June 29, 2016

June 29, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my fourteenth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). The authors discuss what is known in social psychology as the “Fundamental Attribution Error,” the tendency to ascribe behavior of someone else to dispositional causes and to ascribe our own behavior to situational causes. The reason that individuals attribute behavior either to internal or external variables is relative to the access that one has to someone’s behavioral history. 

If someone is a total stranger to us, we haven’t talked and we have no access to his or her behavioral history and thus, internal attributes are more likely to be made, but the more familiar we are with a person, the more we know about his or her behavioral history and, the more we are capable of explaining this person’s behavior based on what we know. 

Situational attributions are more likely if we talk and come to know someone. Also our own behavior is more likely to be attributed to false dispositional causes relative to our lack of knowledge of behavioral science and our individual behavioral history. The more knowledgeable we become about behavioral science, the more likely we will look into our phylogenetic, ontogenetic and cultural conditioning and the more likely we will be to attribute our own behavior to situational causes. 

I guess it takes someone with some knowledge of behavioral science to write this. Hayes (1987) found students “gave causal status to the feelings and thoughts of the client.” They also “reported internal explanations for their own behavior in these type of situations”, as they knew about “common clinical situations.” Thus, the real point of the “Fundamental Attribution Error” is the inner causation of behavior!

June 28, 2016

June 28, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my thirteenth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). I can’t believe that this is my thirteenth response to this paper. It gives me a lot to think and write about. As I have previously stated,  the “Epistemological  Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” are more effectively addressed as epistemological barriers to science as such. However, the biggest hindrance to the sciences is not, as the authors suggest, folk psychology, but religion. 

We have done a dismal job educating people about science. This has produced a common half-heartedness; in spite of many scientific advances and benefits most people continue to have and to support superstitions. As long as this bigger issue is not properly addressed, the “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” will remain. 

One thing is clear: the confrontation between religious beliefs (or folk psychology for that matter) and science hasn’t worked. A new strategy is needed which focuses only increasing scientific behavior and puts religious behavior on an extinction schedule. However, this is only going to be accomplished if we are able to change the way in which we talk.

As long as we remain uneducated about what is needed to create and maintain Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), ongoing conversation which only generates positive emotions, we will continue to have Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and generate negative emotions out of ignorance.  

Unless we learn to have ongoing SVB, our interaction is derailed by our superstition which is emboldened by our science. Whether mankind becomes more scientific on not will be determined by SVB, but NVB will, as it has always done, continue to promote pre-scientific beliefs.

June 27, 2016

June 27, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my twelfth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). These authors, who don’t know anything about the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) / Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction, try to understand why students have problems accepting behaviorism and why folk psychology still remains such an epistemological barrier.

Once we know about the SVB/NVB distinction, we realize that NVB maintains all our superstitions and that SVB is a scientific way of talking. Also, the “Fundamental Attribution Error” which deals with a person’s tendency “to place greater emphasis on internal explanations for behavior rather than on external ones” (Jellison & Green, 1981), must be explained differently.

Why is it that “Internal explanations of behavior are common and serve to minimize the role of environmental variables?” It is because of how we talk. In NVB, we minimize the important role of our public speech in our private speech. Presumably, how we talk with ourselves is caused by us, but this absolutely wrong. We talk with ourselves privately, that is, we think, in the same way as others have talked with us publicly.

As a consequence of our involvement in and our exposure to NVB public speech, we acquire negative self-talk. Our thinking about ourselves and each other is negative because in NVB the speaker separates him or herself from the listener. Separation of the speaker and the listener involves conflict between people, but also within each person.

It is because of NVB that, when we observe someone’s else’s actions, we have the tendency to overestimate the influence of that person’s internal characteristics on behavior (disposition) and to underestimate the influence of the situation. Also, it is because of NVB that when we explain our own behavior we use situational attributions. In SVB we recognize that other people just like us are affected by the situation.   

June 26, 2016

June 26, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my eleventh response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). “The extent to which a student initially finds an approach acceptable or problematic” is determined by how the teacher speaks. If a teacher has Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the student will find his or her approach acceptable, but if he or she has Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the student will find his or her approach problematic.

“Folk psychology as an explanatory system is not likely to be eliminated in the near future (Horgan & Woodward, 1990; Richards, 1997; Churchland (1991)” since people know damn well when they are being spoken at or when they are being spoken with. The fact that everyone who is introduced to the SVB/NVB distinction agrees with it shows there is validity in folk psychology which we have yet to acknowledge.

The authors underestimate the power of folk psychology as a “framework of concepts” that is “roughly adequate to the demands of everyday life.” If it was only “roughly adequate” people wouldn’t hang on to it. Why are mental events “thought to play the most important causal roles in human action?” It is because of how we talk, that is, it is because we mostly keep having NVB.

With NVB “there is little reason to move beyond the inner life of the person as the source of explanations for his or her behavior”, only SVB gives us the reason to do this. In SVB we include our private speech again into our public speech. What explains the tenacity of folk psychology, in spite of all the scientific evidence? 

Why is it that “Folk psychology takes these internal causes to be so important, ubiquitous, proximate, and powerful that there is little emphasis upon environmental or external causes of human behavior?” Assumed “internal causes” refer to private speech, which, in NVB is kept out of public speech. Thus, folk psychology could continue because of the separation of our private speech from public speech. 

June 25, 2016

June 25, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Behavioral Engineer

Dear Reader, 

This is my tenth response to “Epistemological Barriers to Radical Behaviorism” by Donohue et al. (1998). Even today, in 2016, we still have creationists, who argue that “the species were fixed because

God would only make a perfect creation.” The authors state “the notion of an ever-changing species contained in Darwin's account ran directly counter to this theological view.” As one person is saying this and the other person is saying something else, all our attention goes to what we are saying and presumably we then have a difference of opinion. 

Nobody is listening to anybody when our so-called communication is based on a struggle for attention.  Moreover, we all want others to listen to us. While we emphasize the importance of listening to others, we have Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) in which we are NOT listening to ourselves. We only do that during Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).

We are familiar with the saying: it is not what you say, but how you say it, but this saying doesn’t make any difference in monitoring how we sound while we speak. Such a saying expresses a listener’s perspective which is generally not listened to by the speaker. Speakers are bound to be offended when they are made aware by the listeners of how they dominate and force the conversation with the way in which they sound.

Telling speakers that they need to sound better doesn’t result into SVB. It only stimulates more NVB, which is always based on 1) struggle for attention, 2) outward orientation, and 3) fixation on the verbal. We, the speaker and the listener, can only come together during SVB in which each speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks. 

The paper, which is a written version of NVB didn’t make a dent in dissolving “epistemological barriers.” It is because of NVB “the student of psychology comes to the field with commitments rooted in folk psychological beliefs.” Teacher’s need to address how he or she speaks!