Archive for November, 2013

Behaviorism at its most basic level is about creation. It seeks to explain how we came to be the way we are.  You can see this theme in the work of all the major behaviorists including Pavlov, Watson and Skinner. However, behaviorism also seems to have a very different perspective on how our own personal creations happen. They do not see human personality shaped by a god or anything like that but instead see it, at least in Skinner’s view, as people who are shaped purely through their experience. He believes that every single quirk or thing that can be observed in a person has behavioral roots. Some experience caused it. Behaviorism also is concerned with creation in the sense that in use during therapy it can be used to create new behaviors as a way to change old less functional behaviors or habits.  Skinner liked to show how using his methods he could create behaviors in pidgeons such as teaching them to turn in circles or made  pidgeons with gambling addictions. He believed that these lessons could and should also be used on humans. This may cause some ethical problems but even so does not negate the fact that it has often proved to be an extremely effective way to do therapy in many cases.

William McDougall brought about a new idea to psychology. The idea of purposive behavior, this type of behavior was different from reflexive behavior which many psychologists before him had been studying. This type of behavior focused on variety, spontaneity and improvement through practice. Essentially the type of behavior that McDougall was talking about is behavior that is very specifically thought out before it is produced. McDougall talks a lot about the importance of having a goal, and that there is something within every person that causes them to strive towards a goal, there is an internal drive that keeps them going. Because of this, I believe that McDougall’s ideas best align with Creation. He believes that people are capable of more than just mindless reactions, he believes that there is always a goal in behavior. If there is no creator, than there would be no reason for actions and behaviors that are purposefully thought out. So by saying that behaviors are thoughtful, intricate processes, McDougall supports the idea that a creator had to put these ideas within the human brain. Mcdougall then goes on to speak about the importance of instincts, he believes that instincts will interact in specific ways to cause motivation, in a very intricate process. There is no way that this intricate process could just arise, it was very specific and thought out by a creator who made man for a specific purpose. McDougall’s ideas about the intricacies of behavior and motivational tendencies truly lead one to believe that he is in support of an all mighty creator.

Modeling is a learning theory that learning occurs by observing the behaviors of others. People, especially children learn behaviors simply by watching and imitating others. In this basic form of learning, the model plays an important role. The model can be an actual individual in daily life, such as parents or teachers, or can be a real or fictional character in media programs. The model can also be a verbal instruction to describe a behavior. People are naturally apt to engage in observational learning. Therefore, modeling can be unintentionally, and it can also occur on purpose by the model trying to teach a particular behavior. Both desirable and undesirable behaviors will be learned through modeling in either way.

As we live in a fallen world, people may easily learn undesirable behaviors by poor modeling. In the famous Bobo doll experiment, which was conducted by Albert Bandura, we are surprised to see the little children hit the Bobo doll so aggressively after observing the violent actions of an adult model. Due to the undesirable behaviors learned by modeling, I want to put it under the category of Fall. Here I am thinking of a specific example-the contagion of suicide. Suicide is a sin, for the giving and taking of human life should remain in God’s hands. Researches have reveals that one suicide case can be a model for anther suicidal act. People, especially teenagers, are more likely to kill themselves when they observe or hear of the other person’s suicide. The cases of suicides by celebrities or other highly publicized cases will bring about imitators and trigger more similar suicides. Even an educative video about suicides may have the contagion effect. Suicides by familiar people, such as friends, classmates or colleagues can also be a model for another tragedy.

One of my favorite quotes by Jung is from the video we watched in classes in which he said that he didn’t think one should believe.  If you have the facts then you know, otherwise you have no reason to believe.  I like this quote because it describes perfectly how so many in our society think, and how I used to think.

During some of the lower points in my faith I relied heavily on logic and science.  That is part of why I would definitely categorize Jung with the fall. A big part of faith in Christ in my opinion,  is not knowing. God didn’t give us all the answers, and that gives us a need to lean on him at times instead of on science and our knowledge. However with that being said, I don’t think that everything Jung had to say was worthless, I think he had a lot of really great input to the field and to life in general.

I believe that Freud could be placed under the fall. His work on the unconscious and behavior shows what seems to be a darker side of peoples behavior. To think that sex is the main drive in human behavior avoids the point of morals and things that are not personal. I feel that this limits mans ability to sacrifice his own needs to help others. I also feel that he goes under the fall because of how little research he actually did. If he cannot prove his own works yet be so influential to the field of psychology then he should be placed under the fall. I also feel that his work on the unconscious limits mans ability to control his actions leading to the lack of free will which should be placed under the fall. Although some of his views could be placed under different categories I feel that the fall best fits freud.

Carl Jung believed in personal unconscious. The personal unconscious consists of experiences that had either been repressed or simply forgotten. It it the information from one’s life that for one reason or another has been forgotten. Some of this information is easy to retrieve and some of it is not. I think the idea of the unconscious can go into the category of restoration. The ability to forget things can be and usually is frustrating. However, repressing memories into the unconscious can be a good thing. The concept of restoration is bringing the world back to a more ideal way of life. This is the same way the personal unconscious works. One’s mind has the ability to remove the things that it does not like or that it finds not pleasant. When thinking about creation/fall/redemption/restoration there is an understanding of a continuous working progress. That is how our mind is. It is continuously changing and shaping. The conscious mind goes through all of the stages, and I think that the unconscious fits into the restoration part of the mind. In restoring your mind and world to a point of pleasure your mind places things into your personal unconscious so it can begin to restore your world into what your mind thinks it should be. Jung had ideas of reaching meaning in you life, and I think this comes with having a personal unconscious.

Albert Bandura constructed a study in the early 1960s that sought to understand the importance of learned behavior. He studied how children behaved after they had watched an adult act aggressively towards the Bobo doll. The experiment was one that supported his social learning theory and it showed that people can learn not only from being rewarded or punished themselves, but also by observing others who are either rewarded or punished. With this he went on to see that most of the children, after seeing the adults act aggressively towards the doll, would act similarly towards the doll. When they were not allowed to play with the toys they took out their anger on the doll. They would use physical force against it both through their own strength and through the objects they had access to while also verbally abusing it, like they had observed the adults doing. These results had setbacks, like many other studies, but are simply interesting and alarming. This shows how influenced we are by the observations we make. Unconsciously we are adapt to act in certain ways, or change certain things about ourselves because of the ways we see others act. Not only do we learn from our own personal experiences, we learn from observing the experiences of others. We are always observing and aware of our surroundings even if we do not do so intentionally, so the people we surround ourselves with actually does make a difference.

Relating this experiment to the four branches of theology, I can see how it fits into the category of the fall. The child has learned response, but anger came naturally. There are powerful and destructive emotions that were brought out in this experiment, simply because these children saw the appropriate aspect of their use. When they saw the adults acting in these violent ways, the children had no boundary to where their aggression stopped. As we saw from the results, the children that were subject to violence acted accordingly. I feel like this natural anger is related to the fall of man. We were made to live together in peace and love, and our passions are supposed to be used for the bettering of each other’s lives, and for bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Unfortunately, this passion and built up energy can easily be channeled through anger and violence, which is what we need restoration from. We are not supposed to live with these emotions, but in love. That is why this experiment shows our fall, because we can easily be led astray just by observing the actions of others. Thankfully, we can be positively influenced by observing others as well. That is why living in a community of people who are loving is crucial to personal growth. These positive actions become learned responses because not only do we try to do them on our own, we observe others setting an example for us and their actions naturally become our own responses.

Skinner is typically seen as an enemy of religion, and it’s true that he is not a particularly religious individual. Most of the reasoning for this comes from his views on free will and superstition. Skinner is not specifically an opponent of free will, like many past thinkers. He’s an opponent of will. Skinner believes, regardless of one’s belief in spirituality, God, or a soul, that any attempt to describe man as autonomous, aside from basic instincts, is incorrect at best and delusional at worst. As branches of Christianity are often reliant on free will to explain suffering, this causes problems among many believers.

Furthermore, behaviorism can explain prayer as superstition. Prayer, to Skinner, is always on a variable ratio reinforcement schedule; we see things happen that we prayed for, which makes us feel as if the prayer works. From a theological standpoint, there are all kinds of ways to nitpick this idea: First, we consider prayer to be asking God for help, not the direct source of help. Second, prayer is (for most people) two-way communication with God, not just a chance to ask for things. Third, most of us can tolerate an answer of “no” to our prayers without losing our faith.

But Skinner wasn’t looking to argue the merits of Christian theology. He’s just looking to explain behavior, as someone who is not a member of the Christian faith. Let’s suppose Skinner is correct, and that prayer, like all behavior, is the product of reinforcement or punishment. Obviously, few people are punished for praying, so we’ll leave that idea aside. Suppose, for a moment, that prayer is not supposed to be a variable ratio reinforcement schedule, but a fixed interval one. Consider how Jesus taught his disciples to pray in one is almost universally known as The Lord’s Prayer. Do you recall the one physical thing Jesus asks for?

“Give us this day our daily bread.”

Yet Jesus also spoke of how he knew God would care for him, as he even cared for birds: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:26, NIV)

Why would Jesus pray for something he knew he would receive? I would suggest that we aren’t only supposed pray for miracles, but for the things we know God already gives us. In this way, our prayers, in some way, are always answered. Our requests cease to be endless begging to God for things we may or may not need, and instead become a new means of appreciating what God gives us. All good things come from God.

I associate Skinner with redemption, not because of his anti-religious beliefs (obviously) but because of proven effectiveness of behavioral treatments and the way behaviorism forces Christians to consider the origins of their behavior and think critically about their beliefs.

Skinner is difficult for me to categorize, but I think he fits more into Fall and Redemption. Like several positivists before him, Skinner doesn’t focus on causation of behaviors. He’s more concerned about how to change or stop them. He also doesn’t focus on what he cannot see. This approach does make sense. What’s done is done, and when a behavior has happened it doesn’t necessarily change once you figure out why it occurred in the first place. Although I personal think there’s a lot to gain from the unknown aspects of human beings and the world we live in, Skinner does offer effective methods of understanding behavior. One such method is functional analysis, which highlights the relationship between environments and certain behaviors.

As modern Christians, we do tend to find it important to learn about the Old Testament and how we fell from grace. However, that knowledge is nowhere near as important to us as the salvation given to us by the death of Christ.  Furthermore, our main goals today are centered on moving forward. We try to attain these goals through attempting to live as Christ intended us to do so. We also attempt to approach the secular world as Christ intended us to do so. Both of these attempts in the past have crashed and burned quite horribly. That’s why we rely on redemption: to get up and try again. Skinner’s contributions lead us, not to just understand humans, but to learn how we can change.

Skinner believed in the idea that behavior that is reinforced tends to be repeated and behavior that is not reinforced tends to not be repeated. In Skinners experiment of operant conditioning, he places rats in a box and trained them to pull the lever to get food. As the rats learned to press the lever to get food, we adapt our behavior to again approval and reinforcement from our environment as well.
We can all think of examples of why our own behavior has been reinforced or punished. Whether our environment may better ourselves, some environments can have a culture of reinforcing negative behaviors. Unfortunately, our society places a negative assumption towards people who follow the rules and talk about their feelings rather than playing it cool with “no worries.” Society places a big emphasis on “YOLO.” We all know it stands for You only live once, but it contains a more meanings than that. It insinuates “whatever. I don’t care. I do what I want.” type of attitude. And sadly, out society reinforces it. Take Miley Cyrus for example, she was an innocent country-pop style singer who’s last hit was “the climb”, a song about pushing through tough times. Ever since her c.d.s did not make it big until she gave society what she saw was getting more reinforcement. She strayed away from her country style and turned to this “yolo” sense of mind. Lyrics containing phrases like “doing whatever we want… we cant stop..forget the haters..” With her new look she has topped charts and broke youtube records. She was reinforced just as the rats and will continue because of her success. Reinforcement reminds me of the human fall. Although, reinforcement could also reinforce good behaviors (like the rats in the experiment), we place high priority on affirmation of others that we may do whatever it takes it gain it.