Behaviorism vs cognitive black box

1. Demonstration
Behaviorism
Vs
Cognitive Psychology
Use the left and right arrow keys to go backwards or
forwards through slides.

2. To behaviorists, the human mind is like a black box. It’s sealed,
and you can’t see inside.

3. The behaviorists claimed that we could still study the organism
by selectively presenting stimuli to the “black box”
Stimulus

4. Then…something happens in the person, and we see responses
emitted by the organism (fancy way of saying “people do things”)
Stimulus
Example Responses:
Working harder in the
future
Response
Example Stimuli:
Giving a raise after
good performance
………………………… .

5. Then…something happens in the person, and we see responses
emitted by the organism (fancy way of saying “people do things”)
Stimulus
Example Responses:
Working harder in the
future
Buying the product
Response
Example Stimuli:
Giving a raise after
good performance
Pairing music and
attractive people
with products in ads
………………………… .
………………………… .

6. Then…something happens in the person, and we see responses
emitted by the organism (fancy way of saying “people do things”)
Stimulus
Example Responses:
Working harder in the
future
Buying the product
Staying away from the
person who yelled
Response
Example Stimuli:
Giving a raise after
good performance
Pairing music and
attractive people
with products in ads
Getting yelled at
………………………… .
………………………… .
………………………… ..

7. Then…something happens in the person, and we see responses
emitted by the organism (fancy way of saying “people do things”)
Stimulus
Example Responses:
Working harder in the
future
Buying the product
Staying away from the
person who yelled
Head turning, staring 
Response
Example Stimuli:
Giving a raise after
good performance
Pairing music and
attractive people
with products in ads
Getting yelled at
Seeing a hottie 
………………………… .
………………………… .
………………………… ..
………………………… ..

8. To a behaviorist, the black box is sealed, closed, and inaccessible. They looked
for law-like relationships between stimuli and responses (in a broad sense).
Stimulus
Example Responses:
Working harder in the
future
Buying the product
Staying away from the
person who yelled
Head turning, staring 
Response
Example Stimuli:
Giving a raise after
good performance
Pairing music and
attractive people
with products in ads
Getting yelled at
Seeing a hottie 
………………………… .
………………………… .
………………………… ..
………………………… ..
To Watson, what
goes on in the box is
unimportant!

9. They found classical conditioning (associative learning) and operant
conditioning (instrumental learning)
Stimulus
Example Responses:
Working harder in the
future
Buying the product
Staying away from the
person who yelled
Head turning, staring 
Response
Example Stimuli:
Giving a raise after
good performance
Pairing music and
attractive people
with products in ads
Getting yelled at
Seeing a hottie 
………………………… .
………………………… .
………………………… ..
………………………… ..
reinforcement
punishment
Classical cond.
Me being
funny

10. Problem…
Consider two different people.
You see both get the same stimulus. You see both make
the same response.
Are they the same?
Did the same thing go through the “black box” (the minds)
of both people?

11. Problem…
Watson would answer:
It doesn’t matter if the same thing goes through their minds or not.
We can’t study consciousness, so any consideration of what’s in the
“black box” of people’s minds is unscientific.
Skinner would answer:
What goes through people’s minds is irrelevant. They have learned to
have their particular thoughts under these circumstances with this
stimulus. What is important is understanding the relationships
between input (stimulus) and output (response) through the “black
box.”
Cognitive psychologists would answer:
Very different cognitions (thoughts) may be going on in the “black
box.” Here’s evidence for how we know this…

12. Cognitive psychologists specialize in using creative ways to study what is
going on in the black box.

It is difficult to study
what is going on in a
person’s thoughts,
but it is not
impossible.

13. In general, you can start with observing a tie between a stimulus and a response
and hypothesize what is going on cognitively in the “black box,” that is, what is
going through one’s mind?
Response

Stimulus
•Maybe they’re thinking A
•Maybe they’re thinking B

14. Then you can change the stimulus or some other aspects of the experiment so
that the different hypothesized cognitions would produce DIFFERENT responses.

Change the
Experiment
Response if A

•If they think A, we’ll see them do one behavior
•If they think B, we’ll see them do another behavior
Response if B

15. Notice, although we can not study what is in the “black box”
directly in one study, we CAN gain information about
cognitions with a series of creatively designed studies!!
Change the
Experiment
Compare
Results

The challenge to a researcher
is to find ways to change a
study so that different
hypothesized cognitions will
produce different results

16. •Cognitive research gets very detailed and
technical, but when the findings are put
together, we get to peer into the Black Box
of the Mind
•More recently, cognitive neuroscientists
attempt to tie the creative findings of
cognitive research with physiological
findings from neuroscience

17. Take home message:
Even if something is not easily observed,
you may be able to study it scientifically.