (American Psychological Association, n.d.), such as attending a large gathering.

Systematic desensitization and flooding can be undertaken in vitro (imagining exposure to the phobic stimulus) or in vivo (actually exposure to the phobic stimulus). Menzies and Clarke (1993) found that in vivo techniques are much more successful. In vitro can be used if it is more practical.

This is yet another example of how acquired fears can be removed by the principles of classical conditioning.

3. Operant conditioning and gambling

Gambling works based on operant conditioning, as gambling behavior is reinforced, increasing the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated. Gambling can become an addiction and is defined as such in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychological Association, n.d.).

Griffiths (2009) suggests that some types of gambling, such as slot machines, are addictive because financial rewards can be gained from pulling the lever. He also describes many other rewards, such as physiological rewards (adrenaline rush of winning), psychological rewards (excitement), and social rewards (praise from peers).

Aasved (2003) found that gamblers continued to gamble and repeat these experiences. Gambling is not prone to extinction, as it is reinforced partially (not every time), which makes the gambler repeat the behavior.

Gambling involves only partial reinforcement, as only a portion of responses are reinforced. The lack of predictability keeps people gambling. Does this remind you of Skinner’s study with rats and the rewards of food they gained from pressing the lever?

There are many treatments for gambling addiction. Treatment that combines the principles of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and in vivo strategies of imagining the consequences of gambling behaviors can be effective for problem gamblers (Bowden-George & Jones, 2015).

4. Operant conditioning and substance misuse

Some individuals use alcohol and drugs because of the pleasant positive feelings they gain from the experience. If they compulsively repeat the experience over time to achieve the same rewarding stimuli, the adverse consequence can be addiction (Angres & Bettinardi-Angres, 2008).

Aversion therapy (American Psychological Association, n.d.) is one way of eliminating addictions, through association with noxious and unpleasant experiences (Brewer, Streel, & Skinner, 2017; Platt, 2000). It is based on operant conditioning principles.

Aversion therapy involves pairing the unwanted and addictive behavior with an unpleasant experience. As an example, someone could be administered a medication that causes them to feel nauseous and vomit if they consume alcohol.

After aversion therapy, alcohol may be associated with the feeling of nausea, and so the person does not want to repeat this behavior (Brewer, Meyers, & Johnson, 2000).

Once again, this resembles the technique used by Skinner, when the rats were exposed to an electric shock and learned to press a level to avoid the experience.

What every person can learn from dog training – Noa Szefler

Throughout our blog, you’ll find many resources to help your clients address negative habits unconsciously acquired through repeated conditioning.

The tools below can help your clients become more aware of these habits and behaviors and help them gain control over their lives.

Graded Exposure Worksheet This worksheet invites clients to rank their phobias from least to most feared as a first step toward conducting an exposure intervention.
Building New Habits This worksheet succinctly explains how habits are formed and includes a space for clients to craft a plan to develop a new positive habit.
Action Brainstorming This exercise helps clients identify, evaluate, and then break or change habits that may be getting in the way of making desired changes or moving closer to goals.
Changing Physical Habits This worksheet helps clients reflect on their vulnerabilities and habits surrounding aspects of their physical health and consider steps to develop healthier habits.
Reward Replacement Worksheet This worksheet helps clients identify the negative consequences of behaviors they use to reward themselves and select different reward behaviors with positive consequences to replace them.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others enhance their wellbeing, this signature collection contains 17 validated positive psychology tools for practitioners. Use them to help others flourish and thrive.

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Classical and operant conditioning had great significance on the birth of behaviorism.

Classical conditioning has proven to be most valuable in understanding the acquisition of negative and unwanted behaviors such as phobias, anxiety, and addictions.

It is also valuable in providing people with treatment, as the same principles are used to undo inadvertently developed behaviors. These new treatments include exposure therapy, aversion therapy, systematic desensitization, and flooding.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article and will be able to help your own clients make the changes they need with the recommended resources.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free .

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Behaviorism In Psychology

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Behaviorism, also known as behavioral learning theory, is a theoretical perspective in psychology that emphasizes the role of learning and observable behaviors in understanding human and animal actions. Behaviorism is a theory of learning that states all behaviors are learned through conditioned interaction with the environment. Thus, behavior is simply a response to environmental stimuli. The behaviorist theory is only concerned with observable stimulus-response behaviors, as they can be studied in a systematic and observable manner. Some of the key figures of the behaviorist approach include B.F. Skinner, known for his work on operant conditioning, and John B. Watson, who established the psychological school of behaviorism.

Principles of Behaviorism

The behaviorist movement began in 1913 when John B. Watson wrote an article entitled Psychology as the behaviorist views it , which set out several underlying assumptions regarding methodology and behavioral analysis:

All behavior is learned from the environment:

One assumption of the learning approach is that all behaviors are learned from the environment. They can be learned through classical conditioning, learning by association, or through operant conditioning, learning by consequences.

Behaviorism emphasizes the role of environmental factors in influencing behavior to the near exclusion of innate or inherited factors. This amounts essentially to a focus on learning. Therefore, when born, our mind is “tabula rasa” (a blank slate).

Classical conditioning refers to learning by association, and involves the conditioning of innate bodily reflexes with new stimuli.

Pavlov’s Experiment

Ivan Pavlov showed that dogs could be classically conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell if that sound was repeatedly presented while they were given food.

He first presented the dogs with the sound of a bell; they did not salivate so this was a neutral stimulus. Then he presented them with food, they salivated.

The food was an unconditioned stimulus and salivation was an unconditioned (innate) response.

Pavlov then repeatedly presented the dogs with the sound of the bell first and then the food (pairing) after a few repetitions, the dogs salivated when they heard the sound of the bell.

The bell had become the conditioned stimulus and salivation had become the conditioned response.

Examples of classical conditioning applied to real life include:

taste aversion – using derivations of classical conditioning, it is possible to explain how people develop aversions to particular foods
learned emotions – such as love for parents, were explained as paired associations with the stimulation they provide
advertising – we readily associate attractive images with the products they are selling
phobias – classical conditioning is seen as the mechanism by which – we acquire many of these irrational fears.

Skinner argued that learning is an active process and occurs through operant conditioning . When humans and animals act on and in their environmental consequences, follow these behaviors.

If the consequences are pleasant, they repeat the behavior, but if the consequences are unpleasant, they do not.

Behavior is the result of stimulus-response:

Reductionism is the belief that human behavior can be explained by breaking it down into smaller component parts.

Reductionists say that the best way to understand why we behave as we do is to look closely at the very simplest parts that make up our systems, and use the simplest explanations to understand how they work.

Psychology should be seen as a science:

Theories need to be supported by empirical data obtained through careful and controlled observation and measurement of behavior. Watson (1913) stated:

“Psychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is … prediction and control.” (p. 158).

The components of a theory should be as simple as possible. Behaviorists propose using operational definitions (defining variables in terms of observable, measurable events).

Behaviorism introduced scientific methods to psychology. Laboratory experiments were used with high control of extraneous variables.

These experiments were replicable, and the data obtained was objective (not influenced by an individual’s judgment or opinion) and measurable. This gave psychology more credibility.

Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events like thinking and emotion:

The starting point for many behaviorists is a rejection of the introspection (the attempts to “get inside people’s heads”) of the majority of mainstream psychology.

While modern behaviorists often accept the existence of cognitions and emotions, they prefer not to study them as only observable (i.e., external) behavior can be objectively and scientifically measured.

Although theorists of this perspective accept that people have “minds”, they argue that it is never possible to objectively observe people’s thoughts, motives, and meanings – let alone their unconscious yearnings and desires.

Therefore, internal events, such as thinking, should be explained through behavioral terms (or eliminated altogether).

There is little difference between the learning that takes place in humans and that in other animals:

There’s no fundamental (qualitative) distinction between human and animal behavior. Therefore, research can be carried out on animals and humans.

The underlying assumption is that to some degree the laws of behavior are the same for all species and that therefore knowledge gained by studying rats, dogs, cats and other animals can be generalized to humans.

Consequently, rats and pigeons became the primary data source for behaviorists, as their environments could be easily controlled.

Types of Behaviorist Theory

Historically, the most significant distinction between versions of behaviorism is that between Watson’s original methodological behaviorism, and forms of behaviorism later inspired by his work, known collectively as neobehaviorism (e.g., radical behaviorism).

John B Watson: Methodological Behaviorism

As proposed by John B. Watson, methodological behaviorism is a school of thought in psychology that maintains that psychologists should study only observable, measurable behaviors and not internal mental processes.

According to Watson, since thoughts, feelings, and desires can’t be observed directly, they should not be part of psychological study.

Watson proposed that behaviors can be studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of internal mental states.

He argued that all behaviors in animals or humans are learned, and the environment shapes behavior.

Watson’s article “Psychology as the behaviorist views it” is often referred to as the “behaviorist manifesto,” in which Watson (1913, p. 158) outlines the principles of all behaviorists:

“Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.”

In his efforts to get a unitary scheme of animal response, the behaviorist recognizes no dividing line between man and brute.

Man’s behavior, with all of its refinement and complexity, forms only a part of the behaviorist’s total scheme of investigation.

This behavioral perspective laid the groundwork for further behavioral studies like B.F’s. Skinner who introduced the concept of operant conditioning.

Radical Behaviorism

Radical behaviorism was founded by B.F Skinner , who agreed with the assumption of methodological behaviorism that the goal of psychology should be to predict and control behavior.

Radical Behaviorism expands upon earlier forms of behaviorism by incorporating internal events such as thoughts, emotions, and feelings as part of the behavioral process.

Unlike methodological behaviorism, which asserts that only observable behaviors should be studied, radical behaviorism accepts that these internal events occur and influence behavior.

However, it maintains that they should be considered part of the environmental context and are subject to the same laws of learning and adaptation as overt behaviors.

Another important distinction between methodological and radical behaviorism concerns the extent to which environmental factors influence behavior. Watson’s (1913) methodological behaviorism asserts the mind is a tabula rasa (a blank slate) at birth.

In contrast, radical behaviorism accepts the view that organisms are born with innate behaviors and thus recognizes the role of genes and biological components in behavior.

Social Learning

Behaviorism has undergone many transformations since John Watson developed it in the early part of the twentieth century.

One more recent extension of this approach has been the development of social learning theory, which emphasizes the role of plans and expectations in people’s behavior.

Under social learning theory , people were no longer seen as passive victims of the environment, but rather they were seen as self-reflecting and thoughtful.

The theory is often called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation.

Historical Timeline

Pavlov (1897) published the results of an experiment on conditioning after originally studying digestion in dogs.
Watson (1913) launches the behavioral school of psychology, publishing an article, Psychology as the behaviorist views it .
Watson and Rayner (1920) conditioned an orphan called Albert B (aka Little Albert) to fear a white rat.
Thorndike (1905) formalized the Law of Effect .
Skinner (1938) wrote The Behavior of Organisms and introduced the concepts of operant conditioning and shaping.
Clark Hull’s (1943) Principles of Behavior was published.
B.F. Skinner (1948) published Walden Two , describing a utopian society founded upon behaviorist principles.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior began in 1958.
Chomsky (1959) published his criticism of Skinner’s behaviorism, “ Review of Verbal Behavior .”
Bandura (1963) published a book called the Social Leaning Theory and Personality development which combines both cognitive and behavioral frameworks.
B.F. Skinner (1971) published his book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity , where he argues that free will is an illusion.

Applications

Mental health.

Behaviorism theorized that abnormal behavior and mental illness stem from faulty learning processes rather than internal conflicts or unconscious forces, as psychoanalysis claimed.

Based on behaviorism, behavior therapy aims to replace maladaptive behaviors with more constructive ones through techniques like systematic desensitization, aversion therapy, and token economies. Systematic desensitization helps phobia patients gradually confront feared objects.

The behaviorist approach has been used in treating phobias. The individual with the phobia is taught relaxation techniques and then makes a hierarchy of fear from the least frightening to the most frightening features of the phobic object.

He then is presented with the stimuli in that order and learns to associate (classical conditioning) the stimuli with a relaxation response. This is counter-conditioning.

Aversion therapy associates unpleasant stimuli with unwanted habits to discourage them. Token economies reinforce desired actions by providing tokens redeemable for rewards.

The implications of classical conditioning in the classroom are less important than those of operant conditioning , but there is still a need for teachers to try to make sure that students associate positive emotional experiences with learning.

If a student associates negative emotional experiences with school, then this can obviously have bad results, such as creating a school phobia.

For example, if a student is bullied at school, they may learn to associate the school with fear. It could also explain why some students show a particular dislike of certain subjects that continue throughout their academic career. This could happen if a teacher humiliates or punishes a student in class.

Cue reactivity is the theory that people associate situations (e.g., meeting with friends)/ places (e.g., pub) with the rewarding effects of nicotine, and these cues can trigger a feeling of craving (Carter & Tiffany, 1999).

These factors become smoking-related cues. Prolonged use of nicotine creates an association between these factors and smoking based on classical conditioning.

Nicotine is the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), and the pleasure caused by the sudden increase in dopamine levels is the unconditioned response (UCR). Following this increase, the brain tries to lower the dopamine back to a normal level.

The stimuli that have become associated with nicotine were neutral stimuli (NS) before “learning” took place but they became conditioned stimuli (CS), with repeated pairings. They can produce the conditioned response (CR).

However, if the brain has not received nicotine, the levels of dopamine drop and the individual experiences withdrawal symptoms, therefore, is more likely to feel the need to smoke in the presence of the cues that have become associated with the use of nicotine.

Issues & Debates

Free will vs. determinism.

Strong determinism of the behavioral approach as all behavior is learned from our environment through classical and operant conditioning. We are the total sum of our previous conditioning.

Softer determinism of the social learning approach theory recognizes an element of choice as to whether we imitate a behavior or not.

Nature vs. Nurture

Behaviorism is very much on the nurture side of the debate as it argues that our behavior is learned from the environment.

The social learning theory is also on the nurture side because it argues that we learn behavior from role models in our environment.

The behaviorist approach proposes that apart from a few innate reflexes and the capacity for learning, all complex behavior is learned from the environment.

Holism vs. Reductionism

The behaviorist approach and social learning are reductionist ; they isolate parts of complex behaviors to study.

Behaviorists believe that all behavior, no matter how complex, can be broken down into the fundamental processes of conditioning.

Idiographic vs. Nomothetic

It is a nomothetic approach as it views all behavior governed by the same laws of conditioning.

However, it does account for individual differences and explains them in terms of differences in the history of conditioning.

Critical Evaluation

Behaviorism has experimental support: Pavlov showed that classical conditioning leads to learning by association. Watson and Rayner showed that phobias could be learned through classical conditioning in the “Little Albert” experiment.

An obvious advantage of behaviorism is its ability to define behavior clearly and measure behavior changes. According to the law of parsimony, the fewer assumptions a theory makes, the better and the more credible it is. Therefore, behaviorism looks for simple explanations of human behavior from a scientific standpoint.

Many of the experiments carried out were done on animals; we are different cognitively and physiologically. Humans have different social norms and moral values that mediate the effects of the environment.

Therefore people might behave differently from animals, so the laws and principles derived from these experiments, might apply more to animals than to humans.

Humanism rejects the nomothetic approach of behaviorism as they view humans as being unique and believe humans cannot be compared with animals (who aren’t susceptible to demand characteristics). This is known as an idiographic approach.

In addition, humanism (e.g., Carl Rogers) rejects the scientific method of using experiments to measure and control variables because it creates an artificial environment and has low ecological validity.

Humanistic psychology also assumes that humans have free will (personal agency) to make their own decisions in life and do not follow the deterministic laws of science .

The behaviorist approach emphasis on single influences on behavior is a simplification of circumstances where behavior is influenced by many factors. When this is acknowledged, it becomes almost impossible to judge the action of any single one.

This over-simplified view of the world has led to the development of ‘pop behaviorism, the view that rewards and punishments can change almost anything.

Therefore, behaviorism only provides a partial account of human behavior, that which can be objectively viewed. Essential factors like emotions, expectations, and higher-level motivation are not considered or explained. Accepting a behaviorist explanation could prevent further research from other perspectives that could uncover important factors.

For example, the psychodynamic approach (Freud) criticizes behaviorism as it does not consider the unconscious mind’s influence on behavior and instead focuses on externally observable behavior. Freud also rejects the idea that people are born a blank slate (tabula rasa) and states that people are born with instincts (e.g., eros and Thanatos).

Biological psychology states that all behavior has a physical/organic cause. They emphasize the role of nature over nurture. For example, chromosomes and hormones (testosterone) influence our behavior, too, in addition to the environment.

Behaviorism might be seen as underestimating the importance of inborn tendencies. It is clear from research on biological preparedness that the ease with which something is learned is partly due to its links with an organism’s potential survival.

Cognitive psychology states that mediational processes occur between stimulus and response, such as memory , thinking, problem-solving, etc.

Despite these criticisms, behaviorism has made significant contributions to psychology. These include insights into learning, language development, and moral and gender development, which have all been explained in terms of conditioning.

The contribution of behaviorism can be seen in some of its practical applications. Behavior therapy and behavior modification represent one of the major approaches to the treatment of abnormal behavior and are readily used in clinical psychology.

The behaviorist approach has been used in the treatment of phobias, and systematic desensitization .

Many textbooks depict behaviorism as dominating and defining psychology in the mid-20th century, before declining from the late 1950s with the “cognitive revolution.”

However, the empirical basis for claims about behaviorism’s prominence and decline has been limited. Wide-scope claims about behaviorism are often based on small, unrepresentative samples of historical data. This raises the question – to what extent was behaviorism actually dominant in American psychology?

To address this question, Braat et al. (2020) conducted a quantitative bibliometric analysis of 119,278 articles published in American psychology journals from 1920-1970.

They generated cocitation networks, mapping similarities between frequently cited authors, and co-occurrence networks of frequently used title terms, for each decade. This allowed them to examine the structure and development of psychology fields without relying on predefined behavioral/non-behavioral categories.

Key findings:

In no decade did behaviorist authors belong to the most prominent citation clusters. Even a combined “behaviorist” cluster accounted for max. 28% of highly cited authors.
The main focus was measuring personality/mental abilities – those clusters were consistently larger than behaviorist ones.
Between 1920 and 1930, Watson was a prominent author, but behaviorism was a small (19%) slice of psychology. Larger clusters were mental testing and Gestalt psychology.
From the 1930s, behaviorism split into two clusters, possibly reflecting “classical” vs. “neobehaviorist” approaches. However, the combined behaviorist cluster was still smaller than mental testing and Gestalt clusters.
The influence of behaviorism did not dramatically decline after 1950. The behaviorist cluster was stable at 28% during the 1940s-60s, and its citation count quadrupled.
Contrary to narratives, Skinner was not highly cited in the 1950s-60s – he did not dominate behaviorism after WWII.
Analyses challenge assumptions that behaviorism was the single dominant force in mid-20th-century psychology. The story was more diverse.

However, behaviorist vocabulary became more prominent over time in title term analyses. This suggests behaviorists were influential in shaping psychological research agendas, if not fully dominating the field.

Overall, quantitative analyses provide a richer perspective on the development of behaviorism and 20th-century psychology. Claims that behaviorism “rose and fell” as psychology’s single dominant school appear too simplistic.

Psychology was more multifaceted, with behaviorism as one of several influential but not controlling approaches. The narrative requires reappraisal.

Bandura, A., & Walters, R. H. (1963). Social learning and personality development . New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

Braat, M., Engelen, J., van Gemert, T., & Verhaegh, S. (2020). The rise and fall of behaviorism: The narrative and the numbers. History of Psychology, 23 (3), 252-280.

Carter, B. L., & Tiffany, S. T. (1999). Meta‐analysis of cue‐reactivity in addiction research. Addiction , 94 (3), 327-340.

Chomsky, N. (1959). A review of BF Skinner’s Verbal Behavior . Language, 35(1) , 26-58.

Holland, J. G. (1978). BEHAVIORISM: PART OF THE PROBLEM OR PART OF THE SOLUTION? Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis , 11 (1), 163-174.

Hull, C. L. (1943). Principles of behavior: An introduction to behavior theory . New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Pavlov, I. P. (1897). The work of the digestive glands . London: Griffin.

Skinner, B. F. (1938). The behavior of organisms: An experimental analysis . New York: Appleton-Century.

Skinner, B. F. (1948). Walden two. New York: Macmillan.

Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity . New York: Knopf.

Thorndike, E. L. (1905). The elements of psychology . New York: A. G. Seiler.

Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it . Psychological Review, 20 , 158-178.

Watson, J. B. (1930). Behaviorism (revised edition). University of Chicago Press.

Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions . Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3 , 1, pp. 1–14.

What is the theory of behaviorism?

What is behaviorism with an example.

An example of behaviorism is using systematic desensitization in the treatment of phobias. The individual with the phobia is taught relaxation techniques and then makes a hierarchy of fear from the least frightening to the most frightening features of the phobic object.

How behaviorism is used in the classroom?

In the conventional learning situation, behaviorist pedagogy applies largely to issues of class and student management, rather than to learning content.

It is very relevant to shaping skill performance. For example, unwanted behaviors, such as tardiness and dominating class discussions, can be extinguished by being ignored by the teacher (rather than being reinforced by having attention drawn to them).

Who founded behaviorism?

John B. Watson founded behaviorism. Watson proposed that psychology should abandon its focus on mental processes, which he believed were impossible to observe and measure objectively, and focus solely on observable behaviors.

His ideas, published in a famous article “ Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It ” in 1913, marked the formal start of behaviorism as a major school of psychological thought.

Is behavior analysis the same as behaviorism?

No, behavior analysis and behaviorism are not the same. Behaviorism is a broader philosophical approach to psychology emphasizing observable behaviors over internal events like thoughts and emotions.

Behavior analysis , specifically applied behavior analysis (ABA), is a scientific discipline and set of methods derived from behaviorist principles, used to understand and change specific behaviors, often employed in therapeutic contexts, such as with autism treatment.

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What Is Behaviorism?

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Classical Conditioning

Operant conditioning, frequently asked questions.

Behaviorism is a theory of learning based on the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning, and conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment . Behaviorists believe that our actions are shaped by environmental stimuli.

In simple terms, according to this school of thought, also known as behavioral psychology, behavior can be studied in a systematic and observable manner regardless of internal mental states. Behavioral theory also says that only observable behavior should be studied, as cognition , emotions , and mood are far too subjective.

Strict behaviorists believe that any person—regardless of genetic background, personality traits , and internal thoughts— can be trained to perform any task, within the limits of their physical capabilities. It only requires the right conditioning.

Verywell / Jiaqi Zhou

History of Behaviorism

Behaviorism was formally established with the 1913 publication of John B. Watson 's classic paper, "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." It is best summed up by the following quote from Watson, who is often considered the father of behaviorism:

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors."

Simply put, strict behaviorists believe that all behaviors are the result of experience. Any person, regardless of their background, can be trained to act in a particular manner given the right conditioning.

From about 1920 through the mid-1950s, behaviorism became the dominant school of thought in psychology . Some suggest that the popularity of behavioral psychology grew out of the desire to establish psychology as an objective and measurable science.

During that time, researchers were interested in creating theories that could be clearly described and empirically measured, but also used to make contributions that might have an influence on the fabric of everyday human lives.

Types of Behaviorism

There are two main types of behaviorism used to describe how behavior is formed.

Methodological Behaviorism

Methodological behaviorism states that observable behavior should be studied scientifically and that mental states and cognitive processes don't add to the understanding of behavior. Methodological behaviorism aligns with Watson's ideologies and approach.

Radical Behaviorism

Radical behaviorism is rooted in the theory that behavior can be understood by looking at one's past and present environment and the reinforcements within it, thereby influencing behavior either positively or negatively. This behavioral approach was created by the psychologist B.F. Skinner .

Classical conditioning is a technique frequently used in behavioral training in which a neutral stimulus is paired with a naturally occurring stimulus. Eventually, the neutral stimulus comes to evoke the same response as the naturally occurring stimulus, even without the naturally occurring stimulus presenting itself.

Throughout the course of three distinct phases of classical conditioning, the associated stimulus becomes known as the conditioned stimulus and the learned behavior is known as the conditioned response .

Learning Through Association

The classical conditioning process works by developing an association between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus.

In physiologist Ivan Pavlov 's classic experiments, dogs associated the presentation of food (something that naturally and automatically triggers a salivation response) at first with the sound of a bell, then with the sight of a lab assistant's white coat. Eventually, the lab coat alone elicited a salivation response from the dogs.

Factors That Impact Conditioning

During the first part of the classical conditioning process, known as acquisition , a response is established and strengthened. Factors such as the prominence of the stimuli and the timing of the presentation can play an important role in how quickly an association is formed.

When an association disappears, this is known as extinction . It causes the behavior to weaken gradually or vanish. Factors such as the strength of the original response can play a role in how quickly extinction occurs. The longer a response has been conditioned, for example, the longer it may take for it to become extinct.

Operant conditioning, sometimes referred to as instrumental conditioning, is a method of learning that occurs through reinforcement and punishment . Through operant conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that behavior.

This behavioral approach says that when a desirable result follows an action, the behavior becomes more likely to happen again in the future. Conversely, responses followed by adverse outcomes become less likely to reoccur.

Consequences Affect Learning

Behaviorist B.F. Skinner described operant conditioning as the process in which learning can occur through reinforcement and punishment. More specifically: By forming an association between a certain behavior and the consequences of that behavior, you learn.

For example, if a parent rewards their child with praise every time they pick up their toys, the desired behavior is consistently reinforced and the child will become more likely to clean up messes.

Timing Plays a Role

The process of operant conditioning seems fairly straightforward—simply observe a behavior, then offer a reward or punishment. However, Skinner discovered that the timing of these rewards and punishments has an important influence on how quickly a new behavior is acquired and the strength of the corresponding response.

This makes reinforcement schedules important in operant conditioning. These can involve either continuous or partial reinforcement.

Continuous reinforcement involves rewarding every single instance of a behavior. It is often used at the beginning of the operant conditioning process. Then, as the behavior is learned, the schedule might switch to one of partial reinforcement.
Partial reinforcement involves offering a reward after a number of responses or after a period of time has elapsed. Sometimes, partial reinforcement occurs on a consistent or fixed schedule. In other instances, a variable and unpredictable number of responses or amount of time must occur before the reinforcement is delivered.

Uses for Behaviorism

The behaviorist perspective has a few different uses, including some related to education and mental health.

Behaviorism can be used to help students learn, such as by influencing lesson design. For instance, some teachers use consistent encouragement to help students learn (operant conditioning) while others focus more on creating a stimulating environment to increase engagement (classical conditioning).

One of the greatest strengths of behavioral psychology is the ability to clearly observe and measure behaviors. Because behaviorism is based on observable behaviors, it is often easier to quantify and collect data when conducting research.

Mental Health

Behavioral therapy was born from behaviorism and originally used in the treatment of autism and schizophrenia. This type of therapy involves helping people change problematic thoughts and behaviors, thereby improving mental health.

Effective therapeutic techniques such as intensive behavioral intervention, behavior analysis, token economies, and discrete trial training are all rooted in behaviorism. These approaches are often very useful in changing maladaptive or harmful behaviors in both children and adults.

Impact of Behaviorism

Several thinkers influenced behavioral psychology. Among these are Edward Thorndike , a pioneering psychologist who described the law of effect, and Clark Hull , who proposed the drive theory of learning.

There are a number of therapeutic techniques rooted in behavioral psychology. Though behavioral psychology assumed more of a background position after 1950, its principles still remain important.

Even today, behavior analysis is often used as a therapeutic technique to help children with autism and developmental delays acquire new skills. It frequently involves processes such as shaping (rewarding closer approximations to the desired behavior) and chaining (breaking a task down into smaller parts, then teaching and chaining the subsequent steps together).

Other behavioral therapy techniques include aversion therapy , systematic desensitization , token economies, behavior modeling , and contingency management.

Criticisms of Behaviorism

Many critics argue that behaviorism is a one-dimensional approach to understanding human behavior. They suggest that behavioral theories do not account for free will or internal influences such as moods, thoughts, and feelings.

Freud, for example, felt that behaviorism failed by not accounting for the unconscious mind's thoughts, feelings, and desires, which influence people's actions. Other thinkers, such as Carl Rogers and other humanistic psychologists , believed that behaviorism was too rigid and limited, failing to take into consideration personal agency.

More recently, biological psychology has emphasized the role the brain and genetics play in determining and influencing human actions. The cognitive approach to psychology focuses on mental processes such as thinking, decision-making, language, and problem-solving. In both cases, behaviorism neglects these processes and influences in favor of studying only observable behaviors.

Behavioral psychology also does not account for other types of learning that occur without the use of reinforcement and punishment. Moreover, people and animals can adapt their behavior when new information is introduced, even if that behavior was established through reinforcement.

A Word From Verywell

While the behavioral approach might not be the dominant force that it once was, it has still had a major impact on our understanding of human psychology . The conditioning process alone has been used to understand many different types of behaviors, ranging from how people learn to how language develops.

But perhaps the greatest contributions of behavioral psychology lie in its practical applications. Its techniques can play a powerful role in modifying problematic behavior and encouraging more positive, helpful responses. Outside of psychology, parents, teachers, animal trainers, and many others make use of basic behavioral principles to help teach new behaviors and discourage unwanted ones.

John B. Watson is known as the founder of behaviorism. Though others had similar ideas in the early 1900s, when behavioral theory began, some suggest that Watson is credited as behavioral psychology's founder due to being "an attractive, strong, scientifically accomplished, and forceful speaker and an engaging writer" who was willing to share this behavioral approach when other psychologists were less likely to speak up.

Behaviorism can be used to help elicit positive behaviors or responses in students, such as by using reinforcement. Teachers with a behavioral approach often use "skill and drill" exercises to reinforce correct responses through consistent repetition, for instance.

Other ways reinforcement-based behaviorism can be used in education include praising students for getting the right answer and providing prizes for those who do well. Using tests to measure performance enables teachers to measure observable behaviors and is, therefore, another behavioral approach.

Behaviorism says that behavior is a result of environment, the environment being an external stimulus. Psychoanalysis is the opposite of this, in that it is rooted in the belief that behavior is a result of an internal stimulus. Psychoanalytic theory is based on behaviors being motivated by one's unconscious mind, thus resulting in actions that are consistent with their unknown wishes and desires.

Whereas strict behaviorism has no room for cognitive influences, cognitive behaviorism operates on the assumption that behavior is impacted by thoughts and emotions. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), for instance, attempts to change negative behaviors by changing the destructive thought patterns behind them.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Behaviorism

It has sometimes been said that “behave is what organisms do.” Behaviorism is built on this assumption, and its goal is to promote the scientific study of behavior. The behavior, in particular, of individual organisms. Not of social groups. Not of cultures. But of persons and animals.

This entry considers different types of behaviorism and outlines reasons for and against being a behaviorist. It consider contributions of behaviorism to the study of behavior. Special attention is given to the so-called “radical behaviorism” of B. F. Skinner (1904–90). Skinner is given special (not exclusive) attention because he is the behaviorist who has received the most attention from philosophers, fellow scientists and the public at large. General lessons can also be learned from Skinner about the conduct of behavioral science in general. The entry describes those lessons.

1. What is Behaviorism?

2. three types of behaviorism, 3. roots of behaviorism, 4. popularity of behaviorism, 5. why be a behaviorist, 6. skinner’s social worldview, 7. why be anti-behaviorist, 8. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries.

One has to be careful with “ism” words. They often have both loose and strict meanings. And sometimes multiple meanings of each type. ‘Behaviorism’ is no exception. Loosely speaking, behaviorism is an attitude – a way of conceiving of empirical constraints on psychological state attribution. Strictly speaking, behaviorism is a doctrine – a way of doing psychological or behavioral science itself.

Wilfred Sellars (1912–89), the distinguished philosopher, noted that a person may qualify as a behaviorist, loosely or attitudinally speaking, if they insist on confirming “hypotheses about psychological events in terms of behavioral criteria” (1963, p. 22). A behaviorist, so understood, is someone who demands behavioral evidence for any psychological hypothesis. For such a person, there is no knowable difference between two states of mind (beliefs, desires, etc.) unless there is a demonstrable difference in the behavior associated with each state. Consider the current belief of a person that it is raining. If there is no difference in his or her behavior between believing that it is raining and believing that it is not raining, there is no grounds for attributing the one belief rather than the other. The attribution is empirically empty or unconstrained.

Arguably, there is nothing truly exciting about behaviorism loosely understood. It enthrones behavioral evidence, an arguably inescapable premise not just in psychological science but in ordinary discourse about mind and behavior. Just how behavioral evidence should be ‘enthroned’ (especially in science) may be debated. But enthronement itself is not in question.

Not so behaviorism the doctrine. It has been widely and vigorously debated. This entry is about the doctrine, not the attitude. Behaviorism, the doctrine, has caused considerable excitation among both advocates and critics. In a manner of speaking, it is a doctrine, or family of doctrines, about how to enthrone behavior not just in the science of psychology but in the metaphysics of human and animal behavior.

Behaviorism, the doctrine, is committed in its fullest and most complete sense to the truth of the following three sets of claims.

Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the inner mind – as something other or different from behavior.
Behavior can be described and explained without making ultimate reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind, in the head).
In the course of theory development in psychology, if, somehow, mental terms or concepts are deployed in describing or explaining behavior, then either (a) these terms or concepts should be eliminated and replaced by behavioral terms or (b) they can and should be translated or paraphrased into behavioral concepts.

The three sets of claims are logically distinct. Moreover, taken independently, each helps to form a type of behaviorism. “Methodological” behaviorism is committed to the truth of (1). “Psychological” behaviorism is committed to the truth of (2). “Analytical” behaviorism (also known as “philosophical” or “logical” behaviorism) is committed to the truth of the sub-statement in (3) that mental terms or concepts can and should be translated into behavioral concepts.

Other nomenclature is sometimes used to classify behaviorisms. Georges Rey (1997, p. 96), for example, classifies behaviorisms as methodological, analytical, and radical, where “radical” is Rey’s term for what is here classified as psychological behaviorism. The term “radical” is instead reserved for the psychological behaviorism of B. F. Skinner. Skinner employs the expression “radical behaviorism” to describe his brand of behaviorism or his philosophy of behaviorism (see Skinner 1974, p. 18). In the classification scheme used in this entry, radical behaviorism is a sub-type of psychological behaviorism, primarily, although it combines all three types of behaviorism (methodological, analytical, and psychological).

Methodological behaviorism is a normative theory about the scientific conduct of psychology. It claims that psychology should concern itself with the behavior of organisms (human and nonhuman animals). Psychology should not concern itself with mental states or events or with constructing internal information processing accounts of behavior. According to methodological behaviorism, reference to mental states, such as an animal’s beliefs or desires, adds nothing to what psychology can and should understand about the sources of behavior. Mental states are private entities which, given the necessary publicity of science, do not form proper objects of empirical study. Methodological behaviorism is a dominant theme in the writings of John Watson (1878–1958).

Psychological behaviorism is a research program within psychology. It purports to explain human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements. Psychological behaviorism is present in the work of Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), Edward Thorndike (1874–1949), as well as Watson. Its fullest and most influential expression is B. F. Skinner’s work on schedules of reinforcement.

To illustrate, consider a hungry rat in an experimental chamber. If a particular movement, such as pressing a lever when a light is on, is followed by the presentation of food, then the likelihood of the rat’s pressing the lever when hungry, again, and the light is on, is increased. Such presentations are reinforcements, such lights are (discriminative) stimuli, such lever pressings are responses, and such trials or associations are learning histories.

Analytical or logical behaviorism is a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or concepts. It says that the very idea of a mental state or condition is the idea of a behavioral disposition or family of behavioral tendencies, evident in how a person behaves in one situation rather than another. When we attribute a belief, for example, to someone, we are not saying that he or she is in a particular internal state or condition. Instead, we are characterizing the person in terms of what he or she might do in particular situations or environmental interactions. Analytical behaviorism may be found in the work of Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–51) (if perhaps not without controversy in interpretation, in Wittgenstein’s case). More recently, the philosopher-psychologist U. T. Place (1924–2000) advocated a brand of analytical behaviorism restricted to intentional or representational states of mind, such as beliefs, which Place took to constitute a type, although not the only type, of mentality (see Graham and Valentine 2004). Arguably, a version of analytical or logical behaviorism may also be found in the work of Daniel Dennett on the ascription of states of consciousness via a method he calls ‘heterophenomenology’ (Dennett 2005, pp. 25–56). (See also Melser 2004.)

Each of methodological, psychological, and analytical behaviorism has historical foundations. Analytical behaviorism traces its historical roots to the philosophical movement known as Logical Positivism (see Smith 1986). Logical positivism proposes that the meaning of statements used in science must be understood in terms of experimental conditions or observations that verify their truth. This positivist doctrine is known as “verificationism.” In psychology, verificationism underpins or grounds analytical behaviorism, namely, the claim that mental concepts refer to behavioral tendencies and so must be translated into behavioral terms.

Analytical behaviorism helps to avoid a metaphysical position known as substance dualism. Substance dualism is the doctrine that mental states take place in a special, non-physical mental substance (the immaterial mind). By contrast, for analytical behaviorism, the belief that I have as I arrive on time for a 2pm dental appointment, namely, that I have a 2pm appointment, is not the property of a mental substance. Believing is a family of tendencies of my body. In addition, for an analytical behaviorist, we cannot identify the belief about my arrival independently of that arrival or other members of this family of tendencies. So, we also cannot treat it as the cause of the arrival. Cause and effect are, as Hume taught, conceptually distinct existences. Believing that I have a 2pm appointment is not distinct from my arrival and so cannot be part of the causal foundations of arrival.

Psychological behaviorism’s historical roots consist, in part, in the classical associationism of the British Empiricists, foremost John Locke (1632–1704) and David Hume (1711–76). According to classical associationism, intelligent behavior is the product of associative learning. As a result of associations or pairings between perceptual experiences or stimulations on the one hand, and ideas or thoughts on the other, persons and animals acquire knowledge of their environment and how to act. Associations enable creatures to discover the causal structure of the world. Association is most helpfully viewed as the acquisition of knowledge about relations between events. Intelligence in behavior is a mark of such knowledge.

Classical associationism relied on introspectible entities, such as perceptual experiences or stimulations as the first links in associations, and thoughts or ideas as the second links. Psychological behaviorism, motivated by experimental interests, claims that to understand the origins of behavior, reference to stimulations (experiences) should be replaced by reference to stimuli (physical events in the environment), and that reference to thoughts or ideas should be eliminated or displaced in favor of reference to responses (overt behavior, motor movement). Psychological behaviorism is associationism without appeal to inner mental events.

Don’t human beings talk of introspectible entities, thoughts, feelings, and so on, even if these are not recognized by behaviorism or best understood as behavioral tendencies? Psychological behaviorists regard the practice of talking about one’s own states of mind, and of introspectively reporting those states, as potentially useful data in psychological experiments, but as not presupposing the metaphysical subjectivity or non-physical presence of those states. There are different sorts of causes behind introspective reports, and psychological behaviorists take these and other elements of introspection to be amenable to behavioral analysis. (For additional discussion, see Section 5 of this entry). (See, for comparison, Dennett’s method of heterophenomenology; Dennett 1991, pp. 72–81)

The task of psychological behaviorism is to specify types of association, understand how environmental events control behavior, discover and elucidate causal regularities or laws or functional relations which govern the formation of associations, and predict how behavior will change as the environment changes. The word “conditioning” is commonly used to specify the process involved in acquiring new associations. Animals in so-called “operant” conditioning experiments are not learning to, for example, press levers. Instead, they are learning about the relationship between events in their environment, for example, that a particular behavior, pressing the lever in the presences of a light, causes food to appear.

In its historical foundations, methodological behaviorism shares with analytical behaviorism the influence of positivism. One of the main goals of positivism was to unify psychology with natural science. Watson wrote that “psychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is … prediction and control” (1913, p. 158). Watson also wrote of the purpose of psychology as follows: “To predict, given the stimulus, what reaction will take place; or, given the reaction, state what the situation or stimulus is that has caused the reaction” (1930, p. 11).

Though logically distinct, methodological, psychological, and analytical behaviorisms are sometimes found in one behaviorism. Skinner’s radical behaviorism combines all three forms of behaviorism. It follows analytical strictures (at least loosely) in paraphrasing mental terms behaviorally, when or if they cannot be eliminated from explanatory discourse. In Verbal Behavior (1957) and elsewhere, Skinner tries to show how mental terms can be given behavioral interpretations. In About Behaviorism (1974) he says that when mental terminology cannot be eliminated it can be “translated into behavior” (p. 18, Skinner brackets the expression with his own double quotes).

Radical behaviorism is concerned with the behavior of organisms, not with internal processing (if treated or described differently from overt behavior). So, it is a form of methodological behaviorism. Finally, radical behaviorism understands behavior as a reflection of frequency effects among stimuli, which means that it is a form of psychological behaviorism.

Behaviorism of one sort or another was an immensely popular research program or methodological commitment among students of behavior from about the third decade of the twentieth century through its middle decades, at least until the beginnings of the cognitive science revolution. Cognitive science began to mature roughly from 1960 until 1985 (see Bechtel, Abrahamsen, and Graham 1998, pp. 15–17). In addition to Ryle and Wittgenstein, philosophers with sympathies for behaviorism included Carnap (1932–33), Hempel (1949), and Quine (1960). Quine, for example, took a behaviorist approach to the study of language. Quine claimed that the notion of psychological or mental activity has no place in a scientific account of either the origins or the meaning of speech. To talk in a scientifically disciplined manner about the meaning of an utterance is to talk about stimuli for the utterance, its so-called “stimulus meaning”. Hempel (1949) claimed that “all psychological statements that are meaningful … are translatable into statements that do not involve psychological concepts,” but only concepts for physical behavior (p. 18).

Among psychologists behaviorism was even more popular than among philosophers. In addition to Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, and Watson, the list of behaviorists among psychologists included, among others, E. C. Tolman (1886–1959), C. L. Hull (1884–52), and E. R. Guthrie (1886–1959). Tolman, for example, wrote that “everything important in psychology … can be investigated in essence through the continued experimental and theoretical analysis of the determiners of rat behavior at a choice point in a maze” (1938, p. 34).

Behaviorists created journals, organized societies, and founded psychology graduate programs reflective of behaviorism. Behaviorists organized themselves into different types of research clusters, whose differences stemmed from such factors as varying approaches to conditioning and experimentation. Some clusters were named as follows: “the experimental analysis of behavior”, “behavior analysis”, “functional analysis”, and, of course, “radical behaviorism”. These labels sometimes were responsible for the titles of behaviorism’s leading societies and journals, including the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis (SABA), and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (begun in 1958) as well as the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (begun in 1968).

Behaviorism generated a type of therapy, known as behavior therapy (see Rimm and Masters 1974; Erwin 1978). It developed behavior management techniques for autistic children (see Lovaas and Newsom 1976) and token economies for the management of chronic schizophrenics (see Stahl and Leitenberg 1976). It fueled discussions of how best to understand the behavior of nonhuman animals and of the relevance of laboratory study to the natural environmental occurrence of animal behavior (see Schwartz and Lacey 1982).

Behaviorism stumbled upon various critical difficulties with some of its commitments. One difficulty is confusion about the effects of reinforcement on behavior (see Gallistel 1990). In its original sense, a stimulus such as food is a reinforcer only if its presentation increases the frequency of a response in a type of associative conditioning known as operant conditioning. A problem with this definition is that it defines reinforcers as stimuli that change behavior. The presentation of food, however, may have no observable effect on response frequency with respect to food even in cases in which an animal is food deprived or hungry. Rather, response frequency can be associated with an animal’s ability to identify and remember temporal or spatial properties of the circumstances in which a stimulus (say, food) is presented. This and other difficulties prompted changes in behaviorism’s commitments and new directions of research. One alternative direction has been the study of the role of short term memory in contributing to reinforcement effects on the so-called trajectory of behavior (see Killeen 1994).

Another stumbling block, in the case of analytical behaviorism, is the fact that the behavioral sentences that are intended to offer the behavioral paraphrases of mental terms almost always use mental terms themselves (see Chisholm 1957). In the example of my belief that I have a 2pm dental appointment, one must also speak of my desire to arrive at 2pm, otherwise the behavior of arriving at 2pm could not count as believing that I have a 2pm appointment. The term “desire” is a mental term. Critics of analytical behaviorism have charged that we can never escape from using mental terms in the characterization of the meaning of mental terms. This suggests that mental discourse cannot be displaced by behavioral discourse. At least it cannot be displaced term-by-term. Perhaps analytical behaviorists need to paraphrase a whole swarm of mental terms at once so as to recognize the presumption that the attribution of any one such mental term presupposes the application of others (see Rey 1997, p. 154–5).

Why would anyone be a behaviorist? There are three main reasons (see also Zuriff 1985).

The first reason is epistemic or evidential. Warrant or evidence for saying, at least in the third person case, that an animal or person is in a certain mental state, for example, possesses a certain belief, is grounded in behavior, understood as observable behavior. Moreover, the conceptual space or step between the claim that behavior warrants the attribution of belief and the claim that believing consists in behavior itself is a short and in some ways appealing step. If we look, for example, at how people are taught to use mental concepts and terms—terms like “believe”, “desire”, and so on—conditions of use appear inseparably connected with behavioral tendencies in certain circumstances. If mental state attribution bears a special connection with behavior, it is tempting to say that mentality just consists in behavioral tendencies.

The second reason can be expressed as follows: One major difference between mentalistic (mental states in-the-head) and associationist or conditioning accounts of behavior is that mentalistic accounts tend to have a strong nativist bent. This is true even though there may be nothing inherently nativist about mentalistic accounts (see Cowie 1998).

Mentalistic accounts tend to assume, and sometimes even explicitly to embrace (see Fodor 1981), the hypothesis that the mind possesses at birth or innately a set of procedures or internally represented processing rules which are deployed when learning or acquiring new responses. Behaviorism, by contrast, is anti-nativist. Behaviorism, therefore, appeals to theorists who deny that there are innate rules by which organisms learn. To Skinner and Watson organisms learn without being innately or pre-experientially provided with implicit procedures by which to learn. Learning does not consist, at least initially, in rule-governed behavior. Learning is what organisms do in response to stimuli. For a behaviorist an organism learns, as it were, from its successes and mistakes. “Rules,” says Skinner (1984a), “are derived from contingencies, which specify discriminative stimuli, responses, and consequences” (p. 583). (See also Dennett 1978).

Much contemporary work in cognitive science on the set of models known as connectionist or parallel distributed processing (PDP) models seems to share behaviorism’s anti-nativism about learning. PDP model building takes an approach to learning which is response oriented rather than rule-governed and this is because, like behaviorism, it has roots in associationism (see Bechtel 1985; compare Graham 1991 with Maloney 1991). Whether PDP models ultimately are or must be anti-nativist depends upon what counts as native or innate rules (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 1991, pp. 103–105).

The third reason for behaviorism’s appeal, popular at least historically, is related to its disdain for reference to inner mental or mentalistic information processing as explanatory causes of behavior. The disdain is most vigorously exemplified in the work of Skinner. Skinner’s skepticism about explanatory references to mental innerness may be described as follows.

Suppose we try to explain the public behavior of a person by describing how they represent,conceptualize or think about their situation. Suppose they conceive or think of their situation in a certain way, not as bare, as filled with items without attributes, but as things, as trees, as people, as walruses, walls, and wallets. Suppose, we also say, a person never merely interacts with their environment; but rather interacts with their environment as they perceive, see, or represent it. So, for example, thinking of something as a wallet, a person reaches for it. Perceiving something as a walrus, they back away from it. Classifying something as a wall, they don’t bump into it. So understood, behavior is endogenously produced movement, viz. behavior that has its causal origin within the person who thinks of or represents their situation in a certain way.

Skinner would object to such claims. He would object not because he believes that the eye is innocent or that inner or endogenous activity does not occur. He would object because he believes that behavior must be explained in terms that do not themselves presuppose the very thing that is explained. The outside (public) behavior of a person is not accounted for by referring to the inside (inner processing, cognitive activity) behavior of the person (say, his or her classifying or analyzing their environment) if, therein, the behavior of the person ultimately is unexplained. “The objection,” wrote Skinner, “to inner states is not that they do not exist, but that they are not relevant in a functional analysis” (Skinner 1953, p. 35). ‘Not relevant’ means, for Skinner, explanatorily circular or regressive.

Skinner charges that since mental activity is a form of behavior (albeit inner), the only non-regressive, non-circular way to explain behavior is to appeal to something non-behavioral. This non-behavioral something is environmental stimuli and an organism’s interactions with, and reinforcement from, the environment.

So, the third reason for behaviorism’s appeal is that it tries to avoid (what it claims is) circular, regressive explanations of behavior. It aims to refrain from accounting for one type of behavior (overt) in terms of another type of behavior (covert), all the while, in some sense, leaving behavior unexplained.

It should be noted that Skinner’s views about explanation and the purported circularity of explanation by reference to inner processing are both extreme and scientifically contestable, and that many who have self-identified as behaviorists including Guthrie, Tolman, and Hull, or continue to work within the tradition, broadly understood, including Killeen (1987) and Rescorla (1990), take exception to much that Skinner has said about explanatory references to innerness. Also Skinner himself is not always clear about his aversion to innerness. Skinner’s derisive attitude towards explanatory references to mental innerness stems, in part, not just from fears of explanatory circularity but from his conviction that if the language of psychology is permitted to refer to internal processing, this goes some way towards permitting talk of immaterial mental substances, agents endowed with contra-causal free will, and little persons (homunculi) within bodies. Each of these Skinner takes to be incompatible with a scientific worldview (see Skinner 1971; see also Day 1976). Finally, it must be noted that Skinner’s aversion to explanatory references to innerness is not an aversion to inner mental states or processes per se. He readily admits that private thoughts and so on exist. Skinner countenances talk of inner events but only provided that their innerness is treated in the same manner as public behavior or overt responses. An adequate science of behavior, he claims, must describe events taking place within the skin of the organism as part of behavior itself (see Skinner 1976). “So far as I am concerned,” he wrote in 1984 in a special issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences devoted to his work, “whatever happens when we inspect a public stimulus is in every respect similar to what happens when we introspect a private one” (Skinner 1984b, p. 575; compare Graham 1984, pp. 558–9).

Skinner does not have much to say about just how inner (covert, private) behavior (like thinking, classifying, and analyzing) can be described in the same manner as public or overt behavior. But his idea is roughly as follows. Just as we may describe overt behavior or motor movement in terms of concepts like stimulus, response, conditioning, reinforcement, and so on, so we may deploy the very same terms in describing inner or covert behavior. One thought or line of thought may reinforce another thought. An act of analysis may serve as a stimulus for an effort at classification. And so on. Purely ‘mentalistic’ activities may be at least roughly parsed in terms of behavioral concepts — a topic to be revisited later in the entry (in the 7th Section).

Skinner is the only major figure in the history of behaviorism to offer a socio-political world view based on his commitment to behaviorism. Skinner constructed a theory as well as narrative picture in Walden Two (1948) of what an ideal human society would be like if designed according to behaviorist principles (see also Skinner 1971). Skinner’s social worldview illustrates his aversions to free will, to homunculi, and to dualism as well as his positive reasons for claiming that a person’s history of environmental interactions controls his or her behavior.

One possible feature of human behavior which Skinner deliberately rejects is that people freely or creatively make their own environments (see Chomsky 1971, Black 1973). Skinner protests that “it is in the nature of an experimental analysis of human behavior that it should strip away the functions previously assigned to a free or autonomous person and transfer them one by one to the controlling environment” (1971, p. 198).

Critics have raised several objections to the Skinnerian social picture. One of the most persuasive, and certainly one of the most frequent, adverts to Skinner’s vision of the ideal human society. It is a question asked of the fictional founder of Walden Two, Frazier, by the philosopher Castle. It is the question of what is the best social or communal mode of existence for a human being. Frazier’s, and therein Skinner’s, response to this question is both too general and incomplete. Frazier/Skinner praises the values of health, friendship, relaxation, rest, and so forth. However, these values are hardly the detailed basis of a social system.

There is a notorious difficulty in social theory of specifying the appropriate level of detail at which a blueprint for a new and ideal society must be presented (see Arnold 1990, pp. 4–10). Skinner identifies the behavioristic principles and learning incentives that he hopes will reduce systematic injustices in social systems. He also describes a few practices (concerning child rearing and the like) that are intended to contribute to human happiness. However, he offers only the haziest descriptions of the daily lives of Walden Two citizens and no suggestions for how best to resolve disputes about alternative ways of life that are prima facie consistent with behaviorist principles (see Kane 1996, p. 203). He gives little or no serious attention to the crucial general problem of inter-personal conflict resolution and to the role of institutional arrangements in resolving conflicts.

In an essay which appeared in The Behavior Analyst (1985), nearly forty years after the publication of Walden Two, Skinner, in the guise of Frazier, tried to clarify his characterization of ideal human circumstances. He wrote that in the ideal human society “people just naturally do the things they need to do to maintain themselves … and treat each other well, and they just naturally do a hundred other things they enjoy doing because they do not have to do them” (p. 9). However, of course, doing a hundred things humans enjoy doing means only that Walden Two is vaguely defined, not that its culturally instituted habits and the character of its institutions merit emulation.

The incompleteness of Skinner’s description of the ideal human society or life is so widely acknowledged that one might wonder if actual experiments in Walden Two living could lend useful detail to his blueprint. More than one such social experiment has been conducted. Perhaps the most interesting (in part because the community has evolved away from its Skinnerian roots) is the Twin Oaks Community in Virginia in the U.S.A., which can be indirectly explored via the Internet (see Other Internet Resources).

Behaviorism is dismissed by cognitive scientists developing intricate internal information processing models of cognition. Its laboratory routines or experimental regimens are neglected by cognitive ethologists and ecological psychologists convinced that its methods are irrelevant to studying how animals and persons behave in their natural and social environment. Its traditional relative indifference towards neuroscience and deference to environmental contingencies is rejected by neuroscientists sure that direct study of the brain is the only way to understand the truly proximate causes of behavior.

But by no means has behaviorism disappeared. Robust elements of behaviorism survive in both behavior therapy and laboratory-based animal learning theory (of which more below). In the metaphysics of mind, too, behavioristic themes survive in the approach to mind known as Functionalism. Functionalism defines states of mind as states that play causal-functional roles in animals or systems in which they occur. Paul Churchland writes of Functionalism as follows: “The essential or defining feature of any type of mental states is the set of causal relations it bears to … bodily behavior” (1984, p. 36). This functionalist notion is similar to the behaviorist idea that reference to behavior and to stimulus/response relations enters centrally and essentially into any account of what it means for a creature to behave or to be subject, in the scheme of analytical or logical behaviorism, to the attribution of mental states.

Fans of the so-called and now widely discussed Extended Mind Hypothesis (EMH) also share a kinship with behaviorism or at least with Skinner. The defining hypothesis of EMH is that “mental” representation is a matter that spills out from the brain or head into the world and cultural environment (Levy 2007). Representations are things external to the head or which bear special individuating relationships with external devices or forms of cultural activity. Skinner’s misgivings about depicting the power of mental representation as something confined to the head (brain, inner mind) are at least loosely akin to EMH’s shift to depict representationality as environmentally extended.

Elements, however, are elements. Behaviorism is no longer a dominating research program.

Why has the influence of behaviorism declined? The deepest and most complex reason for behaviorism’s decline in influence is its commitment to the thesis that behavior can be explained without reference to non-behavioral and inner mental (cognitive, representational, or interpretative) activity. Behavior, for Skinner, can be explained just by reference to its “functional” (Skinner’s term) relation to or co-variation with the environment and to the animal’s history of environmental interaction. Neurophysiological and neurobiological conditions, for Skinner, sustain or implement these functional or causal relations. But they do not serve as ultimate or independent sources or explanations of behavior. Behavior, Skinner (1953) wrote, cannot be accounted for “while staying wholly inside [an animal]; eventually we must turn to forces operating upon the organism from without.” “Unless there is a weak spot in our causal chain so that the second [neurological] link is not lawfully determined by the first [environmental stimuli], or the third [behavior] by the second, the first and third links must be lawfully related.” (p. 35) “Valid information about the second link may throw light on this relationship but can in no way alter it.” (ibid.) It is “external variables of which behavior is a function.” (ibid.)

Skinner was no triumphalist about neuroscience. Neuroscience, for him, more or less just identifies organismic physical processes that underlie animal/environment interactions. Therein, it rides evidential or epistemic piggyback on radical behaviorism’s prior description of those interactions. “The organism”, he says, “is not empty, and it cannot adequately be treated simply as a black box” (1976, p. 233). “Something is done today which affects the behavior of the organism tomorrow” (p. 233). Neuroscience describes inside-the-box mechanisms that permit today’s reinforcing stimulus to affect tomorrow’s behavior. The neural box is not empty, but it is unable, except in cases of malfunction or breakdown, to disengage the animal from past patterns of behavior that have been reinforced. It cannot exercise independent or non-environmentally countervailing authority over behavior.

For many critics of behaviorism it seems obvious that, at a minimum, the occurrence and character of behavior (especially human behavior) does not depend primarily upon an individual’s reinforcement history, although that is a factor, but on the fact that the environment or learning history is represented by an individual and how (the manner in which) it is represented. The fact that the environment is represented by me constrains or informs the functional or causal relations that hold between my behavior and the environment and may, from an anti-behaviorist perspective, partially disengage my behavior from its conditioning or reinforcement history. No matter, for example, how tirelessly and repeatedly I have been reinforced for pointing to or eating ice cream, such a history is impotent if I just don’t see a potential stimulus as ice cream or represent it to myself as ice cream or if I desire to hide the fact that something is ice cream from others. My conditioning history, narrowly understood as unrepresented by me, is behaviorally less important than the environment or my learning history as represented or interpreted by me.

Similarly, for many critics of behaviorism, if representationality comes between environment and behavior, this implies that Skinner is too restrictive or limited in his attitude towards the role of brain mechanisms in producing or controlling behavior. The brain is no mere passive memory bank of behavior/environment interactions (see Roediger and Goff 1998). The central nervous system, which otherwise sustains my reinforcement history, contains systems or neurocomputational sub-systems that implement or encode whatever representational content or meaning the environment has for me. It is also an active interpretation machine or semantic engine, often critically performing environmentally untethered and behavior controlling tasks. Such talk of representation or interpretation, however, is a perspective from which behaviorism—most certainly in Skinner— wishes and tries to depart.

One defining aspiration of traditional behaviorism is that it tried to free psychology from having to theorize about how animals and persons represent (internally, in the head) their environment. This effort at freedom was important, historically, because it seemed that behavior/environment connections are a lot clearer and more manageable experimentally than internal representations. Unfortunately, for behaviorism, it’s hard to imagine a more restrictive rule for psychology than one which prohibits hypotheses about representational storage and processing. Stephen Stich, for example, complains against Skinner that “we now have an enormous collection of experimental data which, it would seem, simply cannot be made sense of unless we postulate something like” information processing mechanisms in the heads of organisms (1998, p. 649).

A second reason for rejecting behaviorism is that some features of mentality—some elements, in particular, of the conscious mental life of persons—have characteristic ‘qualia’ or presentationally immediate or phenomenal qualities. To be in pain, for example, is not merely to produce appropriate pain behavior under the right environmental circumstances, but it is to experience a ‘like-thisness’ to the pain (as something dull or sharp, perhaps). A purely behaviorist creature, a ‘zombie’, as it were, may engage in pain behavior, including beneath the skin pain responses, yet completely lack whatever is qualitatively distinctive of and proper to pain (its painfulness). (See also Graham 1998, pp. 47–51 and Graham and Horgan 2000. On the scope of the phenomenal in human mentality, see Graham, Horgan, and Tienson 2009).

The philosopher-psychologist U. T. Place, although otherwise sympathetic to the application of behaviorist ideas to matters of mind, argued that phenomenal qualia cannot be analyzed in behaviorist terms. He claimed that qualia are neither behavior nor dispositions to behave. “They make themselves felt,” he said, “from the very moment that the experience of whose qualia they are” comes into existence (2000, p. 191; reprinted in Graham and Valentine 2004). They are instantaneous features of processes or events rather than dispositions manifested over time. Qualitative mental events (such as sensations, perceptual experiences, and so on), for Place, undergird dispositions to behave rather than count as dispositions. Indeed, it is tempting to postulate that the qualitative aspects of mentality affect non-qualitative elements of internal processing, and that they, for example, contribute to arousal, attention, and receptivity to associative conditioning.

The third reason for rejecting behaviorism is connected with Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has been one of behaviorism’s most successful and damaging critics. In a review of Skinner’s book on verbal behavior (see above), Chomsky (1959) charged that behaviorist models of language learning cannot explain various facts about language acquisition, such as the rapid acquisition of language by young children, which is sometimes referred to as the phenomenon of “lexical explosion.” A child’s linguistic abilities appear to be radically underdetermined by the evidence of verbal behavior offered to the child in the short period in which he or she expresses those abilities. By the age of four or five (normal) children have an almost limitless capacity to understand and produce sentences which they have never heard before. Chomsky also argued that it seems plainly untrue that language learning depends on the application of detailed reinforcement. A child does not, as an English speaker in the presence of a house, utter “house” repeatedly in the presence of reinforcing elders. Language as such seems to be learned without, in a sense, being explicitly taught or taught in detail, and behaviorism doesn’t offer an account of how this could be so. Chomsky’s own speculations about the psychological realities underlying language development include the hypothesis that the rules or principles underlying linguistic behavior are abstract (applying to all human languages) and innate (part of our native psychological endowment as human beings). When put to the test of uttering a grammatical sentence, a person, for Chomsky, has a virtually infinite number of possible responses available, and the only way in which to understand this virtually infinite generative capacity is to suppose that a person possesses a powerful and abstract innate grammar (underlying whatever competence he or she may have in one or more particular natural languages).

The problem to which Chomsky refers, which is the problem of behavioral competence and thus performance outstripping individual learning histories, goes beyond merely the issue of linguistic behavior in young children. It appears to be a fundamental fact about human beings that our behavior and behavioral capacities often surpass the limitations of individual reinforcement histories. Our history of reinforcement is often too impoverished to determine uniquely what we do or how we do it. Much learning, therefore, seems to require pre-existing or innate representational structures or principled constraints within which learning occurs. (See also Brewer 1974, but compare with Bates et al. 1998 and Cowie 1998).

Is the case against behaviorism definitive? Decisive? Paul Meehl noted decades ago that theories in psychology seem to disappear not under the force of decisive refutation but rather because researchers lose interest in their theoretical orientations (Meehl 1978). One implication of Meehl’s thesis is that a once popular “Ism”, not having been decisively refuted, may restore some of its former prominence if it mutates or transforms itself so as to incorporate responses to criticisms. What may this mean for behaviorism? It may mean that some version of the doctrine might rebound.

Skinner claimed that neural activities subserve or underlie behavior/environment relations and that the organism’s contribution to these relations does not reduce to neurophysiological properties. But this does not mean that behaviorism cannot gain useful alliance with neuroscience. Reference to brain structures (neurobiology, neurochemistry, and so on) may help in explaining behavior even if such references do not ultimately displace reference to environmental contingencies in a behaviorist account.

Such is a lesson of animal modeling in which behaviorist themes still enjoy currency. Animal models of addiction, habit and instrumental learning are particularly noteworthy because they bring behavioral research into closer contact than did traditional psychological behaviorism with research on the brain mechanisms underlying reinforcement, especially positive reinforcement (West 2006, pp. 91–108). One result of this contact is the discovery that sensitized neural systems responsible for heightened reinforcement value or strength can be dissociated from the hedonic utility or pleasurable quality of reinforcement (see Robinson and Berridge 2003). The power of a stimulus to reinforce behavior may be independent of whether it is a source or cause of pleasure. Focus on brain mechanisms underlying reinforcement also forms the centerpiece of one of the most active research programs in current neuroscience, so-called neuroeconomics, which weds study of the brain’s reward systems with models of valuation and economic decision making (see Montague and Berns 2002; Nestler and Malenka 2004; Ross et al 2008). Behaviorism may do well to purchase some of neuroeconomic’s conceptual currency, especially since some advocates of the program see themselves as behaviorists in spirit if not stereotypical letter and honor the work of a number of theorists in the behavioristic tradition of the experimental analysis of behavior, such as George Ainslie, Richard Herrnstein and Howard Rachlin, on how patterns of behavior relate to patterns of reward or reinforcement (see Ross et al. 2008, especially p. 10). One important assumption in neuroeconomics is that full explanations of organism/environmental interactions will combine facts about such things as reinforcement schedules with appeal to neurocomputational modeling and to the neurochemistry and neurobiology of reinforcement.

Other potential sources of utility or renewal? The continued popularity of so-called economic behavior therapy is noteworthy because it offers a potential domain of testing application for the regimen of behaviorism. Early versions of behavior therapy sought to apply restricted results from Skinnerian or Pavlovian conditioning paradigms to human behavior problems. No minds should be spoken of; just behavior—stimuli, responses, and reinforcement. Therapy shapes behavior not thought. Successive generations of behavior therapy relax those conceptual restrictions. Advocates refer to themselves as cognitive behavior therapists (e.g. Mahoney 1974; Meichenbaum 1977). Clients’ behavior problems are described by referring to their beliefs, desires, intentions, memories, and so on. Even the language of self-reflexive thought and belief (so-called ‘meta-cognition’) figures in some accounts of behavioral difficulties and interventions (Wells 2000). One goal of such language is to encourage clients to monitor and self-reinforce their own behavior. Self-reinforcement is an essential feature of behavioral self-control (Rachlin 2000; Ainslie 2001). The monitoring process may include a number of checking and error detection processes and correction of behavior in a client’s current life circumstances (West 2006).

It may be wondered whether cognitive behavior therapy is aptly consistent with behaviorist doctrine. Much depends on how beliefs and desires are understood. If beliefs and desires are understood as states that somehow spill out into the environment and are individuated in terms of their non-mentalistic, behavior-like role in organism/environment interactions, this would be consistent with traditional behaviorist doctrine. It would reflect the principle of logical or analytical behaviorism that if mental terms are to be used in the description and explanation of behavior, they must be defined or paraphrased in non-mental behavioral terms. Prospects for belief/desire individuation in non-mental, environmentally externalist terms may look doubtful however, especially in cases of conscious attitudes(see Horgan, Tienson and Graham 2006). But the topic of the forms and limits of behavior therapy and the range of its plausible application is open for continued further exploration.

In 1977 Willard Day, a behavioral psychologist and founding editor of the journal Behaviorism (later known as Behavior and Philosophy), published Skinner’s “Why I am not a cognitive psychologist” (Skinner 1977). Skinner began the paper by stating that “the variables of which human behavior is a function lie in the environment” (p. 1). Skinner ended by remarking that “cognitive constructs give … a misleading account of what” is inside a human being (p. 10)

More than a decade earlier, in 1966 Carl Hempel had announced his defection from behaviorism:

In order to characterize … behavioral patterns, propensities, or capacities … we need not only a suitable behavioristic vocabulary, but psychological terms as well. (p. 110)

Hempel had come to believe that it is a mistake to imagine that human behavior can be understood exclusively in non-mental, behavioristic terms.

Contemporary psychology and philosophy largely share Hempel’s conviction that the explanation of behavior cannot omit invoking a creature’s representation of its world. Psychology must use psychological terms. Behavior without cognition is blind. Psychological theorizing without reference to internal cognitive processing is explanatorily impaired. To say this, of course, is not to a priori preclude that behaviorism will recover some of its prominence. Just how to conceive of cognitive processing (even where to locate it) remains a heated subject of debate (see Melser 2004; see also Levy 2007, pp. 29–64). But if behaviorism is to recover some of its prominence, this recovery may require a reformulation of its doctrines that is attune to developments (like that of neuroeconomics) in neuroscience as well as in novel therapeutic orientations.

Skinner’s vantage point on or special contribution to behaviorism mates the science of behavior with the language of organism/environment interactions. But we humans don’t just run and mate and walk and eat in this or that environment. We think, classify, analyze, imagine, and theorize. In addition to our outer behavior, we have highly complex inner lives, wherein we are active, often imaginatively, in our heads, all the while often remaining as stuck as posts, as still as stones. Call our inner life ‘behavior’ if one wants, but this piece of linguistic stipulation does not mean that the probability or occurrence of inner events is shaped by the same environmental contingencies as overt behavior or bodily movements. It does not mean that understanding a sentence or composing an entry for this encyclopedia consist of the same general modes of discriminatory responses as learning how to move one’s body in pursuit of a food source. How the Inner Representational World of mind maps into the Country of Behaviorism remains the “ism’s” still incompletely charted territory.

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Behaviorism

Learning Theory

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Behaviorism is a psychological school of thought that seeks to identify observable, measurable laws that explain human (and animal) behavior. Rather than looking inward to incorporate the subject’s thoughts and feelings, classical behaviorism focused on observable behavioral outputs, presuming that each behavior was carried out in response to environmental stimuli or a result of the individual’s past conditioning—which may have included consequences, such as rewards or punishments. What’s more, proponents argued that any task or behavior could be modified with the right conditioning, regardless of individual traits and thinking patterns.

Behaviorism was most dominant in the first half of the twentieth century. Though the field did evolve beyond its early hyperfocus on external behavior, it is no longer widely cited amongst clinicians or academics because modern psychology tends to privilege the inner landscape of emotions and thought. Still, behavioral therapy techniques are used to help with developing new skills, connecting the steps required to complete a task, and rewarding desired behavior, particularly in the areas of developmental delays and the modification of problematic behaviors. The theory of behaviorism laid the groundwork for understanding how we learn, and has had a durable influence on everything from animal training to parenting techniques to teaching standards.

The Basics of Behaviorism
Why People Like Behaviorist Approaches to the Mind
The Criticisms of Behaviorism

A golden retriever dog eating from a bowl and licking its lips

Behaviorism emerged in the early 1900s, largely in response to other popular schools of thought at the time—including Freudian psychology, which emphasized the importance of unconscious thoughts and urges. Early behaviorists aimed to transform psychology into a more objective scientific discipline that, like biology or chemistry, focused on measurable, observable phenomenon, rather than the unobservable internal phenomena that Freud and his contemporaries prioritized. Classical behaviorists did not deny that humans have thoughts and emotions; rather, they argued that because such internal cognitions could not be measured or documented, they were not relevant for the study of human behavior. Though such theories have been largely discounted, some elements of behaviorism—particularly those related to radical behaviorism, a theory promoted by noted psychologist B.F. Skinner—remain in use today

An American psychologist named John B. Watson, born in 1898, is considered the “father” of behaviorism. Watson primarily studied animal behavior and child development and was (in)famous for conducting the “Little Albert” experiment, now widely seen as unethical. Though his work is still taught to psychology students, some argue that his legacy should be rethought .

Classical conditioning is a form of learning in which the repeated pairing of two stimuli will cause an organism to respond to one stimulus as if the other was present, even when it isn’t. A famous example of classical conditioning is an experiment conducted by Ivan Pavlov, who observed that dogs could be made to salivate in response to unrelated auditory or visual stimuli. In one version of the experiment, food—which itself caused the dogs to salivate—was repeatedly paired with a whistling sound. After being conditioned, the dogs would salivate at the mere sound of the whistle—even if food never arrived.

Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which an organism modifies its behavior in response to repeated rewards or punishments. A child who touches a hot stove, for example, will be burned; that negative consequence will likely lead them to avoid touching hot stoves in the future.

“Methodological behaviorism,” credited to John Watson, argues that because only external behaviors can be observed, they are all that should be measured and studied. “Radical behaviorism,” devised by B.F. Skinner, argues that thoughts and feelings represent “inner behavior” and can be studied and modified, just like external behaviors.

Behaviorism does not suggest that negative consequences necessarily promote desired behavior—rather, they teach the organism to avoid undesired behavior. Spanking , for example, is a common example of negative consequences being used to manage behavior—a child who misbehaves is punished, and (in theory) avoids the bad behavior in the future. However, the child has not learned a positive replacement behavior, and the punished behavior may reappear once the punitive consequences (i.e. spanking) are stopped.

The “Little Albert” experiment was an early-20th-century behaviorist study in which an infant (dubbed “Albert”) was conditioned to fear certain animals and objects—such as a rat, a white rabbit, and a Santa Claus mask—because each was paired with a loud, frightening sound. The experiment is now considered unethical because the researchers did not attempt to “decondition” the infant afterward, potentially leaving him with lasting fears of harmless objects; some experts also speculate that “Albert’s” mother was coerced into participating. Though several historians have claimed to have discovered the identity of “Albert,” the child’s true identity—and the aftereffects of the study—remain debated.

Behaviorist principles are sometimes used today to treat mental health challenges, such as phobias or PTSD ; exposure therapy , for example, aims to weaken conditioned responses to certain feared stimuli. Applied behavior analysis (ABA), a therapy used to treat autism, is based on behaviorist principles. Behaviorism also shows up in organizational psychology , particularly in the use of rewards and punishments to modify employee behavior.

One reason behaviorism rose to prominence in the 1920s is that it implies human behavior is predictable. People often expect, or hope, that others will behave in a predictable fashion, even if that isn’t always the case. On a social level, behavioral predictability builds confidence and trust—and behaviors and attitudes that deviate too far from the established norm or that are erratic and unpredictable are often considered unacceptable. Thus, the idea that one can predict how another person will behave or elicit a standard response using operant conditioning was enticing to generations of psychologists. And though behaviorism is no longer a dominant school of thought in psychology, it hasn’t been entirely discounted—many modern approaches incorporate behaviorist elements with some success.

Many modern therapies, such as behavior therapy or exposure therapy, rely in part on behaviorist techniques. Behavior therapy, for example, makes use of positive and negative consequences (such as praise or the loss of privileges) to modify a child’s behavior; such therapy has been shown to be effective for developmental disorders such as ADHD .

Because behaviorism suggests that learning happens primarily via conditioning, behavioral approaches to teaching make use of rewards and punishments in order to reinforce desired concepts and behaviors. Such techniques may prove useful for simple behaviors or learning rooted in repetition; however, it is not thought to be effective in helping students master more complex concepts or engage in critical thinking.

The principles of reinforcement can be used in interpersonal relationships; indeed, parents very often use the promise of a reward or the threat of a punishment to change their child’s behavior. Romantic partners can also make use of reinforcement to modify each other’s behavior—for example, “rewarding” a partner with affection when they complete a needed chore. Evidence suggests, however, that such “conditional regard” can backfire in romantic relationships .

Behaviorism is no longer as dominant as it once was, and many psychologists today discount most aspects of both classical behaviorism and radical behaviorism. While most modern therapeutic approaches aim to change behavior to some extent, they typically do so by targeting thoughts and emotions, rather than focusing primarily on rewards and punishment. There are exceptions to this—such as in the treatment of autism or other developmental disorders—but even these are not without their critics. Indeed, some psychologists argue that using behaviorist approaches to treat developmental disorders is both ineffective and potentially harmful.

Behaviorism began to decline in popularity when cognitive psychology, which prioritizes the study of internal mental processes such as attention and memory , started to gain steam in the 1960s. Psychologists of the time were frustrated by the limits of behaviorism and felt that it was unable to truly explain the complex realities of human behavior. An influential critique by linguist Noam Chomsky is credited with dismantling much of behaviorism’s influence.

Among the most common criticisms of behaviorism are that it is reductionist and that it ignores the complexity of human thought and emotion , as well as the possibility of free will . Some modern applications of behaviorism—most notably applied behavior analysis—have been criticized for modifying behavior at the expense of personal agency; some have suggested that the use of behaviorist techniques to treat autism , in particular, can be harmful.

ABA remains a popular approach to treating autism. Some autism advocates, however, argue that ABA uses punishment and/or negative reinforcement to force autistic individuals to behave in neurotypical ways, even when it does not benefit them. They also argue that it does not address the underlying reasons for autistic behaviors —using reinforcement to get an autistic person to stop hand-flapping, for example, does not target his motivation for doing so in the first place, and thus leaves him with an unmet internal need.

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science pp 495–500 Cite as

B. F. Skinner and Behaviorism

James W Diller 3
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Burrhus Frederic Skinner ; Radical behaviorism

B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) was an American psychologist who pioneered the field of behavior analysis and developed the philosophy of radical behaviorism. Skinner is widely known for his experimental work with rats and pigeons, the technologies that he developed (e.g., the operant conditioning chamber or Skinner box, schedules of reinforcement), and the philosophy of radical behaviorism, which underlies and unifies the basic and applied work of behavior analysts. He expanded the scope of his science and philosophy to issues of human culture and survival, spawning the application of his behavioral science to improve the human condition.

Introduction

At the heart of Skinner’s contribution is operant conditioning , which focuses on the influence of consequences on behavior. As a tool to understand behavior, Skinner developed the concept of the three-term contingency , consisting of the antecedent, the behavior, and the...

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Diller, J.W. (2021). B. F. Skinner and Behaviorism. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_1306

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Theories of behaviour and behaviour change across the social and behavioural sciences: a scoping review

Rachel davis.

a Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology , University College London , London, UK

Rona Campbell

b School of Social and Community Medicine , University of Bristol , Bristol, UK

Lorna Hobbs

Susan michie.

Interventions to change health-related behaviours typically have modest effects and may be more effective if grounded in appropriate theory. Most theories applied to public health interventions tend to emphasise individual capabilities and motivation, with limited reference to context and social factors. Intervention effectiveness may be increased by drawing on a wider range of theories incorporating social, cultural and economic factors that influence behaviour. The primary aim of this paper is to identify theories of behaviour and behaviour change of potential relevance to public health interventions across four scientific disciplines: psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics. We report in detail the methodology of our scoping review used to identify these theories including which involved a systematic search of electronic databases, consultation with a multidisciplinary advisory group, web searching, searching of reference lists and hand searching of key behavioural science journals. Of secondary interest we developed a list of agreed criteria for judging the quality of the theories. We identified 82 theories and 9 criteria for assessing theory quality. The potential relevance of this wide-ranging number of theories to public health interventions and the ease and usefulness of evaluating the theories in terms of the quality criteria are however yet to be determined.

Introduction

Human behaviours, including tobacco and alcohol consumption, dietary behaviours, physical activity and sexual practices, play a key role in many of the leading causes of death in developing and developed countries (Aveyard & West, 2007 ; Danaei et al., 2009 ; Ezzati et al., 2002 ; Mokdad, Marks, Stroup, & Gerberding, 2004 ; Parkin, Boyd, & Walker, 2011 ; Solomon & Kington, 2002 ). Even small changes in such behaviours can have substantial effects on population health outcomes (Ezzati et al., 2002 ; Mokdad et al., 2004 ; National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), 2010 ; Solomon & Kington, 2002 ). Understanding these behaviours and the contexts in which they occur is essential for developing effective evidence-based health behaviour change interventions and policies and for reducing avoidable mobility and mortality (House of Lords, 2011 ; Office of Behavioural and Social Sciences Research, 2006 ).

Despite the relatively small investment in preventive health and behavioural science (Marteau, Dieppe, Foy, Kinmonth, & Schneiderman, 2006 ), there is evidence for the effectiveness of behaviour change interventions at individual, community and population levels (Abraham, Kelly, West, & Michie, 2009 ; Albarracin et al., 2005 ; Michie & West, 2013 ; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2007 ; Nigg, Allegrante, & Ory, 2002 ). Interventions have been targeted at behavioural risk factors (e.g., smoking; Carr & Ebbert, 2012 ; Rice & Stead, 2008 ), encouraging protective behaviours (e.g., health screening; Brouwers et al., 2011 ; Everett et al., 2011 ), improving adaptation to chronic and acute illness (e.g., adherence to medical advice; Cutrona et al., 2010 ) and changing health professional behaviours to improve the quality and efficiency of services (e.g., hand hygiene compliance; Fuller et al., 2012 ). While there are many examples of successful interventions, there are also examples of ineffective interventions (e.g., Coleman, 2010 ; Summerbell et al., 2005 ); for those that are effective, the effects tend to be modest, with significant heterogeneity of short-term and long-term effects (Michie, Johnston, Francis, Hardeman, & Eccles, 2008 ).

To maximise the potential efficacy of interventions, it is necessary to understand behaviour and behaviour change: in other words, it is necessary to have a theoretical understanding of behaviour change. In this context, theory represents the accumulated knowledge of the mechanisms of action (mediators) and moderators of change as well as the a priori assumptions about what human behaviour is, and what the influences on it are. The application of theory is advocated as an integral step in intervention design and evaluation and in evidence synthesis, for example, by the UK Medical Research Council's guidance for developing and evaluating complex interventions (Campbell et al., 2000 , 2007 ; Craig et al., 2008 ; Glanz & Bishop, 2010 ). This is for several reasons. First, the antecedents of behaviour and the causal determinants of change can be appropriately identified and targeted by the intervention (Hardeman et al., 2005 ; Michie & Abraham, 2004 ; Michie et al., 2008 ) and component behaviour change techniques can be selected and/or refined and tailored (Michie & Prestwich, 2010 ; Michie et al., 2008 ; Rothman, 2004 ). Second, theoretically identified mechanisms of action (i.e., mediators) can be investigated to gain further understanding as to how the intervention brings about its effects (Michie & Abraham, 2004 ; Rothman, 2004 , 2009 ). This allows researchers to determine whether unsuccessful interventions have failed either because the intervention has had no effect upon the hypothesised mediator or because the hypothesised (and successfully influenced) mediator has had no effect upon behaviour (Michie & Abraham, 2004 ; Rothman, 2004 , 2009 ), thus facilitating more efficient refinement of the intervention. Third, theory summarises the cumulative knowledge of how to change behaviour across different populations, behaviours and contexts. Finally, theory-based interventions provide an opportunity in which theory can be tested. This aids development of more useful theories which, in turn, supports intervention optimisation (Michie et al., 2008 ; Rothman, 2004 ).

The question as to whether interventions that are explicitly based on theory are more effective that those that are not is a complex one. Some reviews have found a positive association (Albada, Ausems, Bensing, & van Dulmen, 2009 ; Albarracin et al., 2005 ; Glanz & Bishop, 2010 ; Noar, Benac, & Harris, 2007 ; Swann, Bowe, Kosmin, & McCormick, 2003 ; Taylor, Conner, & Lawton, 2011 ), but others have found no association, or, even a negative association (Gardner, Wardle, Poston, & Croker, 2011 ; Roe, Hunt, Bradshaw, & Rayner, 1997 ; Stephenson, Imrie, & Sutton, 2000 ). Some reviews have reported a mixture depending on the measure of effectiveness (Ammerman, Lindquist, Lohr, & Hersey, 2002 ; Bhattarai et al., 2013 ; Kim, Stanton, Li, Dickersin, & Galbraith, 1997 ).

There are several factors that may explain this mixed picture. Theory is often poorly applied. A review investigating application of theory using the 19-item ‘Theory Coding Scheme’ (Michie & Prestwich, 2010 ), found that only 10% of studies of theory-based interventions reported links between behaviour change techniques and theoretical constructs and only 9% reported that all the constructs had been targeted by behaviour change techniques. Another explanation may be that the choice of theory may not have been appropriate. For example, if a behaviour is heavily influenced by habit or emotional states then a theory that focuses on beliefs and reflective thought processes may not be appropriate when informing intervention design.

The importance of understanding the theoretical underpinnings of behavioural interventions has been highlighted in previous research suggesting theoretical bases for combining behaviour change techniques within interventions to allow synergistic effects and enhance their effectiveness (Dombrowski et al., 2012 ; Michie, Abraham, Whittington, McAteer, & Gupta, 2009 ; Taylor et al., 2011 ; Webb, Joseph, Yardley, & Michie, 2010 ). Despite the advantages of theory, behaviour change interventions are often designed without reference to theory (Davies, Walker, & Grimshaw, 2010 ; Prestwich et al., 2013 ). For instance, a recent meta-analysis found that only 22.5% of 235 implementation studies explicitly used theories of behaviour change (Davies et al., 2010 ). Where theory is used, it is often only loosely referred to rather than rigorously applied to intervention design and evaluation (Painter, Borba, Hynes, Mays, & Glanz, 2008 ; Prestwich et al., 2013 ). In those situations where interventions are based on ‘explicit theory’, theory is often used sub-optimally to develop or evaluate the intervention (e.g., only a few of the theoretical constructs may be targeted and/or theory is not used to appropriately tailor the intervention).

Choosing a relevant theory can be a challenging task for intervention designers, especially given the large number of theories, many of which have the same or overlapping constructs, to choose from (Michie et al., 2005 ). There is a lack of guidance on how to select an appropriate theory for a particular purpose (Michie, 2008 ), with a predominance in published intervention evaluations of a small number of theories that have already gained recognition in the field (Painter et al., 2008 ). By using a ‘common’ or ‘favourite’ theory, rather than one that may be more suited to the particular characteristics of the target population, behaviour and context, the potential benefit of using theory is limited.

One approach to addressing the plethora of different, overlapping theories and lack of guidance as to how to choose between them was the development of the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF; Cane, O'Connor, & Michie, 2012 ; Michie et al., 2005 ). Developed by psychologists and implementation researchers, the TDF provides a framework of theoretical domains to explain barriers and facilitators of behaviour in any particular situation. Informed by 128 explanatory constructs from 33 theories of behaviour, the TDF has been used in many contexts to understand behaviour and design theoretically informed interventions (Francis, O'Connor, & Curran, 2012 ; French et al., 2012 ). Another resource for theory-informed research is the US National Institute of Health's ‘Grid Enabled Measures’ (GEM) web-based database. GEM provides the descriptions of theoretical constructs and behavioural and social measures to assess these constructs ( https://www.gem-beta.org/Public/Home.aspx ). While both these approaches are of value, neither specifies relationships between theoretical domains and constructs in terms of the effect that one domain or construct may have on another. They deal with theoretical domains and constructs, not theories per se. One previous consensus exercise did generate a list of eight constructs thought to influence HIV-related behaviours, with the resulting framework specifying links between the constructs and behaviour (Fishbein et al., 2001 ). However, it is not clear how this consensus was reached and how relevant the included constructs are to other behaviours, given the focus on HIV-related behaviours. Researchers or interventions designers may want to select specific theories either at the beginning of the intervention design process or after conducting some preliminary research to indicate which theories are likely to be relevant and useful. In these situations there is a need for an accessible source of potentially useful theories, as well as a method for selecting amongst them.

At present, theories used in public health and behaviour change interventions more generally tend to emphasise individual and sometimes interpersonal rather than broader social and environmental variables (Glanz & Bishop, 2010 ). Capabilities and motivation (individual factors) are often targeted, but context (social and environmental variables) is far less likely to be considered. NICE's ( 2007 ) behaviour change guidance concluded that interventions were more effective if they simultaneously targeted variables at different levels (e.g., individual, community and population; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2007 ). Therefore, to maximise effectiveness, intervention designers are likely to benefit from drawing from a wider range of theories than currently used. Current resources on theories of behaviour change tend to reflect specific contexts and disciplines, and are thus inevitably limited in the range of theories considered (Agar, 2008 ; Conner & Norman, 2005 ; Glanz & Bishop, 2010 ; Glanz, Rimer, & Lewis, 2002 ).

To improve the selection and application of theory we need to consider, across relevant disciplines, those theories which may be of potential use in informing public health questions. By identifying a range of theories we can assess which theories may be of value given the behaviour, population and context in question. To this end, we conducted a scoping review and consensus exercise, informed by the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics. The scoping review and consensus exercise primarily aimed to address the question, ‘What theories exist across the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics that could be of value to guiding behaviour change interventions?’

To be as comprehensive as possible we focused on both theories of behaviour and behaviour change. Theories of behaviour tend to be linear, and explain the reasons why behaviour may occur by considering a number of predictors and their associations with one another and how these could influence the likelihood of a particular behaviour (Agar, 2008 ; Conner & Norman, 2005 ; Glanz & Rimer, 1997 ; Head & Noar, 2013 ). Theories of change tend to be more cyclical and identify interactional and dynamic behaviour change processes (Agar, 2008 ; Head & Noar, 2013 ). In practice, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two and some theories could be viewed as both.

Of secondary interest we also addressed ‘What criteria should we consider when evaluating the quality and potential appropriateness of behaviour change theory?’ Finally, we assessed the extent to which the theories we identified had been applied within the behaviour change field.

The scope of the present paper is twofold: (i) to report in detail the methodology employed to identify relevant theories and to produce a compendium of these theories and (ii) to provide the list of agreed criteria for judging the quality of the theories. Ways in which some of the theories have been used to study behaviour change are also briefly summarised, though it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss this in detail. Research examining how the theories have been operationalised and the quality of their empirical application (as measured by the quality criteria reported here) forms part of the future research programme.

Theories of behaviour and behaviour change were identified through five sources: expert consultation with a multidisciplinary project advisory group, electronic databases, web searching, forward and backward searching of reference lists and hand searching of key behavioural science journals. Empirical application of the theories was identified from electronic databases and searching the reference lists of retrieved articles. These, together with expert consultations with the advisory group, informed the development of the quality assessment criteria.

Expert advisory group

Twenty-four UK experts from the social and behavioural sciences and/or population health research formed the advisory group, which determined the scope, methods and conduct of the review. The group comprised four sociologists, five economists, five psychologists, four health service researchers, three anthropologists, two epidemiologists and one policy researcher.

Definition of key terms

One of the first tasks of the advisory group was to agree definitions of the terms ‘theory’ and ‘behaviour’. A shortlist of potentially relevant definitions of each term was compiled from peer-reviewed journals, reports and books, for example, the American Psychological Association Dictionary . In the first of two rounds of a Delphi process, advisory group members were asked to rate each definition and parts of the definition for potential use. When a definition (or a part of it) was rated as important by at least 50% of the group it was retained as relevant. In the second round, core concepts were extracted and synthesised by the authors and used to create working definitions which were then considered for refinement by the advisory group in order to create the final definitions:

The term theory was defined as: ‘a set of concepts and/or statements with specification of how phenomena relate to each other. Theory provides an organising description of a system that accounts for what is known, and explains and predicts phenomena’.

Behaviour was defined as: ‘anything a person does in response to internal or external events. Actions may be overt (motor or verbal) and directly measurable or, covert (activities not viewable but involving voluntary muscles) and indirectly measurable; behaviours are physical events that occur in the body and are controlled by the brain’.

Identification of relevant theories

To inform the literature search strategy, theories of behaviour and behaviour change were identified through expert consultation with the advisory group and an initial scoping of the literature using generic and discipline-specific terms related to behaviour and behaviour change theories. For example, the term ‘cultural change’ tended to be used by anthropologists, ‘action’ by sociologists and ‘behaviour’ by psychologists.

Literature search strategy

The literature search was conducted primarily to uncover theories of behaviour and behaviour change that were not identified through expert consultation with our advisory group. Secondary to this we identified the ways in which the theories we identified had been empirically applied. While we briefly report this, it was beyond the scope of the study to analyse this comprehensively and in detail. In order to retrieve relevant literature across different disciplines six databases were searched between 1 January 1960 and 11 September 2012: PsycINFO, Econlit, Cochrane Database of Systematic reviews, International Bibliography of Social Sciences, EMBASE and MEDLINE. Databases were chosen based on their coverage of discipline- and content-specific literature and on the volume of public health literature. Databases that did not allow the use of wildcards (to account for variations in spellings) or sets of search terms to be entered and combined through the use of Boolean operators, and/or databases that only retrieved titles of articles but not abstracts were not used (e.g., Anthropology Index Online). The final search was conducted on the 11 September 2012.

The search strategy included four sets of search terms: those that (i) apply theory to behaviour change (e.g., ‘behaviour change theory’); (ii) are relevant to behaviour change and also of relevance in understanding behaviour more generally [e.g., ‘Health Belief Model’ (HBM)]; (iii) are relevant to behaviour change but that do not mention theory (e.g., ‘behaviour modification’); and (iv) discipline-specific terms combined with the term behaviour change (e.g., ‘economics and behaviour change’). A list of the search terms together with how these terms were combined can be found in the online supplemental material ( Supplemental Figure 1 ).

The search strategy was customised to each database. Standard filters were used to capture systematic reviews where applicable. A sensitivity analysis was performed to ensure that the search results included key articles on theories relevant to behaviour change (identified through the initial scoping of the literature). Given the complex body of evidence, in terms of cross-cutting disciplines and sheer breadth and volume of literature, the search was restricted to titles and abstracts to tighten the search specificity.

Additional potentially relevant theories were identified through expert consultation and web searching for key documents from organisations known for their interest in behaviour change. This included, from the USA, the National Institute of Health's Behaviour Change Consortium and, from the UK, the NICE, Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI Centre), Government Social Research Unit, House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee Report on Behaviour Change and National Institute of Health Research's Health Technology Assessment.

Forward and backward citation searching, and hand searching of key behavioural science journals were performed to minimise the likelihood of relevant theories being missed. The journals hand searched were: Annals of Behavioural Medicine , BMC Health Services Research , British Journal of Health Psychology , Health Psychology , Health Psychology Review , Implementation Science , International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology , Journal of Applied Behavioural Science and Social Science & Medicine .

Inclusion criteria for theories

Theories were included if they: (i) met our definition of theory and behaviour and (ii) considered individual behaviour as an outcome or part of the process leading to the outcome. Theories that considered group behaviour (e.g., ‘organisational behaviour’), without reference to individual behaviour were excluded. While we acknowledge that such theories are of interest to intervention designers who want to change group behaviour we decided to limit the scope of the review to theories concerned with individual behaviour change to keep it manageable. The inclusion of each theory was considered independently by at least two of the four authors and by members of the advisory group. Inter-rater reliability was assessed.

Theories that focused purely on cognition were not included. Examples of such theories include Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954 ), which aims to explain how people's opinions are influenced within social groups and Cognitive Adaptation Theory (Taylor, 1983 ), which aims to explain how people cognitively adapt to threatening events. While these theories contribute to our understanding of knowledge, beliefs and intentions about behaviour there are often significant gaps between these and behaviour (Sheeran, 2002 ) and this project was about theories of behaviour and behaviour change.

We distinguished frameworks, which provide an organising structure, from theories which, in addition, offer explanations of how phenomena relate to each other and permit outcomes to be predicted. Thus, conceptual frameworks such as the TDF (Cane et al., 2012 ; Michie et al., 2005 ), or the Ecological Model (McLeroy, Bibeau, Steckler, & Glanz, 1988 ) that are commonly used to guide the design, implementation or evaluation of interventions were not included. While these frameworks have value in implementation and in public health research, policy and practice, this review was of specific theories.

Inclusion criteria for articles

Screening of articles was in two stages. The first stage (title and abstract) was intentionally inclusive, retaining articles if they mentioned: (i) theory in relation to behaviour or behaviour change or (ii) changing behaviour but made no reference to theory (the full text of the article was then checked to see if theory was used to inform the research). We considered all behaviour to be of relevance, not just health-related behaviours. At the second stage of screening (full-text) tighter restrictions applied and articles were included if: (i) theory and behaviour was defined as per our study definitions and (ii) they fell into one of four categories of article: descriptive, intervention, evaluative or review:

Descriptive articles were defined as those that contained the original description of a theory by the author/s who originally conceived of the theory (i.e., primary theory sources) or by an author/s who proposed advances in the theory by re-specification. Secondary theory sources (i.e., those that only provided an overview/description of the theory) were not included.
Intervention articles were defined as those that stated in their methods that they used theory to inform the development and/or evaluation of an intervention aimed at changing behaviour and that included a measure of behaviour as an outcome. We focused on behaviour as the end-point rather than the consequence of the behaviour (e.g., weight loss) because there are a number of factors further along the causal chain that could affect the link between behaviour and outcome (Hardeman et al., 2005 ).
Evaluative articles were defined as those reporting studies that empirically tested a theory longitudinally.
Review articles were defined as those that systematically reviewed a theory in relation to a change in behavioural outcomes. Narrative reviews or selective overviews of the literature (i.e., those without a description of a search strategy and no clear methodology that could be reproduced independently) were not included.

Articles were excluded if they: focused on cognition (e.g., intention to change behaviour) rather than actual behaviour; were restricted to research participation behaviours, animal studies, scale development, measurement or programme development, cost-effectiveness or single case studies; focused on mental health including therapeutic interventions where cognitive or emotional variables were the primary outcome. Dissertations and doctoral theses, books and book reviews, conference posters and presentations, editorials and commentaries were excluded for practical reasons to limit the volume of material to be retrieved and reviewed to manageable proportions. Articles that used multiple theories to inform their methodology were excluded because our review was of the empirical application of individual theories to changing behaviour.

We did not exclude articles based on their quality, since the methodology of applying these criteria has yet to be developed.

Inter-rater reliability

Articles were screened for relevance at abstract and full-text stage by the lead author (Rachel Davis). At both screening stages, 30% of the abstracts were independently screened by two other researchers (each of which screened 15%) and inter-rater reliability (calculated using percentage agreement) was assessed. Since the data constitute unbalanced cells, we have used percentage agreement as it provides a more transparent and more readily interpretable parameter than Cohen's kappa. As kappa corrects for chance agreement among multiple coders, use of kappa is likely to underestimate reliability (Steinijans, Diletti, Bomches, Greis, & Solleder, 1997 ). Differences of views about inclusion were resolved through discussion and consensus with the other authors.

Data extraction

Data were extracted on: (i) country where the research took place, (ii) theory used, (iii) type of article (descriptive, intervention, evaluative or review), (iv) design (quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods), (v) target behaviour (e.g., smoking, physical activity), (vi) target direction of behaviour [i.e., increase (which also included maintaining behaviour) or decrease in uptake] and (vii) measurement of behaviour (self-report, objective or both). Dual data extraction was conducted independently on 60% of the included papers by two researchers and inconsistencies resolved through joint discussion.

Quality assessment criteria

We reviewed key literature which synthesised scientific and philosophical perspectives on what makes a theory scientific and useful for the purpose of effecting healthy behaviour change in a target population (e.g., Glanz & Rimer, 1997 ; West, 2006 ) and used this to draft an initial list of quality criteria. These were considered by the advisory group in both a face-to-face discussion and a subsequent electronic Delphi-like consultation aimed at achieving consensus.

We report the theories of behaviour and behaviour change identified in our review and the agreed criteria for assessing theory quality. A high-level summary of the key characteristics of the review articles is also provided.

A high level of agreement was observed for decisions on inclusion in relation to both the theories and the articles included in the review (>90%).

Theories identified

Eighty-two theories of behaviour and behaviour change were identified. These are listed in Table 1 along with the lead author, date of the paper that originally described the theory and the number of articles that reported using the theory. Fifty-nine (out of the 82 theories) were applied in the articles included in our review. The remaining theories ( N = 23) were identified by the advisory group and/or through abstracts of the articles retrieved in our literature search. In other words, these were theories that met our inclusion criteria but did not have relevant articles retrieved from our search strategy that met our article inclusion criteria, i.e., articles did not fall within one of our four categories (descriptive, intervention, evaluative, review). Theories identified through our search that were excluded, with reasons for exclusion, can be found in the online supplemental material ( Supplemental Table 1 ).

Note: Theories 30–32 were all reported in one paper.

It is important to note here that while our intention was to provide a list of potentially relevant theories across different disciplines, it was not possible to categorise the theories according to disciplines. Many of the theories had influences from more than one discipline and/or authors were from several disciplines or could not be categorised into any one discipline.

Nine defining features were identified as conceptually important for a good theory: (i) clarity of constructs – ‘Has the case been made for the independence of constructs from each other?’ (ii) clarity of relationships between constructs – ‘Are the relationships between constructs clearly specified?’ (iii) measurability – ‘Is an explicit methodology for measuring the constructs given?’ (iv) testability – ‘Has the theory been specified in such a way that it can be tested?’ (v) being explanatory – ‘Has the theory been used to explain/account for a set of observations? (statistically or logically)’; (vi) describing causality – ‘Has the theory been used to describe mechanisms of change?’ (vii) achieving parsimony – ‘Has the case for parsimony been made?’ (viii) generalisablity – ‘Have generalisations been investigated across’: (a) behaviours? (b) populations? (c) contexts?’ and (ix) having an evidence base.

Articles retrieved

In the results sections that follow we briefly summarise the main findings of the articles included in our review. Further examination of the empirical application of these theories using our quality assessment criteria is part of the future research programme.

Of 8680 articles retrieved through the database search, 6620 were excluded at the first stage of screening (title and abstract) and 1804 articles (out of the remaining 2060) were excluded after full-text screening, leaving 256 articles. To these a further 20 articles were added through searching the reference lists of the included articles, resulting in 276 articles. Figure 1 displays a flow chart of the search results.

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Article characteristics

Articles were published between 1977 and 2012, with most of the research conducted in Europe and North America. Eighteen categories of behaviours were identified, with three accounting for 50% of the articles: increasing physical activity ( N = 72; 26%), safe sex practices ( N = 36; 13%) and smoking cessation ( N = 30; 11%). Fifty-two (19%) articles addressed multiple health-related behaviours, with 17 (6%) of these targeting healthy eating and physical activity together. The remaining categories comprised behaviours relating to: healthy eating ( N = 13), addictive behaviours including alcohol and drugs ( N = 12), health examinations and tests ( N = 11), environmental conservation ( N = 10), violence and delinquency ( N = 9), sun protection ( N = 9), drug adherence ( N = 5), job- or education-related activities ( N = 4), Internet- or other technology-related behaviours ( N = 4), health care professional adherence to health care guidelines ( N = 3), financial-related activities ( N = 2), speeding ( N = 2) and 2 ‘others’ which were behaviours that did not fall into any of the above categories including pet removal from domestic residence ( N = 1) and repairing mosquito nets ( N = 1).

The majority of articles used quantitative methods ( N = 243; 88%) and most reported interventions ( N = 168; 61%) or were evaluative ( N = 62; 35%). Thirty-one descriptive articles (either primary theory sources or extensions of a theory) were identified. Behaviour was most commonly measured by self-report methods ( N = 194; 70%). For a high-level summary of these key characteristics, please refer to Table 2 ; a more detailed account of each individual article can be found online in Supplemental Table 2 .

Papers published by the same first author and focused on the same theory were assessed to identify cases in which multiple articles based on the same intervention (i.e., intervention protocol and outcomes) or data-set had been published. This was found to be the case for 19 articles in total (covering 9 interventions/data-sets; see Tables 1 and and2 2 ).

Frequency of use

Of the 82 theories identified, just 4 theories accounted for 174 (63%) of articles: the Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM; N = 91; 33%), the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB; N = 36; 13%), Social Cognitive Theory (SCT; N = 29; 11%) and the Information-Motivation-Behavioural-Skills Model (IMB; N = 18; 7%). A further four theories accounted for an additional 32 (12%) of the included articles: the HBM ( N = 9; 3%), Self-determination Theory (SDT; N = 9; 3%), Health Action Process Approach (HAPA; N = 8; 3%) and Social Learning Theory (SLT; N = 6; 2%; SLT is a precursor of SCT). The remaining theories ( N = 70) were applied fewer than 6 times each in the literature that met our inclusion criteria, with most only being applied once or twice (see Table 1 ).

This scoping review of theories of behaviour/behaviour change of potential relevance to designing and evaluating public health interventions was informed by the disciplines of psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics. Eighty-two theories were identified that spanned a myriad of behaviours and could be applied to designing and evaluating interventions to improve public health, as well as tackle other social issues such as environmental sustainability and public safety.

It is important to note that the literature identified in the scoping review reflects the search strategy that aimed to identify theories rather than exhaustively review theoretically informed empirical studies. Therefore, whilst the review identified articles that use the theories in relation to our inclusion criteria, it does not reflect the wider application of these theories to public health-related research.

Scoping reviews are used to map or configure a body of evidence. They therefore tend to focus on breadth, including studies that are representative of the variation within the evidence base, rather than focusing on depth and assembling all the eligible material. It can also mean that establishing what the boundaries of the review are, and therefore what should be included or excluded, may be refined during the course of the review (Shemilt et al., 2013 ). Consensus methods can help with this process. While we intended to conduct this review in a systematic and reproducible way, as it was the first attempt that we were aware of to review a bodies of theory in this way, its purpose seemed more akin to that of a scoping than a systematic review. As Gough, Thomas, and Oliver ( 2012 ) have suggested, there is a clear distinction between aggregative systematic reviews that are ‘about seeking evidence to inform decisions’ and configurative scoping reviews which are about ‘seeking concepts to provide enlightenment through new ways of understanding’. Arguably what we wanted to attempt was a combination of these two things but we have nevertheless labelled what we did a scoping review.

From the theories we identified, only a few were frequently applied in literature. While the purpose of our scoping review was not to uncover all the relevant literature on how these theories have been applied, the finding is of interest because it is consistent with other reviews and publications (e.g., Glanz & Bishop, 2010 ; Painter et al., 2008 ; Prestwich et al., 2013 ). Sixty-three per cent of the articles identified in the review related to just four theories: the TTM, TPB, SCT and the IMB Skills Model. While the literature we uncovered was limited by our inclusion criteria, and includes a small number cases in which authors have published more than one article applying the same theory to the same data-set or intervention, it indicates the very uneven distribution of frequency of theory use. This raises the question as to why many theories are so little used. One explanation may be that how often a theory is used, could in part, be confounded by the year in which the theory was introduced. Knowledge of a theory in terms of how much it is discussed in the public domain is also likely to play a role. Another explanation might be that those that are used more frequently are ‘better’ theories and selected for use because they have a stronger evidence base or meet other quality criteria. However, a couple of examples suggest that frequency does not necessarily follow quality. For example, the theory appearing most frequently in our review, the TTM, has been criticised on several grounds (West, 2005 ) and its empirical support has been questioned by systematic review findings (e.g., Cahill, Lancaster, & Green, 2010 ; Etter & Perneger, 1999 ; Littell & Girvin, 2002 ; Whitelaw, Baldwin, Bunton, & Flynn, 2000 ). On the other hand, recent meta-regression evidence has shown good support for Control Theory (Dombrowski et al., 2012 ; Ivers et al., 2012 ; Michie et al., 2009 ); however, this was identified in only one article in our review. Another explanation is that people are not aware of the full range of theories from which to choose and so instead opt for those most commonly applied in the literature. Frequency of use may not reflect perceived quality of the theory but instead, fashion, familiarity, prior training, exposure or incentivisation. We hope that this review will help to increase awareness among intervention designers and researchers about the range of theories available. We report nine criteria agreed as markers of theory quality that could aid selection of the most appropriate theory or theories.

Our decision to focus on theories of behaviour change at the level of the individual and exclude theories concerned with group behaviour is likely to be part of the explanation for the preponderance of psychological theories identified in the review, although even interventions at the community level tend to be informed by psychological or social–psychological theories (e.g., Bonell, Fletcher, et al., 2013 ; Bonell, Jamal, et al., 2013 ; Glanz & Bishop, 2010 ; National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2007 ). This, and the decision not to include books where sociological and anthropological theories are more likely to be found, may go some way to explaining why these types of theory are under-represented. In addition, Kelly et al. ( 2010 ) found that sociological theories were missed in electronic searches, particularly if they were more than 25 years old. Given that interventions may be improved by drawing on theories specifically targeting group behaviours, this would be a useful focus for a future literature review as we are not aware of there being such a review.

This review raised the issues as to what constitutes ‘a theory’ and ‘a behaviour’. Theories, as conceptualised here, ranged from quite specific (e.g., to a particular behavioural domain or type of intervention) to very general, including multiple levels of influence. The cut-offs at either end of this spectrum were agreed by consensus but were inevitably arbitrary. A general observation was that more general theories may have greater face validity but be less useable in guiding research than more specific theories; choice of theory will therefore be partly guided by the purpose it is to be put to. Another observation was that there appeared to be no generally accepted use of terms such as theory, model, framework and orientation, with different uses by different authors. Increasing the precision of, and consensus on, use of terminology would be helpful for the field.

‘Behaviour’ also varies in level of specificity: for example, physical activity includes sports which includes volleyball which includes running. Behaviours are also part of sequences, often dependent on previous behaviours (e.g., carrying gym kit) and sometimes on other people's behaviours (e.g., others turning up for a team game). Just as the relevance of a particular theory may vary across type of behaviour, so it may vary according to the level of specificity.

The review also suggests that there are a large number of theories that are of potential use in designing public health interventions. The cataloguing of 83 theories of behaviour change is an important resource for researchers wishing to draw on theories beyond the few that currently dominate the literature. However, few of these theories have been subjected to wide-scale rigorous empirical evaluation. There have been calls for more operationalization, application, testing and refining of theories over many years (e.g., Michie & Johnston, 2012 ; Noar & Zimmerman, 2005 ; Rothman, 2004 ; Weinstein, 2007 ; Weinstein & Rothman, 2005 ), but advances are slow. We need more investment into methodological and substantive research in this area, for example, the use of fractionated factorial (Collins et al., 2011 ) and n -of-1 (Johnston, Jones, Charles, McCann, & McKee, 2013 ) designs to tease apart complex interventions and the extent to which theories can be generalised across populations, behaviours and contexts.

Identifying the theories in this review is just the first step in a much larger and ongoing programme of work aimed at improving the use of appropriate theory and the scientific rigour with which it is applied. Future work will investigate the ways in which theories have been operationalised and the extent to which different theories share constructs and can be seen as ‘families’ of theory. Transforming the nine quality criteria into forms, such as reliable scales or response options that can be used in evaluating theories is a complex task, and a study in its own right. The evolution of theories over time, including the issue of when a theory is considered a new theory, will also be examined. Many theories contained similar constructs or the same constructs but with slightly different names. Understanding these similarities and working towards a common set of terminology would facilitate the building of a cumulative understanding of mechanisms of action from both primary research and evidence syntheses. It would also further our understanding of the evolution of theories and how theories have been revised and/or integrated with other theories over time. Having said this, it is also important to recognise that not only language varies across and within disciplines but so do epistemological and ontological assumptions and preoccupations.

The next phase of the current research is to (i) investigate the connectedness of theories with each other and (ii) operationalize and demonstrate the application of the agreed quality criteria. These will both inform the understanding of theory and its development, and help guide researchers, policy-makers and interventions on the appropriate selection and application behaviour change theories to developing public health and other behaviour change interventions.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the study's advisory group for developing the literature search strategy, key definitions and the quality criteria for evaluating theory: Robert Aunger, Mary Barker, Mick Bloor, Heather Brown, Richard Cookson, Cyrus Cooper, Peter Craig, Paul Dieppe, Anna Dixon, Rachel Gooberman-Hill, Simon Griffin, Graham Hart, Kate Hunt, Susan Jebb, Marie Johnston, Mike Kelly, Steve Morris, Mark Petticrew, Paschal Sheeran, Mark Suhreke, Ivo Vlaev, Robert West, Daniel Wight, Daniel Zizzo. We are also grateful to Kate Sheals for invaluable help in the latter stages of manuscript preparation.

Funding Statement

Funding : This project was funded by the Medical Research Council's Population Health Sciences Research Network [grant number PHSRN10 ]. The work was undertaken with the support of The Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), a UKCRC Public Health Research: Centre of Excellence. Funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council [ RES-590-28-0005 ], Medical Research Council, the Welsh Government and the Wellcome Trust [ WT087640MA ], under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, is gratefully acknowledged.

This project was funded by the Medical Research Council's Population Health Sciences Research Network [grant number PHSRN10]. The work was undertaken with the support of The Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement (DECIPHer), a UKCRC Public Health Research: Centre of Excellence. Funding from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council [RES-590-28-0005], Medical Research Council, the Welsh Government and the Wellcome Trust [WT087640MA], under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, is gratefully acknowledged.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2014.941722 .

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What Is Behaviorist Theory? Understanding Its Influence on the Work of a Behavior Analyst

What is Behaviorism and How Does It Influence The Work Of A Behavior Analyst Featured Image

Have you ever wondered why we do what we do? Perhaps you’ve pondered why certain behaviors persist or how specific habits contribute to success. While psychology often explores the role of thoughts in behavior, there’s another scientific approach to comprehending human behaviors. So, what is the theory behind behaviorism, and how does it apply to modifying our behavior?

Behaviorist theory, also known as behaviorism, is the study of observable and measurable human behaviors. It places a strong emphasis on environmental factors in shaping behavior.

“Behaviorism is understanding how the environment works so that we can make ourselves smarter, more organized, more responsible; so we can encounter fewer punishments and few disappointments. Behavior Analysis is a science of studying how we can arrange our environments so they make very likely the behaviors we want to be probable enough, and they make unlikely the behaviors we want to be improbable.” Cooper et al., 2007, p. 15

Professionals knows as behavior analysts ( BCBAs / IBAs ) strive to understand human behavior by examining the individual’s environment and implementing changes to enhance the quality of life for individuals, groups, and society as a whole.

In this article, we will explore:

The history of behavior analysis and behaviorism
The definition of behavior
The functions of behavior
The science of behavior and learning: stimulus control

There’s a lot to cover, so be sure to bookmark in case you run out of time!

History of Behaviorism/Behaviorist Theory and Behavior Analysis

Behaviorism traces its origins to the early 20th century, with pioneers like Thorndike and his Law of Effect . Thorndike’s research, primarily focused on animal behavior, revealed that behaviors followed by desirable outcomes were more likely to be repeated.

Around the same period, Ivan Pavlov introduced the concept of classical conditioning through his famous dog experiments. Pavlov’s work demonstrated that neutral stimuli could become conditioned to elicit reflex responses in animals.

Further developments in behaviorism came from John B. Watson , who advocated for a shift from studying mental processes to observing how environmental factors, or stimuli, influence the behavior of living organisms. This shift laid the foundation for modern Behavior Analysis (Cooper et al., p. 9).

B.F. Skinner , often regarded as the father of modern Behavior Analysis, expanded behaviorist theory through his empirical research in the 1930s. He distinguished between respondent and operant behaviors.

Respondent Behavior

These are reflexes (Cooper et al., p. 10), involuntary behaviors triggered by immediate stimuli. For instance, seeing or smelling appetizing food leads to salivation.

Operant Behavior

Skinner proposed that behaviors are shaped by consequences that follow them, rather than the preceding stimuli. These consequences determine whether a behavior will likely recur in the future.

Skinner’s famous Skinner Box experiments illustrated how animals learned through operant conditioning, further advancing the theory of behaviorism.

The Skinner Box Experiment

In the Skinner Box experiment, Skinner delivered food to an animal if it pressed a specific lever. The initial responses seemed to not have an impact on the following behavior but, after the animals had experienced the food coming after the lever-press a number of times, their rate of response greatly increased (Cooper et al., p. 11).

By tracking their rate of response, Skinner was able to demonstrate they had ‘learned’ what would occur if the lever was pressed. He continued on to include other environmental stimuli or conditions in which food was available (e.g., a colored light was turned on or off).

Skinner developed Pavlov’s early understanding of conditioning by creating the more robust concept of stimulus control. Through his research of animal behavior, he learned that a previously neutral stimulus (e.g., the light) could become a conditioned stimulus (now signaling the availability of food through a series of learning experiences), eliciting a conditioned response (e.g., the animal is more likely to press the lever when the light is on rather than when it is off).

This is the basis of operant conditioning, later leading to behavior modification.

Behaviorist Theory Regarding Outward vs. Internal Behaviors

Behaviorism has long debated the role of internal mental states or “private events.” Skinner argued that these should not be ignored and can be integrated into the analysis of observable behaviors. He developed radical behaviorism, which became the basis of behavior analysis.

Radical behaviorism is “a comprehensive form of behaviorism that seeks to understand all human behavior, including thoughts and feelings, in terms of controlling variables in an individual’s history and the species’ evolution” (Cooper et al., p. 13). Skinner emphasized that internal stimuli influence outward behaviors and should be studied alongside observable behaviors.

For example, a migraine headache, though not readily observable, affects a person’s behavior. A behaviorist considers it an internal stimulus that influences certain outward behaviors, such as taking medication and avoiding work.

This video by behavior analyst Ryan O’Donnell explains radical behaviorism in more detail.

What Is Behavior?

Behavior encompasses all actions performed by an individual. According to ontogenic selectionism , behavior is shaped by the consequences experienced in one’s environment after engaging in a particular behavior.

Responses include those from other individuals, internal physiological reactions, and aspects of the physical environment. Behavior evolves over time as a result of the consequences an organism experiences.

Parallel to Darwin’s natural selection for physical evolution (phylogeny), selectionism leads to the development of new behaviors based on their functionality due to experienced consequences (ontogeny).

Four Term Contingency

The discovery of operant learning shifted from predicting behavior based on the stimulus to predicting it from repeated consequences or outcomes following the behavior. The four-term contingency includes motivating operations (MO), an antecedent (A), behavior or response (B), and consequence or outcome (C).

Motivating operations are environmental or contextual factors that occasion a behavior, making it more or less likely to occur. For example, if I’m hungry I’ll be more likely to eat from a bag of chips left on the counter when I arrive at home than if I were not hungry.

MOs can also make it less likely you will engage in a specific behavior. Using a similar example, if I think my partner is likely to comment on me eating chips before dinner and he’s sitting there when I come into the house, his presence might make it less likely I’ll eat the chips.

Using the bag of chips example, seeing the bag of chips when entering the kitchen is an antecedent. It signals that reinforcement (aka delicious chips) are available for my enjoyment.

Just a reminder, that when we use the term ‘behavior’ we mean any action ommitted by an organism. This term does not refer to only challenging or negative behaviors such as aggression, stealing or property destruction. Sometimes the term ‘behavior’ is used to define these undesireable behaviors, but in true behaviorist theory terminology, ‘behavior’ is a neutral term.

Behavior analysts consider the patterns and the consequences following a behavior to predict if that behavior will increase or decrease in the future. Consequences are whatever follows immediately after a behaviour is ommitted.

The 4-term contingency is the most basic form of anlyzing behavior and not the only framework for doing so. Nonlineal beahvior analysis is another way to look at beahvior and analyze contingencies. Israel Goldiamond put forward the nonlinear constructional approach to understanding behavior. For a breakdown of this approach, check out Ryan O.- The Daily BA .

When trying to analyze patterns of behavior, the question is, ‘what purpose is this behavior serving?’ ‘What are the outcomes for the person?’ Let’s look at the outcomes that help predict whether a behavior will occur again in the future or not.

The power of consequences according to behaviorist theory

Reinforcement.

Reinforcement is a central principle in applied behavior analysis. It occurs when an outcome following a behavior increases the likelihood of that behavior recurring in the future. Reinforcement is determined by an individual’s preferences, not hypothetical notions of what might be reinforcing.

There are two types of reinforcement:

Positive reinforcement

This involves adding a stimulus after a behavior, making the behavior more likely to occur in the future. What acts as positive reinforcement varies from person to person, depending on individual preferences.

For example, I might create a workout program for myself and decide to reward myself with getting my nails done if I meet my goals for the week. However, when it comes down to it I’m not that motivated by this and it has no influence on my working out behavior. In fact, I stop meeting my daily goals.

Perhaps I’d rather reward myself with a latte at the end of the week instead. When I switch my reward and see my working out behavior increase, it’s clear that the latte is functioning as a reinforcer but getting my nails done was not.

Something can only be deemed a reinforcer for a person if the stimuli being added or removed results in them emitting that behavior more often in the future.

Negative reinforcement

Negative reinforcement involves removing a stimulus after a behavior, making the behavior more likely to occur in the future. It often relates to escaping from an aversive situation.

For example, when the buzzer goes off in my car because my seatbelt is not on, I put my seatbelt on. Phew! I have escaped the annoyance of the buzzer. In the future, I’ll put on my seatbelt sooner when I start the car to avoid the annoyance of the buzzer.

This has a lot to do with personal preferences, tolerance level, pet peeves, and sensory needs. For example, if I choose to share my idea in a staff meeting and it gives me a lot of positive social attention, I might never speak in a staff meeting again since I don’t like social attention in group settings.

On the other hand, if I am someone who values public accolades and attention from my colleagues, and sharing my idea in a staff meeting gains this for me, then I will be more likely to share my ideas in a staff meeting again. The attention functions as positive reinforcement. Something that is reinforcing for one person might not function as a reinforcer for another.

Using the same example as above, my partner might not find the buzzing sound in the car as aversive as I do. This might result in him delaying to put on his seatbelt as he doesn’t find the buzzer annoying. I start putting on my seatbelt right away, as I find the buzzer quite annoying. It has served as a negative reinforcer for me, but not for him.

Discussing the word punishment unto itself can seem aversive. We might automatically associate this term with all sorts of traumatic and negative connotations. While punishment can include things that are aversive and inappropriate in modern behavioral treatment, let’s first look at what the behavioral definition says.

By definition, punishment is defined by whether the stimulus added or removed decreases the future frequency of a behavior. This is in contrast to reinforcement, which increases a behavior in the future.

Positive punishment is when “a behavior is followed immediately by the presentation of a stimulus that decreases the future frequency of the behavior” (Cooper et al., p. 701).

Negative punishment is when “a response behavior is followed by the removal of a stimulus (or a decrease in the intensity of the stimulus), that decreases the future frequency of similar responses under similar conditions (p. 700).

Let’s look at some common examples:

Positive Punishment

You ask your roommate to do their dishes more often. They respond in a whiny tone of voice, get defensive and it turns into an argument. You find this whining and arguing aversive. Your behavior of asking your roommate to do their dishes happens less and less often in the future as you want to avoid that aversive situation of whining and arguing.

The whining and arguing is the stimulus that follows your asking. It results in the asking behavior decreasing in the future.

Negative Punishment

A classic example for many families is when a child is acting in a way that a parent doesn’t like. As things escalate, the parent starts taking away privileges. If in the future the child engages in that behavior less often to avoid having privileges taken away, the removal of privileges is acting as a negative punisher.

A stimulus was removed (the privilege) in response to the undesirable behavior, resulting in that behavior being less frequent in the future. However, please see other articles on this site, including the one about parenting children with ODD , about why relying on punishment is not fruitful.

Modern behavior analysis primarily focuses on the use of positive reinforcement to teach new and adaptive skills, as there are many negative side-effects and questionable ethics of using punishment strategies.

Contemporary behavior analysts use positive reinforcement strategies to increase desired behaviors rather than use punishement to quash undesired behaviors becuase this results in longer term success. Everyone needs ways to access things that are reinforcing to them rather than just avoid aversives. Not to mention this is much more dignifying and respectful to the client.

Related Read: Parent Coaching: Effective Tool Or Social-Media Driven Fad?

This is a third behavioral principle related to reinforcement and punishment. If a behavior typically results in reinforcement, but then reinforcement is withheld and the behavior decreases in frequency, extinction is in place. The behavior that once resulted in specific reinforcement no longer produces that same reinforcement.

Here is an example:

You often go into a nearby grocery store by pressing a button with your elbow.

For weeks, this door has reliably opened for you so you can enter the store. In other words, you have been repeatedly reinforced for pressing the button, by the door opening over and over again. Today, however, you press the button at the grocery store and nothing happens.

You quickly press it again and maybe a third time. You look inside to see if the store is open. It appears there are other patrons inside so you press it again twice a little more firmly. Nothing. You are no longer being reinforced for the behavior that you once were.

At this point, you give up pressing the button and try to wave down an employee through the door to come and investigate from the inside. Your button-pressing behavior has stopped by being placed on extinction. What once was reinforced is no longer being reinforced.

Today, many behavior analysts are opposed to using extinction techniques and would rather use other techniques that are more respectful of the client, maintain rapport, are socially acceptable and safe.

Behaviorist Theory on Functions Of Behavior

Behavior analysts seek to understand the function, purpose, or ‘why’ behind a behavior. When we understand the concepts of reinforcement and punishment. There is always something that is reinforcing a behavior that is being maintained.

It is the job of a behavior analyst to observe, measure and analyze behaviors and be somewhat of a detective to figure out the function of the behavior of concern.

how to hire a board certified behavior analyst featured image

Hiring a BCBA (or IBA) and How to Work with Them

There are four functions of behavior, and they often work in tandem with each other, but sometimes one will stand out as the clear primary function. This is especially true for very young children.

Example: If you’re someone who engages in exercise regularly, you likely enjoy the physiological feeling you get during and after exercising. Therefore your exercising behavior is being reinforced and you continue to exercise regularly.
Example: A child may tantrum when asked to do a chore because, in the past, the parent will usually retract the instructions in response to the tantrum. In the past, the tantrum has resulted in an escape from the chores. It serves as an ‘escape from chores’ function for the child.
Example: A child may learn that if they begin to whine and yell when asked to give up the iPad, they are usually then allowed to continue playing on the iPad. The tangible reinforcement they receive for whining and yelling is more time on the iPad.
On the flip side, the parent gives in because they find it hard to tolerate the whining and yelling. They want to escape their child’s aversive behavior so they give in and allow more time on the iPad. This might make it more likely for the parent to continue giving in to the whining in the future, as giving in serves as an escape function from the whining behavior. Of course, there are often other factors at play such as other kids in the mix, other pressures on the parent etc. so this is not a judgement statement but simply a neutral analysis of the situation.
Attention/Social : A behavior is maintained by social attention from another human. Just to be crystal clear, humans have social needs. It is not bad to need social attention from others. It is simply part of being human. The challenge can come in when behaviors that are not safe or prosocial become the primary way a person meets their social/attention needs.

Behaviorism: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Behavior analysts are in the business of teaching new skills. The goal of behavior analysis is to create meaningful changes for an individual to improve their quality of life, according to their values.

Sometimes this means trying to reduce a problematic behavior, but this will always mean that the individual is also being taught useful and meaningful new skills and behaviors that will improve their quality of life.

The early discoveries of Skinner influenced learning theory. By the 1940s, scientists began applying operant conditioning to people including preschoolers, people with developmental disabilities, children with autism, adults with schizophrenia, and also neurotypical adults. Unfortunately, the way the science was applied sometimes did harm and trauma was experienced by those undergoing behavioral interventions.

Delving into the history of how behavior analysis has been a tool for harm rather than good and applied in ways that did not consider the values, dignity and perspective of the persons it sought to serve is beyond the scope of this blog post but worth reading more about. Here is a balanced article that outlines some of the common criticisms of behavior analysis and some repsonses.

You may have heard about some of the unsavory history of behavior analysis including methods used in early behavior modification or Ivar Lovaas and his work with individuals with autism.

However, the field has developed significantly in recent years and is shifting toward a compassionate, empowering, inclusive field truly devoted to making the world a better place through the thoughtful application of behavioral science. Like many other sciences, there have been things done in the past that today’s pracittioners are not proud of but seek to change how things are done with a focus on equity and the betterment of society.

The discovery that the principles of operant behavior applied to humans paved the way for modern applied behavior analysis in which these principles are applied to influence socially significant behavior and improve the quality of life for humans on small and large scales. This includes learning and education.

Here is an interesting video by Ryan O’Donnell about various applications of Behavior Analysis from small to large scale. It gives you a better idea of how it can be applied to groups or at a societal level. Let’s look a little closer at the principles of behavior and learning from the perspective of behaviorist theory.

Behaviorist Theory on Stimulus Control: The Science of Learning

Behaviorist theory of learning is centered around stimulus control. This is one of the most exciting principles in behavior analysis as it is the foundation of learning.

Stimulus control is when the presence or absence of a stimulus is presented, resulting in behavior to change in some way. This might include the behavior changing in latency (delay to onset), magnitude/intensity, frequency, or length (i.e., duration).

Through the principle of reinforcement (and sometimes punishment and extinction) we learn to respond to certain stimuli in specific ways. By learning to discriminate or discern which stimuli will produce reinforcement for us, we learn to behave in certain ways under specific conditions.

Through the same processes we learn stimulus generalization, which is understanding which related or similar stimulus will also produce reinforcement for us.

When the balance between generalizing and discriminating is found, we have learned a new concept . In other words, a concept is the result of both stimulus generalization and stimulus discrimination between different groups of stimuli.

For example, let’s think of the color blue. When we learn the color ‘blue’ we learn to discriminate blue from red, yellow, green etc. However, there are shades of blue that are all still considered ‘blue.’ We also learn to generalize what is still within the category of ‘blue’ and would label royal blue, baby blue, cobalt etc. all ‘blue.’

If stimulus control is too loose, we would perhaps call shades of purple ‘blue.’ If stimulus control is too tight, then we might only label one shade of blue as ‘blue.’

Verbal Behavior And Relational Frame Theory

Theorists from various fields have long debated the mechanisms that result in language acquisition and language learning. An original component of behaviorist theory included a perspective on language acquisition and this is called verbal behavior (VB).

The term verbal behavior was developed by B.F. Skinner, and is defined as “behavior whose reinforcement is mediated by a listener; includes both vocal-verbal behavior and nonvocal-verbal behavior. Encompasses the subject matter usually treated as language and topics such as thinking, grammar, composition, and understanding” (Cooper et al., p. 708).

Skinner put forward that language is verbal behavior and is shaped by the same behavioral processes that shape non-language behavior (e.g., reinforcement, extinction, stimulus control etc.).

Similarly, Skinner also defined verbal behavior by its function rather than what it looked like. Skinner developed an environmental account of language acquisition, stemming from the same principles of behavior established in behavioral science.

In contrast to behaviorist theory, Noam Chomsky’s biological account of language acquisition states that humans are born with innate language abilities (Cooper et al., p. 527). He pointed out in a critique that Skinner’s verbal behavior approach did not account for the way in which humans gain language in a generative or exponential manner.

A toddler is not explicitly taught every single word they go on to speak. They might be directly taught some words, but others are learned indirectly. In short, the verbal behavior approach can be critiqued as failing to account for complex language development, falling short of providing empirical research to support it, and explains language acquisition through only direct learning/contingencies of reinforcement and other behavioral processes.

Relational frame theory (RFT ) was developed in response to Skinner’s verbal behavior approach but from within the behavioral sciences.

RFT relies on operant learning and derived relational responding which means humans can learn things without direct teaching, training or experience (Torneke, 2010, p.x). When taught some concepts through operant learning (i.e., reinforcement, stimulus control etc.), humans can derive relations to other concepts and thereby explaining why we don’t need to be directly taught EVERY single word we use.

If you’re curious to learn more about RFT, watch BCBA Ryan O’Donnell explain it further.

Summary on Behaviorist Theory and Behaviorism

And there you have it! Behaviorist theory has a long history dating back to the early 20th century and stemming out of the field of psychology. Following the early findings by BF Skinner, modern behavior analysts seek to understand why a behavior is occurring by understanding the functions of a behavior i.e. what purpose is this behavior serving?

This is done through understanding the functions of behavior. New skills are taught primarily through the principle of positive reinforcement. These behavioral processes result in learning via stimulus control as we learn to respond to specific stimuli but also generalize to other similar stimuli.

The debate between the Verbal Behavior approach and Relational Frame Theory continues on in the behavioral sciences.

Cooper, Heron & Heward. (2007) Applied Behavior Analysis: 2nd Ed. Pearson Education. Torneke, Niklas. (2010). Learning RFT. New Harbinger Publications.

If you want to keep learning, check our podcast library out!

Further resources :

How To Develop Healthy Sleep Habits
Parenting A Child With Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)

Are you looking for a behavioral health professional to work with? Check out the BHC FindXpert network !

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Behavioral Perspective

The basic idea, theory, meet practice.

TDL is an applied research consultancy. In our work, we leverage the insights of diverse fields—from psychology and economics to machine learning and behavioral data science—to sculpt targeted solutions to nuanced problems.

Many philosophers, scientists and biologists have long sought to answer a simple question: What motivates human beings? What can explain our decisions, actions and behavior? According to the behavioral perspective, the way we behave and learn can be explained through our interactions with the environment. Our actions are always responses to stimuli, which either occur naturally or because of a learned response. 1

The behavioral perspective belongs to a school of thought known as behaviorism or behavioral theory. Behavioral theory is the overarching analysis of human behavior focused on examining a person’s environment and learned associations. Behaviorism suggests that all behavior is acquired through conditioning and can therefore be observed without consideration of thoughts or feelings. Since all behavior is but a response, behaviorism also suggests that anyone can learn to perform any action with the right conditioning. Instead of attributing talents, skills, or behaviors to genetics, personality, or cognition, behaviorists believe them to be simply a product of conditioning. 2

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar man and thief – regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. – John B. Watson in his paper “Psychologists as the Behaviorists View It” 2

Stimulus: Anything that occurs in the environment which makes an individual react to it.

Response: While we typically think of a response as a physical action, responses can also be verbal or written. As long as the behavior/action is observable and is a reaction to a stimulus, it is known as a response.

Unlearned drive: A natural human tendency toward food, drink, sleep, or sex that influences decisions and behavior.

Learned drive: A particular behavior that an individual is taught to exhibit.

Classical Conditioning: A learning technique that pairs a naturally-occurring stimulus with a chosen stimulus in order to teach an individual to react the same way to the chosen stimulus as they do to the naturally occurring stimulus. 2

Operant Conditioning: A learning technique that uses positive and negative reinforcements (rewards or punishments) to teach an individual to either continue or cease particular behaviors.

Incentivization : Trying to coax someone into doing something, or making it more appealing, by promise of reward afterwards.

Behavioral theory was established when behavioral psychologist John B. Watson published his paper “Psychology as the Behaviorists View It” in 1913. 2 In this paper, Watson suggested that people begin life as blank slates and can be conditioned or taught into behaving in any way.

While Watson is often referred to as the father of the behavioral perspective, Ivan Pavlov is the founder of classical conditioning. Pavlov’s famous experiment is colloquially known as “Pavlov’s Dogs” and was accidentally discovered in 1897 while trying to measure how much saliva dogs produced. Pavlov’s lab assistant would give the dogs a bowl of food, which causes them to salivate. He found that after a while, the dogs would salivate when they would see the lab assistant, regardless of whether he was bringing them food. The naturally-occurring response of salivating when food was presented became associated with a different stimulus, the lab assistant. This study, which demonstrated classical conditioning, helped create a foundation for the behavioral perspective, because it showed that behavior can be trained. 4

Seven years after publishing his paper, Watson also conducted the infamous Little Albert Experiment. Today, this experiment would be deemed unethical, but there were fewer policies and guidelines for psychological experiments in the 1920s. In the Little Albert Experiment, Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner wanted to see if classical conditioning also worked for humans, since Pavlov had shown that it did for dogs. They tested the theory on a baby, Albert. Watson and Rayner showed Little Albert neutral stimuli, including a white rat, a rabbit, and a monkey. Initially, Albert did not respond to any stimulus in a way that indicated fear. However, Albert would burst into tears if a hammer was struck against a steel bar behind his head. Watson and Rayner decided to strike the steel bar when Albert was being shown the white rat. This was repeated a number of times, over two sessions a week apart. At that point, Albert learned to cry when presented with the white rat because he had learned the fear response by associating the rat with a loud noise. 5

Following Watson’s footsteps, from around 1920 to the mid 1950s, the behavioral perspective continued to grow until it became the dominant theory of motivation.This was in part due to the fact that psychology was trying to establish itself as an objective and measurable science. Since the behavioral perspective suggested that internal characteristics have no influence on actions or emotions, it provided the opportunity for objectivity and measurement of external stimuli. 2

Edward Thorndike

Thorndike is best known for his work on learning theory, which B.F. Skinner drew on to theorize operant conditioning in humans. Thorndike developed the ‘law of effect’ which states that satisfying responses in one particular situation become more likely to occur again in the same situation. Thorndike studied learning theory with cats who attempted to get out of a box using different methods. He found that those who noticed a lever which would enable them to get out of the box would push the lever again when put back in the box. This experiment became a basis for operant conditioning. 6

Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner

Skinner was a foundational figure for the behavioral perspective. Skinner thought that classical conditioning was too simplistic as an explanation for all of human behavior and was interested in not only the cause of an action, but also the consequences. He found that behavior that is reinforced through rewards tends to be repeated, whereas behavior which is not reinforced or that which leads to punishment tends to die out. He called this kind of conditioning operant conditioning. 7

Hull believed that human behavior could be explained by conditioning and reinforcement. His theory rested on the concept of homeostasis: he suggested that human motivation arises as a result of biological need. When thirsty, hungry, or tired, Hull claimed that people feel a ‘drive’, defined as tension or arousal, which causes them to behave in ways that will reduce their drive. 8 Hull published these theories in Principles of Behavior in 1943.

Kenneth Spence

Spence was Hull’s student and helped him develop his ideas on learning and drive. He took ideas about operant conditioning a step further by suggesting that a response is in fact influenced by the size or value of a reward. For example, if money is being used as an incentive, the amount of money will impact the likelihood of a person exhibiting the desired response. Spence thus suggested that performance depends on reinforcement, as well as motivational incentives. 3

Consequences

With the rise in popularity of the behavioral perspective came a new understanding of psychology. If behavior could be observed and measured, psychology was more similar to science than had previously been understood. Watson wrote in his paper that “ psychology as a behaviorist views it [is] a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. ” 9

As the behavioral perspective was being adopted throughout the early 20th century, it changed not only how behavior was explained, but what kind of behavior was studied. Only what was observable was deemed important by the behaviorism school of thought, which meant that emotions, cognitive biases, or other internal events were ignored.

The fact that the behavioral perspective studies objective, measurable actions means that it is able to formulate clear predictions about behavior. A vast number of studies support the perspective because it is easy to replicate the stimulus-response environment in a lab. Its findings can also have positive implications in a number of fields. For example, in the field of education, understanding operant conditioning and positive reinforcement can help engage students in the material and motivate them to work hard. In the field of psychotherapy, classical conditioning can be used to help phobic clients rid themselves of fear by associating their feared objects with more neutral or positive stimuli. Behaviorism also provides insights into habit formation and suggests that bad habits can be broken and that good habits can be developed since all behavior is learned. The behavioral perspective lends support to the nurture side of the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate as it attributes all complex behavior to our responses to the environment.

Controversies

Since the behavioral perspective suggests that our behavior (and thus who we are) is all dependent on learning and conditioning, critics argue that the perspective negates free will. Instead of being active agents in our decision-making processes, behaviorists argue that we simply respond to stimuli. This view seems to reduce complex human beings to machinic entities. For this reason, the psychodynamic approach, which Sigmund Freud developed, criticizes the behavioral perspective for not taking into account unconscious influences. Moreover, Freud criticized the behavioral perspective because it views newborns as blank slates who can be conditioned to behave in any way. 9

Moreover, one of the biggest criticisms of the behavioral perspective is that it is reductionist. It suggests everything can be explained through the stimulus-response relationship and ignores what cannot be observed, like emotions, internal thoughts, or cognitive biases. To suggest that all behavior can easily be traced back to a response from our environment is to ignore many facets of our humanity. Individual differences are explained as mere differences in conditioning instead of results of different personalities. 9

Belief in the behavioral perspective has also led to some unethical applications. Cognitive behavioral therapy, the branch of psychotherapy associated with behaviorism, tries to change thinking patterns. While it can be useful to help people deal with anxiety, depression, or maladaptive or intrusive thoughts, it is also historically drawn on in conversion therapy, which tries to convert people’s sexuality from gay to straight.

A number of other perspectives contradict the behavioral perspective, namely:

The biological perspective, which has gained traction with scientific advancements, has allowed us to ‘see’ what happens on the inside. The biological perspective states that all behavior has a physical or organic cause. While our biology can be shaped by the environment, the biological perspective believes that our actions can be explained largely by what happens inside our bodies. 9
The cognitive perspective rejects the biological perspective because it believes the biological perspective reduces humans to their biological instincts. The cognitive perspective instead suggests that humans are information processors: when we are exposed to stimuli, we access the information that we’ve stored in our minds to form an appropriate response. While the cognitive perspective shares some similarities to the behavioral perspective, it is more concerned with non-observable things like memory and decision-making. 1
The cross-cultural perspective, which is relatively new, suggests that behavior is guided by cultural influences. It is often used to describe behavior that seems odd to some people but that is actually a product of norms and customs of a different culture. 1

Since there are so many perspectives, it is difficult to suggest that all behavior can be explained by learning and conditioning alone. While some actions are certainly reinforced or diminished through conditioning, other factors like genetics, cultures, thoughts, feelings, and environments certainly play into human behavior.

Case Studies

The behavioral perspective and autism.

The behavioral perspective has helped shape therapy and treatment techniques such as applied behavioral analysis (ABA). ABA helps children learn new behaviors or reduce problematic behaviors and can be especially useful when applied to children who are autistic or who have developmental delays. 10

Children with autism have a range of diverse needs; a common one is help with social skills. They find it difficult to develop stimulus control, so they can benefit from conditioning to learn appropriate responses to stimuli. Through a technique called “discrete child training,” which breaks down tasks into individual components, ABA therapists may provoke a desired behavior, such as asking a polite question, and then reinforce it by use of reward. In this way, ABA therapists condition their clients into behaving in socially acceptable ways. While ABA has been around for a while, it has received extreme criticism from the autistic community, who often call its methods harsh and reductive. Read more here .

Attachment Styles and Relationships

You might have heard of the four child attachment styles: secure, avoidant, anxious and disorganized. 13 According to the behavioral perspective, experiences during our childhood inform our attachment styles, which influence how we seek out and manage relationships in our adulthood.

When a child develops a secure attachment style as a kid, she is more likely to grow into an autonomous adult. Children who exhibit avoidant attachment styles are likely to be dismissive with emotions and expectations from a partner. Those who demonstrate an anxious attachment style as a child are likely to be needy and insecure in adult romantic relationships. Lastly, those with disorganized attachment styles might find it difficult to tolerate emotional closeness and intimacy with a partner as adults. 13

The belief that there is a chronic pattern of relational behaviors that result from childhood experiences of attachment owes itself to the behavioral perspective. because it suggests that prior experiences condition people to respond to others in particular ways. 14

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Methodology
Open access
Published: 03 April 2014

Development of a behaviour change intervention: a case study on the practical application of theory

Mark Porcheret 1 ,
Chris Main 1 ,
Peter Croft 1 ,
Robert McKinley 2 ,
Andrew Hassell 2 &
Krysia Dziedzic 1

Implementation Science volume 9 , Article number: 42 ( 2014 ) Cite this article

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Use of theory in implementation of complex interventions is widely recommended. A complex trial intervention, to enhance self-management support for people with osteoarthritis (OA) in primary care, needed to be implemented in the Managing Osteoarthritis in Consultations (MOSAICS) trial. One component of the trial intervention was delivery by general practitioners (GPs) of an enhanced consultation for patients with OA. The aim of our case study is to describe the systematic selection and use of theory to develop a behaviour change intervention to implement GP delivery of the enhanced consultation.

The development of the behaviour change intervention was guided by four theoretical models/frameworks: i) an implementation of change model to guide overall approach, ii) the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to identify relevant determinants of change, iii) a model for the selection of behaviour change techniques to address identified determinants of behaviour change, and iv) the principles of adult learning. Methods and measures to evaluate impact of the behaviour change intervention were identified.

The behaviour change intervention presented the GPs with a well-defined proposal for change; addressed seven of the TDF domains ( e.g ., knowledge, skills, motivation and goals); incorporated ten behaviour change techniques ( e.g ., information provision, skills rehearsal, persuasive communication); and was delivered in workshops that valued the expertise and professional values of GPs. The workshops used a mixture of interactive and didactic sessions, were facilitated by opinion leaders, and utilised ‘context-bound communication skills training.’ Methods and measures selected to evaluate the behaviour change intervention included: appraisal of satisfaction with workshops, GP report of intention to practise and an assessment of video-recorded consultations of GPs with patients with OA.

Conclusions

A stepped approach to the development of a behaviour change intervention, with the utilisation of theoretical frameworks to identify determinants of change matched with behaviour change techniques, has enabled a systematic and theory-driven development of an intervention designed to enhance consultations by GPs for patients with OA. The success of the behaviour change intervention in practice will be evaluated in the context of the MOSAICS trial as a whole, and will inform understanding of practice level and patient outcomes in the trial.

Peer Review reports

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a highly prevalent condition in general practice, and guidance on its management is available [ 1 – 6 ]. Published surveys of current practice have identified that care is not being delivered as recommended in this guidance, indicating that there is a need to improve and optimise primary care of people with OA [ 7 – 9 ].

The case study described in this paper was a component of the Managing Osteoarthritis in Consultations (MOSAICS) trial [ 10 ], an investigation of the feasibility, acceptability and impact of implementing the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) OA Guideline [ 2 ]. The main aim of the MOSAICS study was to test a complex patient-focused intervention (the ‘trial intervention’), developed using the Whole Systems Informing Self-Management Engagement (WISE) model [ 11 ] and incorporating the three elements of that model: information for patients, professional responsiveness to patients’ needs, and access to care. The three elements in the trial intervention were: i) an OA Guidebook developed with user involvement to provide patient-centred and evidence-based information [ 12 ], ii) an enhanced OA consultation by GPs and practice nurses, and iii) access to a practice-based nurse-led OA clinic (providing an initial 30-minute appointment and up to three further 20-minute appointments to provide support for self-management). The intervention was an evidence-based service for people who were 45 years or older presenting to the practice with a peripheral joint problem (Figure 1 ), designed to provide: i) relevant written information for patients, ii) support for patients to undertake muscle strengthening exercises, increase physical activity and, if applicable, lose weight, and iii) advice to patients on the appropriate use of analgesia. Its impact is to be evaluated at the level of the practice, for example prescribing patterns and the recording of clinical information, and at the level of the patient, for example uptake of NICE recommended treatments and pain.

The MOSAICS trial intervention for enhancing osteoarthritis (OA) care.

The Medical Research Council’s (MRC) updated guidance on the development and evaluation of complex interventions highlights the need to ensure successful implementation of interventions in research settings, and that failure to do this can undermine the evaluation of the intervention being tested [ 13 ]. This often requires a change in clinical practice by those delivering the intervention, and there is a growing evidence base on developing, undertaking and evaluating interventions to effect specific changes in professional behaviour: behaviour change interventions [ 14 ]. One component of implementing the MOSAICS trial intervention was to enhance the consultation behaviour of the GPs delivering the trial intervention. This behaviour concerned diagnosis and initial management in line with the NICE OA Guideline when patients aged 45 years and over present with peripheral joint pain. This GP behaviour was the focus of the case study described here.

The use of theory to inform the development of behaviour change interventions is strongly advocated by experts in the field [ 15 – 17 ] and is often presented as a model or framework. In this paper, we use ‘model’ as shorthand for a theoretically derived model or framework. Our case study comprises a description of the systematic selection and use of models to inform development of a behaviour change intervention designed to change GP clinical practice during consultations with patients with OA.

Four models were selected for their ability to operationalize the aims of the MOSAICS study in relation to the behaviour desired of GPs in the study, and their order of use is shown in Figure 2 .

Models used for the development and delivery of the behaviour change intervention.

The implementation of change model

This model, developed by Grol and Wensing [ 16 ], was selected to inform the overall approach to developing the behaviour change intervention. It comprises five steps: first developing a ‘concrete proposal’ for the desired change, one that is clearly defined and easily understandable; second undertaking an analysis of current practice, and barriers and incentives for change, in the group in which change is desired; third developing and selecting ways to change practice; and finally (steps 4 and 5) undertaking and evaluating the implementation plan (Table 1 ). Detailed guidance is available on how to approach the tasks needed for each step with reference to the underpinning evidence [ 16 ], and was selected as, in addition to its logical approach, it provides guidance on the answers to three very practical questions during the planning of change: ‘where do we want to be?’ (step 1), ‘where are we now?’ (step 2), and ‘how do we get there?’ (step 3).

The theoretical domains framework

At step 2, a key task was to understand which factors, or ‘determinants,’ would impede or facilitate the intended change, and many psychologically-oriented models have been proposed to inform this task. Many of these models overlap, and each tends to focus on different aspects of the change process [ 16 ]. One challenge for those facilitating change is how to select the most appropriate model when undertaking an analysis of these factors in a particular set of circumstances. Michie et al. addressed this problem by undertaking a consensus exercise to develop a model that encompassed 128 theoretical constructs (or determinants) included in 33 psychological theories - the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) [ 18 ]. The TDF consists of 12 domains (Table 2 ), such as knowledge, skills, beliefs about consequences, motivation and goals, with each domain having a set of theoretical constructs that had been identified as components in the models included in the consensus exercise. A total of 11 out of the 12 domains concern characteristics of the people for whom change is desired, with the 12 th concerning the attributes of the change or desired behaviour itself. The TDF has been used to identify determinants of behaviour change for an extensive range of conditions and clinical situations, for example, mobilisation of older patients in hospital [ 19 ], utilisation of a rule for the use of CT scans for head trauma [ 20 ], and management of chronic obstructive airways disease [ 21 ], and its development and use in a range of other studies has been reviewed [ 22 ]. The TDF has been recently validated and refined: experts were asked to re-sort the constructs included in the TDF and to re-develop the domains, with and without reference to the original domains [ 23 ]. The refined framework consists of 14 domains, 8 unchanged from the original, 6 derived from a more specific grouping of the constructs underpinning 3 of the domains (beliefs about capabilities, beliefs about consequences, and motivation and goals), with 1 of the original domains omitted (nature of the behaviour). The 12-domain TDF model was selected as the domains in this framework provided a practical and comprehensive list of possible determinants of behaviour change (the 14-domain model had yet to be developed at the time of this study), and the TDF was utilised to identify relevant determinants of behaviour change in this study.

Model for mapping behaviour change techniques to the TDF domains

At step 3, one of our tasks was to develop or select techniques to effect behaviour change. Michie et al. developed a model to inform the selection of behaviour change techniques that target the determinants described in the TDF [ 24 ]. They identified, and defined, a set of behaviour change techniques described in the literature and mapped them to the domains in the TDF described above (barring the 12 th domain): the techniques that they judged to be effective in changing behaviour for each domain [ 24 ]. The approach to mapping behaviour change techniques to TDF domains has been incorporated into protocols for the development of complex interventions, for example for tobacco counselling in dentistry [ 25 ] and management of low back pain [ 26 ]. This mapping process provides a practical tool for selecting appropriate behaviour change techniques as the components of a behaviour change intervention and was utilised at step 3.

Adult learning theory

At step 3, the principles of adult learning theory were also utilised; that adults are internally motivated and self-directed, bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences, are goal and relevancy oriented, are practical and like to be respected [ 27 ]. Adult learning theory was selected to inform the educational process of the behaviour change intervention as it has a well-established role in development of courses to support continuing professional development [ 27 ], including interventions such as the one developed in this study.

Applying the models

Step 1 – development of a concrete proposal for change.

The behaviour change required of the GPs was the delivery of an enhanced OA consultation (see Figure 1 ). A consensus exercise was undertaken with healthcare professionals to develop a model for the OA consultation [ 28 ]. Subsequent to this, two activities were undertaken. Firstly, the characteristics of the consensus model OA consultation were compared with characteristics known to promote or hinder the implementation of an innovation [ 16 ]. Secondly, three general practice advisory groups were formed – two consisting of GPs with research or teaching roles at Keele University and one consisting of members of the primary healthcare team in a local general practice – and meetings arranged. The meetings were audiotaped and field notes made. The model OA consultation was presented to the groups and their views and understanding obtained. From the results of the comparison and feedback from the advisory groups, the model consultation was refined to enhance uptake by GPs.

Step 2 – analysis of performance, target group and setting

The advisory groups, at the same meetings as arranged for step 1, were asked about: i) their current management of OA, ii) their awareness of, and agreement with, the NICE OA Guideline, and iii) any gaps perceived between their current practice and that recommended by NICE and in the model consultation. In addition, they were asked to suggest which barriers and/or incentives might be relevant to implementing the model consultation in practice. Their responses were mapped by the study team to the domains in the TDF.

Step 3 – development or selection of strategies and measures to change practice

There were four phases to the development of the behaviour change intervention: defining content, selecting behaviour change techniques, deciding on style of delivery, and addressing local practicalities. The content was developed by the study team informed by the views of GPs from step 2. The mapping of behaviour change techniques to TDF domains was utilised to select the techniques to address domains identified in step 2. Adult learning principles and Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Group’s reviews [ 29 ] were used to decide on style of delivery. Practical issues, such as venues, timings and duration of meetings, how best to deliver the behaviour change intervention, and what was feasible in the MOSAICS study, were addressed by the study team in consultation with general practices in the study.

Steps 4 and 5 – development, testing and execution of the implementation plan, and its evaluation

The GP behaviour change intervention was undertaken as part of the MOSAICS study in practices randomised to the intervention arm of the study. Methods and measures were developed to evaluate the behaviour change intervention at five levels: satisfaction with delivery of the behaviour change intervention, mediators of change, self-reported intended behaviour, competency to undertake the behaviour (undertaking the behaviour in a controlled situation [ 30 ]), and performance in undertaking the behaviour in day-to-day practice.

The model OA consultation, developed by the consensus exercise, consisted of 25 tasks addressing: i) assessment of chronic joint pain, ii) patient’s ideas and concerns, iii) exclusion of red flags, iv) examination, v) provision of the diagnosis and written information, vi) promotion of exercise and weight loss, vii) initial pain management, and viii) arrangement of a follow-up appointment [ 28 ].

The advisory group meetings were led by one of the authors (MP) and attended by 15 GPs, 5 practice nurses, and a practice manager. The key finding from the meetings on the characteristics of the model OA consultation was that, presented as 25 tasks, it was too complex to explain simply and quickly to GPs or for them to easily understand and translate into day-to-day practice. To simplify the model, tasks were grouped by core elements of a patient-centred consultation [ 11 , 31 , 32 ], for example support for self-care and provision of evidence-based information, and the model succinctly presented as three tasks.

To make, give and explain the diagnosis.

To provide analgesia advice/prescription.

To promote and support self-management.

The advisory group meeting transcripts and field notes on current practice, attitudes to recommended best practice, and perceived barriers to, and incentives for, changing practice, were analysed using the TDF as a coding framework. The analysis was discussed by the study team and by a group of expert educational advisors to the study, and seven TDF domains were identified as relevant to changing GP practice in OA consultations (Table 3 ).

The content of the behaviour change intervention was derived by the study team from the practical requirements of delivering the model OA consultation and from gaps identified in the advisory group meetings, for example lack of knowledge about the impact of OA on the individual, the skills necessary to deliver the model OA consultation, and the credibility of NICE guidelines. The selection of behaviour change techniques was undertaken by the study team and the educational advisors to the study. The starting point was the list of techniques that Michie et al . had judged appropriate to effect change for domains identified in step 2 [ 24 ]. The group used their research, clinical and educational experience to decide which of these techniques to choose. The content of, and techniques to address, each domain are detailed in Table 4 .

The choice of delivery style was informed by evidence from the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Group on the effectiveness of strategies for changing practice, with a specific emphasis on small group learning with a mixture of didactic and interactive sessions [ 33 ] and facilitated by opinion leaders [ 34 ]. In addition, the study team drew on evidence on a learner-centred approach, which utilises prior knowledge and experiences of the participants [ 27 ] to effect change in behaviour. Specifically, for the delivery of techniques to address the skills domain, we used empirical evidence on techniques for training experienced GPs in communication skills, a method of training known as ‘context-bound communication skills training’ was adopted [ 35 ]. In this technique the ‘context,’ in this case the management of OA, is in the foreground and the communication training in the background. A key feature is that participants practise consultation skills when consulting with simulated patients and receive feedback. This had been found to be a feasible, acceptable and effective method of enhancing the consultation skills of experienced practitioners [ 36 ] and preferable, for this group, to the approach taken in undergraduate skills teaching, where it is skill and not context that is in the foreground.

The final step was to consider the practical issues in delivering the workshops in four general practices with all the myriad demands on the GPs’ and other practice staff’s time. The final format was developed by the study team and educational advisors, drawing on their professional experience, and in consultation with GPs working in Keele University Medical School. The format was to deliver the behaviour change intervention at general practices’ premises, in four sessions, lasting one or two hours each, and about two to three weeks apart. The final behaviour change intervention with detailed timings is shown in Table 5 .

All the GPs, practices nurses, and administrative staff working in the four practices randomised to the intervention arm of the MOSAICS study, were invited to attend the training sessions (see Table 5 for details) [ 10 ]. The GPs were invited to participate in the evaluation of the behaviour change intervention. Methods and measures were chosen and developed to evaluate the behaviour change intervention at the four levels (Table 6 ).

The utilisation of the Grol and Wensing Implementation of Change Model, the Theoretical Domains Framework, and the model for mapping behaviour change techniques to the TDF domains have enabled a systematic and theory-driven approach to be taken to the development of an intervention to change clinical practice for the management of OA by GPs, and measures to evaluate its impact. This proved to be a practical way of using theory to inform, rather than just inspire, the development of a complex intervention, an approach that is widely advocated but reportedly not always taken [ 15 , 38 – 40 ].

The Grol and Wensing model did enable us to answer the three questions ‘where do we want to be?’, ‘where are we now?’, and ‘how do we get there?’ – a task that is recommended in the MRC guidance on complex interventions: that researchers can fully describe important components of the overall intervention and can implement them in the research setting [ 13 ]. The use of the TDF at step 2, and behaviour change technique mapping at step 3, enabled identification of relevant determinants of change in the GP behaviour component of the main trial, and behaviour change techniques to address them, within specific theoretical frameworks. It also enabled the purpose of each item of the behaviour change intervention to be understood, for example information giving to address gaps in knowledge about OA, rehearsal and feedback to enhance consultation skills.

In addition to theory, empirical evidence and practical considerations, on style and mode of delivery, informed development and ensured that the end product was evidence-based, feasible to deliver and acceptable to the recipients.

Use of models to develop behaviour change interventions in other studies

The TDF and behaviour change technique mapping, developed by Michie et al ., have both been published within the last 10 years, and a number of studies have reported on utility and outcome in the development of behaviour change interventions for trials [ 26 , 41 , 42 ]. Both models, used sequentially as in this study, have been employed in development of interventions to improve management of low back pain [ 26 ], to enhance GP diagnosis of dementia [ 41 ], and to reduce antibiotic use for upper respiratory infections [ 42 ]. Two of these have resulted in multi-facetted interventions as developed in this study [ 26 , 41 ], with the other [ 42 ] resulting in two interventions, each specifically addressing one of two determinants of behaviour change identified. The research team in the low back pain study, having determined the behaviour change techniques to include in the intervention, and the mode of delivery, took a pragmatic approach to their final selection: what was locally feasible and acceptable. We also took a pragmatic approach on deciding the final format, but this did not result in any changes to our intended delivery other than that the workshops were run at the practices, lasted no more than two hours each, and were about two to three weeks apart. To date, only the low back pain trial has reported and showed a small effect on GP intention to practice but no significant change in actual behaviour [ 43 ]. That clinical practice was not observed to change may not have been due to the intervention per se, as there were logistical problems in getting GPs to attend the intervention workshops and methodological problems in assessing outcome. The drive to use theory to inform development of interventions has been questioned [ 44 ], as empirical evidence is lacking on effectiveness of interventions developed in this way. Although the low back pain trial did not demonstrate a change in clinical practice, its use of theory does add to empirical evidence on the process of behaviour change.

Strengths and possible limitations

Developing complex interventions is a complex task in itself, and understanding how to approach it in a systematic way, informed by relevant theory, can be daunting for research teams [ 13 ]. The principal strength of the method described in this paper is that it enabled the MRC guidance on developing complex interventions to be operationalized systematically, and in a practical and do-able manner. The guidance on using the Grol and Wensing model to change clinical behaviour is extensive [ 16 ] and provided a very usable manual on ‘how to do it.’ The use of the TDF strengthens the approach advocated for the Grol and Wensing model for step 2, and is reflected in the increasing popularity of the TDF by research teams in developing interventions [ 22 ]. In addition, the recent validation and refining of the TDF domains has strengthened the rationale for its methodology, as used in this study, and, with a refined structure, strengthened its use in future studies [ 23 ].

The use of GP advisory group meetings both to gain views about the proposed change (step 1) and to undertake the target group analysis (step 2) was a practical strength. It provided an efficient method of: i) involving the target group in the development of the change proposal (an activity it its own right that enhances uptake of an intervention [ 16 ]), ii) identifying which characteristics of the intervention might hinder or facilitate uptake, and iii) understanding current practice and identifying relevant determinants of change.

One potential limitation was that the topic guide for the advisory group meetings was not specifically developed from the TDF, which could have resulted in some of the TDF domains not being fully explored in the meetings. The topic guide had been developed, and the meetings undertaken, before deciding to use the TDF in step 2. However, the topic guide was broad and covered current management, views about recommended practice, and perceived gaps between current and recommended care and allowed for free discussion by the groups. This has occurred in other studies [ 21 , 45 ] and, although not used to develop the topic guide, the TDF did give an efficient method for analysing advisory group comments.

The GPs who attended advisory group meetings were not the same GPs who received the behaviour change intervention in the MOSAICS trial, and their views and attitudes may not have been the same as these GPs. Analysis of the actual target group for the behaviour change intervention – the GPs in the four MOSAICS intervention practices – may have identified different determinants to be addressed, but the timescale for developing the behaviour change intervention in the MOSAICS study did not allow for this. However, as the mode of delivery included interactive sessions, and the sessions encouraged reflection on current practice and on the video-recorded consultations, there was ample opportunity for issues specific to the study GPs to be addressed.

The final measure of success, beyond the fact that this methodology has provided the framework for an intervention deliverable in practice, is whether it achieved what it set out to (a change in clinical practice) in a sufficient dose to achieve optimal outcomes for patients in the MOSAICS trial. Both these outcomes (intermediate professional-focused and ultimate patient-focused) will be reported in the future as part of the main results from the MOSAICS study.

A stepped approach to the development of a professionally-focussed behaviour change intervention to implement a component of a trial intervention, with the utilisation of theoretical frameworks to identify determinants of change and match behaviour change techniques to these, has enabled the systematic and theory-driven development of an intervention to enhance the management of OA by GPs. The success of the behaviour change intervention will be evaluated in the context of the MOSAICS trial, and will inform the understanding of practice level and patient outcomes in the trial.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Emma Healey and Vince Cooper for their assistance with the development of the behaviour change intervention, the GPs and practice staff who attended the general practice advisory groups, June Handy and Angela Pushpa-Rajah for their assistance with setting up and running the advisory groups, and the members of the Research User Group for their invaluable help and advice.

This paper presents independent research commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grant (RP-PG-0407-10386). The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health.

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MP developed the methodology, facilitated the advisory groups, undertook the data analysis and drafted the manuscript. CM and KD participated in developing the methodology, facilitating the advisory groups, analysing data, and drafting the manuscript. PC, RMcK and AH participated in developing the methodology, analysing data, and drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Porcheret, M., Main, C., Croft, P. et al. Development of a behaviour change intervention: a case study on the practical application of theory. Implementation Sci 9 , 42 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-9-42

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Published: 09 April 2024

Creating culturally-informed protocols for a stunting intervention using a situated values-based approach ( WeValue InSitu ): a double case study in Indonesia and Senegal

Annabel J. Chapman 1 ,
Chike C. Ebido 2 , 3 ,
Rahel Neh Tening 2 ,
Yanyan Huang 2 ,
Ndèye Marème Sougou 4 ,
Risatianti Kolopaking 5 , 6 ,
Amadou H. Diallo 7 ,
Rita Anggorowati 6 , 8 ,
Fatou B. Dial 9 ,
Jessica Massonnié 10 , 11 ,
Mahsa Firoozmand 1 ,
Cheikh El Hadji Abdoulaye Niang 9 &
Marie K. Harder 1 , 2

BMC Public Health volume 24 , Article number: 987 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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International development work involves external partners bringing expertise, resources, and management for local interventions in LMICs, but there is often a gap in understandings of relevant local shared values. There is a widespread need to better design interventions which accommodate relevant elements of local culture, as emphasised by recent discussions in global health research regarding neo-colonialism. One recent innovation is the concept of producing ‘cultural protocols’ to precede and guide community engagement or intervention design, but without suggestions for generating them. This study explores and demonstrates the potential of an approach taken from another field, named WeValue InSitu , to generate local culturally-informed protocols. WeValue InSitu engages stakeholder groups in meaning-making processes which ‘crystallize’ their envelope of local shared values, making them communicable to outsiders.

Our research context is understanding and reducing child stunting, including developing interventions, carried out at the Senegal and Indonesia sites of the UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub. Each national research team involves eight health disciplines from micro-nutrition to epigenetics, and extensive collection of samples and questionnaires. Local culturally-informed protocols would be generally valuable to pre-inform engagement and intervention designs. Here we explore generating them by immediately following the group WeValue InSitu crystallization process with specialised focus group discussions exploring: what local life practices potentially have significant influence on the environments affecting child stunting, and which cultural elements do they highlight as relevant. The discussions will be framed by the shared values, and reveal linkages to them. In this study, stakeholder groups like fathers, mothers, teachers, market traders, administrators, farmers and health workers were recruited, totalling 83 participants across 20 groups. Themes found relevant for a culturally-informed protocol for locally-acceptable food interventions included: specific gender roles; social hierarchies; health service access challenges; traditional beliefs around malnutrition; and attitudes to accepting outside help. The concept of a grounded culturally-informed protocol, and the use of WeValue InSitu to generate it, has thus been demonstrated here. Future work to scope out the advantages and limitations compared to deductive culture studies, and to using other formative research methods would now be useful.

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Although progress has been made towards the SDG of ‘Zero Hunger by 2025’, the global rates of malnutrition and stunting are still high [ 1 ]. Over the past 20 years, researchers have implemented interventions to reduce undernutrition, specifically focussing on the first 1000 days of life, from conception to 24 months [ 2 ]. However, due to both differing determinants between countries [ 3 , 4 ] as well as varying contextual factors, it is clear that no single fixed approach or combination of approaches can be relied on when implementing stunting interventions [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Furthermore, when external researchers design interventions for local areas in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) they can often overlook relevant local cultural factors that consequently act as barriers to intervention uptake and reduce their effectiveness, such as geographical factors and the levels of migration in certain populations [ 8 , 9 ], or social norms or perceptions relating to accepting outside help, and power dynamics related to gender [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. The inclusion of cultural level factors in behaviour change interventions has been proposed as a requirement for effective interventions [ 13 ]. However, despite the breadth of literature highlighting the negative impacts from failing to do this, the lack of integration or even regard of local culture remains a persistent problem in Global Health Research [ 14 ], possibly hindering progress towards the SDGs. Thus, there is a need for approaches to integrate local cultural elements into intervention design.

This lack of understanding of relevant local culture, social norms and shared values also has ethical implications. The field of Global Health Ethics was predominantly developed in the Global North, in High Income Countries (HICs), embedding values common in those countries such as the prominence of individual autonomy [ 15 , 16 ]. Researchers from HICs carrying out research in LMICs may wrongly assume that values held in the Global North are universal [ 14 ] and disregard some local values, such as those related to family and collective decision making, which are core to many communities in LMICs. It is therefore important for outside researchers to have an understanding of relevant local values, culture and social norms before conducting research in LMICs so as not to impose values that do not align with local culture and inadvertently cause harm or offence [ 16 , 17 ]. The importance of this is compounded by the colonial history that is often present in relationships between research communities in HICs and LMICs, and the fact that the majority of the funding and leading institutions are still located in the Global North [ 18 , 19 ]. Thus, conscious steps must be taken to avoid neo-colonialism in Global Health Research [ 20 ]. From a health-equity perspective, it is essential to ensure that those in vulnerable communities are not hindered from involvement in interventions to improve nutrition. Encouraging uptake by such communities could be provided if salient local shared values, norms and culture were taken into account [ 21 ].

In a recent paper, Memon et al., (2021) highlight the usefulness of first creating a cultural protocol that can precede and guide subsequent stages of community engagement or intervention design to ensure that salient local values are known to external researchers coming into the community [ 16 ]. We adopt the use of the concept of a cultural protocol, referring to locally-generated guidance about key values, norms, behaviours and customs relevant to working with the local community. However, we prefer the term, ‘culturally-informed protocol’ since this relates to only cultural elements deemed salient by the researchers, and locally, rather than any comprehensive notion of culture, nor extending beyond the research context.

Memon et al. (2021), point out links between the creation of such a protocol and existing codes of practice that have already been created for some cultures such as the Te Ara Tika, a Guideline for Māori Research Ethics [ 22 ]. Currently, research and interventions in Global Health can be informed by a stage of formative research involving one-to-one interviews, focus groups or direct observations, which can sometimes be ethnographic in nature such as within Focussed Ethnographic Studies or Rapid Assessment Procedures [ 23 , 24 , 25 ]. Although these methods can be effective to inform intervention designs, they have disadvantages like: can take long periods to complete [ 26 ], can be resource intensive [ 26 ] and can lack cultural acceptability [ 27 ]. These limitations may account for the frequent neglect of their use generally, highlighted by Aubel and Chibanda (2022) [ 14 ]. Additionally, none of these methods work towards making explicit local values, or towards the creation of a culturally-informed protocol. In brief, the literature suggests a need to develop alternative methods of Formative Research for understanding locally relevant cultural elements, that are less time-consuming and can generate data that is more easily translatable to intervention design. In addition, these approaches must be applicable in different cultures. Additionally, the protocols produced must be actionable and practical not only for guiding interactions between research teams but also for guiding the initial stages of intervention design.

The work presented here aims to address several of these needs. It includes an exploration of the usefulness of the WeValue InSitu ( WVIS ) approach because that has previously been shown, in environmental management domains, to offer a way to gather in-depth values-based perspectives from a target population [ 28 , 29 ] It was first created through action research, and co-designed to enable civil society organisations to better understand and measure the values-based aspects of their work [ 30 ]. The core WeValue InSitu process (detailed in Table 1 ) involves the crystallization of shared values, with a facilitator guiding a group of participants with shared experiences, through cycles of tacit meaning-making (using a stage of photo-elicitation and triggering) [ 31 ], until they can articulate more explicitly their shared values, in concise and precise statements. These statements are then linked together in a framework by the participants. In an example case in Nigeria, the results of the WVIS approach hinted at the creation of a culturally-informed protocol through an analysis of the shared values frameworks to find cultural themes for the creation of an indicator tool that was used to evaluate several development scenarios based on their social acceptability [ 29 ].

Furthermore, it has been found that if a group of WVIS participants take part in a specialised focus group discussion (FGD), named Perspectives EXploration (PEX:FGD) immediately afterward the main workshop, then they easily and articulately express their perspectives on the topics raised for discussion - and with allusions to the shared values they had crystallised just prior. In an example from Shanghai, the PEX:FGDs focussed on eliciting perspectives on climate change, which were shown to be closely linked with the cultural themes existing within the shared values frameworks produced immediately prior [ 32 ]. In that case, the PEX:FGDs allowed the cultural themes generated during the main WVIS workshop to be linked more closely to the research question. Those results suggested that the WVIS plus PEX:FGD approach could be used to create a specialised culturally-informed protocol for improved intervention design.

In the study presented here, the WVIS approach was explored for the purpose of creating culturally-informed protocols to inform the planning of interventions within two localities of the UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub [ 33 ]. The work was carried out in two parts. Firstly, the WVIS main workshop was used to elicit cultural themes within the target communities, indicating key elements to consider to ensure ethical engagement. Secondly, the PEX focus group discussions focussed on life practices related to stunting which we explored for the purpose of tailoring the culturally-informed protocols to the specific purpose of improving the design of an example intervention. The Action Against Stunting Hub works across three sites where stunting is highly prevalent but via different determinants: East Lombok in Indonesia (estimated 36% of under-fives stunted), Kaffrine in Senegal (estimated 16% of under-fives stunted) and Hyderabad in India (estimated 48% of under-fives stunted) [ 34 ]. We propose that, the information about local shared values in a given site could be used to inform the design of several interventions, but for our specific exploration the focus here is a proposed ‘egg intervention’, in which pregnant women would be provided with an egg three times per week as supplement to their diet. This study proposes that identifying shared values within a community, alongside information about local life practices, provides critical cultural information on the potential acceptability and uptake of this intervention which can be used to generate culturally-informed protocols consisting of recommendations for improved intervention design.

In this paper we aim to explore the use of the WVIS approach to create culturally-informed protocols to guide engagement and inform the design of localised egg interventions to alleviate stunting in East Lombok, Indonesia and Kaffrine, Senegal. We do this by analysing data about local shared values that are crystallized using the WeValue InSitu ( WVIS ) process to provide clear articulation of local values, followed by an analysis of life practices discussed during PEX:FGD to tailor the culturally-informed protocols for the specific intervention design.

Study setting

This research was exploratory rather than explanatory in nature. The emphasis was on demonstrating the usefulness of the WeValue InSitu ( WVIS ) approach to develop culturally-informed protocols of practical use in intervention design, in different cultural sites. This study was set within a broader shared-values workstream within the UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub project [ 33 ]. The Hub project, which was co-designed and co-researched by researchers from UK, Indonesia, Senegal and India, involves cohorts of 500 women and their babies in each site through pregnancy to 24 months old, using cross-disciplinary studies across gut health, nutrition, food systems, micro-nutrition, home environment, WASH, epigenetics and child development to develop a typology of stunting. Alongside these health studies are studies of the shared values of the communities, obtained via the WVIS approach described here, to understand the cultural contexts of that diverse health data. In this study the data from East Lombok, Indonesia and Kaffrine, Senegal were used: India’s data were not yet ready, and these two countries were deemed sufficient for this exploratory investigation.

The WVIS approach

The WVIS approach is a grounded scaffolding process which facilitates groups of people to make explicit their shared values in their own vocabulary and within their own frames (details in Fig. 1 and activities in Table 1 ). The first stage of the WVIS is Contextualisation, whereby the group identifies themselves and set the context of their shared experiences, for example, as ‘mothers in East Lombok, Indonesia’. Subsequently, there is a stage of Photo Elicitation, in which the group are first asked to consider what is important, meaningful or worthwhile to them about their context (e.g., ‘being mothers in East Lombok, Indonesia’) and then asked to choose photos from a localised set that they can use as props to help describe their answer to the group [ 29 ]. After this, a localised Trigger List is used. This Trigger List consists of 109 values statements that act as prompts for the group. Examples of these values statements are included below but all the statements begin with “it is important to me/us that…”. The group are asked to choose which statements within the trigger list resonate with them, and those are taken forward for group intersubjective discussion. After a topic of their shared values has been explored, the group begin to articulate and write down their own unique statements of them. These also all begin with “It is important to me/us that…”. After discussing all pressing topics, the group links the written statements on the table into a unique Framework, and one member provides a narrative to communicate it to ‘outsiders’. The WVIS provides a lens of each group’s local shared values, and it is through this lens that they view the topics in the focus group discussions which immediately follow, termed Perspectives EXplorations (PEX:FGDs).

Schematic of the macro-level activities carried out during the WeValue InSitu ( WVIS ) main workshop session

This results in very grounded perspectives being offered, of a different nature to those obtained in questionnaires or using external frameworks [ 31 ]. The specific PEX:FGD topics are chosen as pertinent to stunting contextual issues, including eating habits, food systems and environments, early educational environments, and perceptions of stunting. The local researchers ensured that all topics were handled sensitively, with none that could cause distress to the participants. The data for this study were collected over 2 weeks within December 2019–January 2020 in workshops in East Lombok, Indonesia, and 2 weeks within December 2020 in Kaffrine, Senegal.

The PEX:FGDs were kept open-ended so that participants could dictate the direction of the discussion, which allowed for topics that may not have been pre-considered by the facilitators to arise. Sessions were facilitated by local indigenous researchers, guided in process by researchers more experienced in the approach, and were carried out in the local languages, Bahasa in East Lombok, Indonesia and French or Wolof in Kaffrine, Senegal.

Development of localised WVIS materials

Important to the WVIS approach is the development of localised materials (Table 1 ). The main trigger list has been found applicable in globalised places where English is the first language, but otherwise the trigger lists are locally generated in the local language, incorporating local vocabulary and ways of thinking. To generate these, 5–8 specific interviews are taken with local community members, by indigenous university researchers, eliciting local phrases and ways of thinking. This is a necessary step because shared tacit values cannot be easily accessed without using local language. Examples of localised Trigger Statements produced this way are given below: (they all start with: “It is important to me/us that…”):

…there is solidarity and mutual aid between the people

…I can still be in communication with my children, even if far away

…husbands are responsible for the care of their wives and family

…the town council fulfils its responsibility to meet our needs

…people are not afraid of hard, and even manual work

Study participants

The group participants targeted for recruitment, were selected by local country Hub co-researchers to meet two sets of requirements. For suitability for the WVIS approach they should be between 3 and 12 in number; belong to naturally existing groups that have some history of shared experiences; are over 18 years old; do not include members holding significantly more power than others; and speak the same native language. For suitability in the PEX:FGD to offer life practices with relevance to the research topic of stunting, the groups were chosen to represent stakeholders with connections to the food or learning environment of children (which the Action Against Stunting Hub refer to as the Whole Child approach) [ 33 ]. The university researchers specialising in shared values from the UK, and Senegal and Indonesia respectively, discussed together which stakeholder groups might be appropriate to recruit. The local researchers made the final decisions. Each group was taken through both a WVIS workshop and the immediately-subsequent PEX:FGD.

Data collection and analysis

Standard data output from the WeValue session includes i) the jointly-negotiated bespoke Statements of shared values, linked together in their unique Framework, and ii) an oral recording of a descriptive Narrative of it, given by the group. These were digitized to produce a single presentation for each group as in Fig. 2 . It represents the synthesised culmination of the crystallisation process: a portrait of what was ‘important’ to each stakeholder group. Separately, statements from the group about the authenticity/ownership of the statements are collected.

An illustrative example of one digitized Shared Values Framework and accompanying Narrative from a teacher’s group in East Lombok, Indonesia. The “…” refers to each statement being preceded by “It is important to us that…”

When these Frameworks of ‘Statements of Shared Values’ are viewed across all the groups from one locality (Locality Shared Values Statements), they provide portraits of ‘what is important’ to people living there, often in intimate detail and language. They can be used to communicate to ‘outsiders’ what the general cultural shared values are. In this work the researchers thematically coded them using Charmaz constructionist grounded theory coding [ 35 ] to find broad Major Cultural Themes within each separate locality.

The second area of data collection was in the post- WVIS event: the PEX:FGD for each group. A translator/interpreter provided a running commentary during these discussions, which was audio recorded and then transcribed. The specific topics raised for each group to discuss varied depending on their local expertise. This required completely separate workstreams of coding of the dataset with respect to each topic. This was carried out independently by two researchers: one from UK (using NVivo software (Release 1.3.1)) and one from the local country, who resolved any small differences. All the transcripts were then collated and inductively, interpretively analysed to draw out insights that should be relayed back to the Action Against Stunting Hub teams as contextual material.

The extracts of discussion which were identified as relevant within a particular Hub theme (e.g. hygiene) were then meta-ethnographically synthesised [ 36 ] into ‘Hub Theme Statements’ on each topic, which became the core data for later communication and interrogation by other researchers within the Action Against Stunting Hub. These statements are interpretations of participants’ intended meanings, and links from each of them to data quotes were maintained, enabling future interpretations to refer to them for consistency checks between received and intended meaning.

In this investigation, those Hub Theme Statements (derived from PEX:FGD transcripts) were then deductively coded with respect to any topics with potential implications of the egg intervention. Literature regarding barriers and facilitators to nutrition interventions indicated the following topics could be relevant: attitudes to accepting help; community interactions; cooking and eating habits; traditional beliefs about malnutrition; sharing; social hierarchies [ 12 , 37 , 38 ] to which we added anything related to pregnancy or eggs. This analysis produced our Egg Intervention Themes from the data.

The Major Cultural Themes and Egg Intervention Themes were then used to create a set of culture-based recommendations and intervention specific recommendations respectively for each locality. These recommendations were then combined to form specialized culturally-informed protocols for the egg intervention in each locality: East Lombok, Indonesia and Kaffrine, Senegal. The process is displayed schematically in Fig. 3 .

Schematic representation of the method of production of the culturally-informed protocol for each locality

The preparation of the localised WVIS materials at each site took 6 hours of interview field work, and 40 person hours for analysis. The 10 workshops and data summaries were concluded within 10 workdays by two people (80 person hours). The analysis of the PEX:FGD data took a further 80 person hours. Thus, the total research time was approximately 200 person hours.

The stakeholder group types are summarised in Table 2 . The data is presented in three parts. Firstly, the Major Cultural Themes found in East Lombok, Indonesia and in Kaffrine, Senegal are described – the ones most heavily emphasised by participants. Then, the Egg Intervention Themes and finally, the combined set of Recommendations to comprise a culturally-informed protocol for intervention design for each location. Quotations are labelled INDO or SEN for East Lombok, Indonesia and Kaffrine, Senegal, respectively.

Major cultural themes from frameworks and narratives

These were derived from the Locality Shared Values Statements produced in the WVIS .

East Lombok, Indonesia

Religious values.

Islamic values were crucially important for participants from East Lombok, Indonesia and to their way of life. Through living by the Quran, participating in Islamic community practices, and teaching Islamic values to their children, participants felt they develop their spirituality and guarantee a better afterlife for themselves and their children. Participants stated the Quran tells them to breastfeed their children for 2 years, so they do. Despite no explicit religious official curriculum in Kindergarten, the teachers stated that it was important to incorporate religious teaching.

“East Lombok people always uphold the religious values of all aspects of social life.”

“It is important for me to still teach religious values even though they are not clearly stated in the curriculum.” – Workshop 1 INDO (teachers).

“In Quran for instance, we are told to breastfeed our kids for 2 years. We can even learn about that ” – Workshop 3 INDO (mothers).

Related to this was the importance of teaching manners to children and preventing them from saying harsh words. Teachers stated that it was important to create a happy environment for the children and to ensure that they are polite and well-behaved. Similarly, mothers emphasised the need to teach their children good religious values to ensure they will be polite and helpful to their elders.

“Children don’t speak harsh words.”

“My children can help me like what I did to my parents”.

– Workshop 8 INDO (mothers).

Togetherness within families and the community

The Locality Shared Values Frameworks stressed the importance of togetherness, both within family and community. Comments mentioned it being important that people rely heavily on their family and come together in times of need to support each other and provide motivation. This was also important more broadly, in that people in society should support each other, and that children grow up to contribute to society. This was also reflected in comments around roles within the family. Despite women being primary care givers, and men working to finance the family, participants stated that they follow a process of consultation to make decisions, and when facing hardships.

“that we have the sense of kinship throughout our society”.

“We have togetherness as mothers”.

“For the family side, whatever happens we need to be able to be united as a whole family. We need to have the [sense of] forgiveness for the sake of the children” – Workshop 2 INDO (mothers).

Attitudes about extra-marital pregnancy

In East Lombok, Indonesia, it was essential to both mothers and fathers that pregnancy happened within a marriage, this was to ensure that the honour of the family was upheld and that the lineage of the child was clear. The potential danger to health that early pregnancies can cause was also acknowledged.

“If they don’t listen to parents’ advice, there will be the possibility of pre-marital pregnancy happening, which will affect the family [so much].

The affect is going to be ruining the good name, honour and family dignity. When the children [are] born outside [of] marriage, she or he will have many difficulties like getting a birth certificate [and] having a hard time when registering to school or family” - Workshop 4 INDO (mothers).

“ To make sure that our children avoid getting married at a very young age and moreover [avoid] having free sex so that they will not get pregnant before the marriage” - Workshop 9 INDO (fathers).

Kaffrine, Senegal

The Major Cultural Themes which emerged from the Kaffrine data are described below. As these are grounded themes, they are different than those seen in East Lombok, Indonesia.

Access to healthcare

A recurring theme amongst the groups in Kaffrine were aspirations of affordable and easy-to-access healthcare. Community health workers stated the importance of encouraging women to give birth in hospitals and spoke of the importance of preventing early pregnancy which result from early marriages. Giving birth in hospitals was also a concern for Public Office Administrators who highlighted that this leads to subsequent issues with registering children for school. Mothers and fathers stated the importance of being able to afford health insurance and access healthcare so that they could take care of themselves.

“That the women give birth in the hospital” – Workshop 11 SEN (CHWS).

“To have affordable health insurance ” – Workshop 10 SEN (mothers).

“To have access to health care ” – Workshop 3 SEN (fathers).

“It is important that women give birth in the hospital in order to be able to have a certificate that allows us to establish the civil status” – Workshop 9 SEN (administrators).

Additionally, Community health workers spoke of their aspiration to have enough supplements to provide to their community so as to avoid frustration at the lack of supply, and mothers spoke of their desire to be provided with supplements.

“To have dietary supplements in large quantities to give them to all those who need them, so as not to create frustration” – Workshop 11 SEN (CHWS).

Another aspect of access to healthcare, was mistrust between fathers and community health workers. Community health workers explained that sometimes men can blame them when things go wrong in a pregnancy or consider their ideas to be too progressive. Thus, to these community health workers the quality of endurance was very important.

“Endurance (Sometimes men can accuse us of influencing their wives when they have difficulties in conceiving)” – Workshop 5 SEN (CHWs).

Another recurring theme was the importance of having secure employment and a means to support themselves; that there were also jobs available for young people, and that women had opportunities to make money to help support the family. This included preventing early marriages so girls could stay in school. Having jobs was stated as essential for survival and important to enable being useful to the community and society.

“To have more means of survival (subsistence) to be able to feed our families”.

“To have a regular and permanent job”.

“We assure a good training and education for our children so that they will become useful to us and the community”.

“ Our women should have access to activities that will support us and lessen our burden” – Workshop 3 SEN (fathers).

It was considered very important to have a religious education and respect for religious elders. Moreover, living by, and teaching, religious values such as being hard working, humble and offering mutual aid to others, was significant for people in Kaffrine.

“Have an education in the Islamic Culture (Education that aligns with the culture of Islam)”.

“Respect toward religious leaders” – Workshop 3 SEN (fathers).

“ To organize religious discussions to develop our knowledge about Islam ” - Workshop 10 SEN (mothers).

“ Have belief and be prayerful and give good counselling to people ” - Workshop 4 SEN (grandmothers).

Egg intervention themes from each country from perspectives EXplorations focus group discussion data

Below are results of analyses of comments made during the PEX:FGDs in East Lombok, Indonesia and Kaffrine, Senegal. The following codes were used deductively: attitudes to accepting outside help, traditional gender roles, food sharing, traditional beliefs, social hierarchies and understanding of stunting and Other. These topics were spoken about during open discussion and were not the subject of direct questions. For example, topics relating to traditional gender roles came up in East Lombok, during conversations around the daily routine. Thus, in order to more accurately reflect the intended meaning of the participants, these were labelled food practices, under the “Other” theme. If any of the themes were not present in the discussion, they are not shown below.

Attitudes to accepting outside help

Few mentions were made that focussed on participants attitudes to accepting outside help, but participants were sure that they would not make changes to their menus based on the advice of outside experts. Additionally, teachers mentioned that they are used to accepting help from local organisations that could to help them to identify under-developed children.

“ We don’t believe that [the outsiders are] going to change our eating habits or our various menus ” – Workshop 3 INDO (Mothers).

Traditional gender roles

In East Lombok, mothers spoke about how their husbands go to work and then provide them with daily money to buy the food for the day. However, this was discussed in relation to why food is bought daily and is thus discussed below in the topics Other – Food practices.

Food sharing

In East Lombok, Indonesia, in times when they have extra food, they share it with neighbours, in the hope that when they face times of hardship, their neighbours will share with them. Within the household, they mentioned sharing food from their plate with infants and encouraging children to share. Some mothers mentioned the importance of weekly meetings with other mothers to share food and sharing food during celebrations.

“ Sometimes we share our food with our family. So, when we cook extra food, we will probably send over the food to our neighbour, to our families. So, sometimes, with the hope that when we don’t have anything to eat, our neighbour will pay for it and will [share with] us.” – Workshop 3 INDO (Mothers).

“Even they serve food for the kids who come along to the house. So, they teach the kids to share with their friends. They provide some food. So, whenever they play [at their] house, they will [eat] the same.” – Workshop 2 INDO (Mothers).

Understanding of stunting

The teachers in East Lombok were aware of child stunting through Children’s Development Cards provided by local healthcare organizations. They stated that they recognise children with nutrition problems as having no patience period, no expression, no energy for activities and less desire to socialise and play with other children. The teachers said that stunted children do not develop the same as other children and are not as independent as children who are the proper height and weight for their development. They also stated that they recognise stunted children by their posture, pale faces and bloated stomachs. They explained how they usually use the same teaching methods for stunting children, but will sometimes allow them to do some activities, like singing, later, once the other children are leaving.

“ They have no patience period, don’t have any energy to do any of the activities. No expression, only sitting down and not mingling around with the kids. They are different way to learn. They are much slower than the other kids .” – Workshop 1 INDO (teachers).

“ When they are passive in singing, they will do it later when everyone else is leaving, they just do it [by] themselves ” – Workshop 1 INDO (teachers).

Specific views on eggs

In East Lombok, Indonesia, there were no superstitions or traditional beliefs around the consumption of eggs. When asked specifically on their views of eggs, and if they would like to be provided with eggs, women in East Lombok said that they would be happy to accept eggs. They also mentioned that eggs were a food they commonly eat, feed to children and use for convenience. Eggs were considered healthy and were common in their house.

“ We choose eggs instead. If we don’t have time, we just probably do some omelettes or sunny side up. So, it happens, actually when we get up late, we don’t have much time to be able to escort our kids to the school, then we fry the eggs or cook the instant noodles. And it happens to all mothers. So, if my kids are being cranky, that’s what happens, I’m not going to cook proper meals so, probably just eggs and instant noodles.” – Workshop 3 INDO (Mothers).

Social hierarchies

In addition to hierarchies relating to gender/position in the family such as grandmothers have decision making power, there was some mention of social hierarchies in Kaffrine, Senegal. For example, during times of food stress it was said that political groups distribute food and elected officials who choose the neighbourhoods in which the food will be distributed. Neighbourhood leaders then decide to whom the food is distributed, meaning there is a feeling that some people are being left out.

“ It’s political groups that come to distribute food or for political purposes…organizations that often come to distribute food aid, but in general it is always subject to a selection on the part of elected officials, in particular the neighbourhood leaders, who select the people they like and who leave the others ” – Workshop 11 SEN (CHWs).

Participants explained that during mealtimes, the family will share food from one large plate from which the father will eat first as a sign of respect and courtesy. Sometimes, children would also eat in their neighbour’s house to encourage them to eat.

“ Yes, it happens that we use that strategy so that children can eat. Note that children like to imitate so that’s why we [send them to the neighbour’s house]” – Workshop 11 SEN (CHWs)”.

Traditional beliefs about malnutrition

In Kaffrine, Senegal, some participants spoke of traditional beliefs relating to malnutrition, which are believed by fewer people these days. For example, uncovered food might attract bad spirits, and any person who eats it will become ill. There were a number of food taboos spoken of which were thought to have negative consequences for the baby, for example watermelon and grilled meat which were though to lead to birth complications and bleeding. Furthermore, cold water was thought to negatively impact the baby. Groups spoke of a tradition known as “bathie” in which traditional healers wash stunted children with smoke.

“ There are traditional practices called (Bathie) which are practiced by traditional healers. Parents are flexible about the practice of Bathie ” – Workshop 1 SEN (CHWs).

Causes of malnutrition and stunting were thought to be a lack of a balanced diet, lack of vitamin A, disease, intestinal worms, poor hygiene, socio-cultural issues such as non-compliance with food taboos, non-compliance with exclusive breastfeeding and close pregnancies. Malnutrition was also thought by some to be hereditary. Numerous signs of malnutrition were well known amongst the groups in Kaffrine. For example, signs of malnutrition were thought to be a big bloated belly, diarrhoea, oedema of the feet, anaemia, small limbs and hair loss as well as other symptoms such as red hair and a pale complexion. Despite this, malnutrition was thought to be hard to identify in Kaffrine as not all children will visit health centres, but mothers do try to take their babies heights and weights monthly. The groups were aware of the effect of poverty on the likelihood of stunting as impoverished parents cannot afford food. Furthermore, the groups mentioned that there is some stigma towards stunted children, and they can face mockery from other children although most local people feel pity and compassion towards them. Malnourished children are referred to as Khiibon or Lonpogne in the local language of Wolof.

“ It is poverty that is at the root of malnutrition, because parents do not have enough money [and] will have difficulty feeding their families well, so it is the situation of poverty that is the first explanatory factor of malnutrition here in Kaffrine” – Workshop 9 SEN (administrators).

“It can happen that some children are the victim of jokes for example of mockery from children of their same age, but not from adults and older ” – Workshop 9 SEN (administrators).

Pregnancy beliefs

In Kaffrine, Senegal, there were concerns around close pregnancies, and pregnancies in women who were too young, and for home births. Within the communities there was a stigma around close pregnancies, which prevented them from attending antenatal appointments. Similarly, there were superstitions around revealing early pregnancies, which again delayed attendance at health centres.

Groups acknowledged the role of good nutrition, and mentioned some forbidden foods such as salty foods, watermelon and grilled meat (which sometimes related back to a traditional belief that negative impacts would be felt in the pregnancy such as birth complications and bleeding). Similarly, drinking cold water was thought to negatively affect the baby. Beneficial foods mentioned included vegetables and meat, during pregnancy.

“ Often when a woman has close pregnancies, she can be ashamed, and this particularly delays the time of consultation” – Workshop 5 SEN (CHWs).

“Yes, there are things that are prohibited for pregnant women like salty foods” – Workshop 11 SEN (CHWs).

In Kaffrine, Senegal, some participants spoke of a traditional belief that if a pregnant woman consumes eggs then her baby might be overweight, or have problems learning how to talk. Despite this, mothers in Kaffrine said that they would be happy to accept eggs as a supplement, although if supplements are provided that require preparation (such as powdered supplements), they would be less likely to accept them.

“These restrictions are traditional, and more women no longer believe that eggs will cause a problem to the child. But if these eggs are brought by external bodies, we will hesitate to take it.” – Workshop 11 SEN (CHWs).

“They don’t eat eggs before the child starts speaking (the child only eats eggs when he starts talking). This is because it’s very heavy and can cause bloating and may also lead to intestinal problems.” – Workshop 4 SEN (grandmothers).

Creation of the culturally-informed protocols

Recommendations that comprise a culturally-informed protocol for intervention design in each locality are given in Table 3 .

The Major Cultural Themes, and specific Egg Intervention Themes drawn out from only 9–11 carefully planned group sessions in each country provided a rich set of recommendations towards a culturally-informed protocol for the localised design of a proposed Egg Intervention for both East Lombok, Indonesia and Kaffrine, Senegal. A culturally-informed protocol designed in this way comprises cultural insights which are worthy of consideration in local intervention design and should guide future stages of engagement and provide a platform from which good rapport and trust can be built between researchers and the community [ 16 ]. For example, in Kaffrine, Senegal, the early involvement of husbands and grandmothers is crucial, which reflects values around shared decision making within families that are noted to be more prevalent in LMICs, in contrast to individualistic values in HICs [ 16 , 39 ]. Similarly, due to strong religious values in both East Lombok, Indonesia and Kaffrine, Senegal, partnerships with Islamic leaders is likely to improve engagement. Past studies show the crucial role that religious leaders can play in determining social acceptability of interventions, particularly around taboo topics such as birth spacing [ 40 ].

The WVIS plus PEX:FGD method demonstrated here produced both broad cultural themes from shared values, which were in a concise and easy-to-understand format which could be readily communicated with the wider Action Against Stunting Hub, as well as life practices relevant to stunting in Kaffrine, Senegal and in East Lombok, Indonesia. Discussions of shared values during the WVIS main workshop provided useful cultural background within each community. PEX:FGD discussion uncovered numerous cultural factors within local life practices that could influence on the Egg Intervention engagement and acceptability. Combining themes from the WVIS workshop and PEX:FGDs allowed for specific recommendations to be made towards a culturally-informed protocol for the design of an Egg Intervention that included both broad cultural themes and specific Intervention insights (Table 3 ). For example, in Kaffrine, Senegal, to know that the husband’s authoritative family decision-making for health care (specific) is rooted in Islamic foundations (wider cultural) points to an Intervention Recommendation within the protocol, involving consultations with Islamic Leaders to lead community awareness targeting fathers. Similarly, in East Lombok, Indonesia the (specific) behaviour of breastfeeding for 2 years was underpinned by (wider cultural) shared values of living in Islam. This understanding of local values could prevent the imposition of culturally misaligned values, which Bernal and Adames (2017) caution against [ 17 ].

There are a number of interesting overlaps between values seen in the WVIS Frameworks and Narratives and the categories of Schwartz (1992) and The World Values Survey (2023) [ 41 , 42 ]. For example, in both Kaffrine, Senegal and East Lombok, Indonesia, strong religious values were found, and the groups spoke of the importance of practicing their religion with daily habits. This would align with traditional and conservation values [ 41 , 43 ]. Furthermore, in Kaffrine, Senegal participants often mentioned the importance of mutual aid within the community, and similar values of togetherness and respect in the community were found in East Lombok, Indonesia. These would seem to align with traditional, survival and conservation values [ 41 , 43 ]. However, the values mentioned by the groups in the WVIS workshops are far more specific, and it is possible that through asking what is most worthwhile, valuable and meaningful about their context, the participants are able to prioritise which aspects of their values are most salient to their daily lives. Grounded shared values such as these are generally neglected in Global Health Research, and values predominant in the Global North are often assumed to be universal [ 14 ]. Thus, by excluding the use of a predefined external framework, we minimized the risk of imposing our own ideas of values in the community, and increased the relevance, significance and local validity of the elicited information [ 28 ].

Participatory methods of engagement are an essential step in conducting Global Health Research but there is currently a paucity of specific guidance for implementing participatory methods in vulnerable communities [ 16 , 44 ]. In addition, there is acknowledgement in the literature that it is necessary to come into communities in LMICs without assumptions about their held values, and to use bottom-up participatory approaches to better understand local values [ 14 , 16 ]. The WVIS plus PEX:FGD methodology highlighted here exemplifies a method that is replicable in multiple country contexts [ 28 , 32 ] and can be used to crystallize local In Situ Shared Values which can be easily communicated to external researchers. Coupled with the specialised FGD (PEX:FGD), values-based perceptions of specific topics (in this case stunting) can be elicited leading to the creation of specific Culture-based recommendations. This therefore takes steps to answer the call by Memon and colleagues (2021) for the creation of cultural protocols ahead of conducting research in order to foster ethical research relationships [ 16 ]. We believe that the potential usefulness of the WVIS approach to guide engagement and inform intervention design is effectively demonstrated in this study and WVIS offers a method of making explicit local values in a novel and valuable way.

However, we acknowledge that our approach has several limitations. It has relied heavily on the local university researchers to debate and decide which participant stakeholder groups should be chosen, and although they did this in the context of the Whole Child approach, it would have been advantageous to have involved cultural researchers with a deeper understanding of cultural structures, to ensure sufficient opportunities for key cultural elements to emerge. This would have in particular strengthened the intervention design derived from the PEX:FGD data. For example, we retrospectively realised that our study could have been improved if grandmothers had been engaged in East Lombok. Understanding this limitation leads to suggestion for further work: to specifically investigate the overlap of this approach with disciplinary studies of culture, where social interactions and structures are taken into account via formal frameworks.

There are more minor limitations to note. For example, the WVIS approach can only be led by a trained and experienced facilitator: not all researchers can do this. A training programme is currently under development that could be made more widely available through online videos and a Handbook. Secondly, although the groups recruited do not need to be representative of the local population, the number recruited should be increased until theoretical saturation is achieved of the themes which emerge, which was not carried out in this study as we focussed on demonstrating the feasibility of the tool. Thirdly, there is a limit to the number of topics that can be explored in the PEX:FGDs within the timeframe of one focus group (depending on the stamina of the participants), and so if a wider range of topics need formative research, then more workshops are needed. Lastly, this work took place in a large, highly collaborative project involving expert researchers from local countries as well as international experts in WVIS : other teams may not have these resources. However, local researchers who train in WVIS could lead on their own (and in this Hub project such training was available).

The need for better understanding, acknowledgement and integration of local culture and shared values is increasing as the field of Global Health Research develops. This study demonstrates that the WVIS plus PEX:FGD shared values approach provides an efficient approach to contextualise and localise interventions, through eliciting and making communicable shared values and local life practices which can be used towards the formation of a culturally-informed protocols. Were this method to be used for intervention design in future, it is possible that more focus should be given to existing social structures and support systems and a greater variety of stakeholders should be engaged. This study thus contributes to the literature on methods to culturally adapt interventions. This could have significant implications for improving the uptake of nutrition interventions to reduce malnutrition through improved social acceptability, which could help progression towards the goal of Zero Hunger set within the SDGs. The transferability and generalisability of the WVIS plus PEX:FGD approach should now be investigated further in more diverse cultures and for providing formative research information for a wider range of research themes. Future studies could also focus on establishing its scaling and pragmatic usefulness as a route to conceptualising mechanisms of social acceptability, for example a mechanism may be that in communities with strong traditional religious values, social hierarchies involving religious leaders and fathers exist and their buy-in to the intervention is crucial to its social acceptability. Studies could also focus on the comparison or combination of WVIS plus PEX:FGD with other qualitative methods used for intervention design and implementation.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request [email protected], Orcid number 0000–0002–1811-4597. These include deidentified Frameworks of Shared Values and Accompanying Narrative from each Group; deidentified Hub Insight Statements of relevant themes.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Hub PI, Claire Heffernan, for feedback on a late draft of the manuscript.

The Action Against Stunting Hub is funded by the Medical Research Council through the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), Grant No.: MR/S01313X/1.

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Values & Sustainability Research Group, School of Architecture, Technology and Engineering, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

Annabel J. Chapman, Mahsa Firoozmand & Marie K. Harder

Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

Chike C. Ebido, Rahel Neh Tening, Yanyan Huang & Marie K. Harder

Department of Zoology and Environmental Biology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

Chike C. Ebido

Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Dakar, Senegal

Ndèye Marème Sougou

Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah, Jakarta, Indonesia

Risatianti Kolopaking

Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Centre for Food and Nutrition (SEAMEO RECFON) Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia

Risatianti Kolopaking & Rita Anggorowati

International Research Laboratory (IRL 3189) Environnement santé et sociétés/CNRS/UCAD, Dakar, Senegal

Amadou H. Diallo

Department of Medical Records and Health Information, Faculty of Health and Technology, Universitas Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia

Rita Anggorowati

Laboratory of Cultural Anthropology, IFAN, Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD), Dakar, Senegal

Fatou B. Dial & Cheikh El Hadji Abdoulaye Niang

School of Education, Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

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MKH formulated the initial research question and study design. AJC developed the specific research question. Data collection in Senegal involved CCE, NMS, AHD, FBD, RNT, CEHAN and JM. Data collection in Indonesia involved RA, RK, YH and MKH. Cultural interpretation in Senegal Involved AHD, FBD, NMS, RNT and JM. Analysis involved AJC and MF. AJC and MKH wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Marie K. Harder .

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The research was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and has been approved by the Ethics Review Board of the University of Brighton, and national ethics committees for research in Indonesia and Senegal. Informed consent was obtained in the local vernacular language, Bahasa, French or Wolof. Participants retained a copy of the informed consent document for reference.

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Chapman, A.J., Ebido, C.C., Tening, R.N. et al. Creating culturally-informed protocols for a stunting intervention using a situated values-based approach ( WeValue InSitu ): a double case study in Indonesia and Senegal. BMC Public Health 24 , 987 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18485-y

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18485-y

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Thomas H. Davenport
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Siti Rahman, the CEO of Malaysia-based NVF Bank, faces a pivotal decision. Her head of AI innovation, a recent recruit from Google, has a bold plan. It requires a substantial investment but aims to transform the traditional bank into an AI-first institution, substantially reducing head count and the number of branches. The bank’s CFO worries they are chasing the next hype cycle and cautions against valuing efficiency above all else. Siti must weigh the bank’s mixed history with AI, the resistance to losing the human touch in banking services, and the risks of falling behind in technology against the need for a prudent, incremental approach to innovation.

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Theories of behaviour and behaviour change across the social and behavioural sciences: a scoping review