You will learn in this lesson the first tactic in solving human problems by using the behavioral strategy. The first tactic in using the behavioral $ strategy is to develop a behavioral definition ofr\ the problem. You may help people solve a problem with this tactic alone. It will focus their at- tention on their behavior rather than on inner causes. But that doesnt mean that you will be restricted to superficial or trivial problems. Indeed, behavior is not a trivial or superficial aspect of human conduct; it is all of human conduct. You can apply the idea of|behavioi\to everything that people do. You can define everything that people do and every problem that people have in terms of behavior. When you learn how to define problems in terms of behavior, you will realize that many vague terms, such as bad attitude, ultimately refer to behaviors. You wm seethat self-reports such as questionnaires and interviews usually do not let you get accurate information about behaviors. The alternative is to use the principle of direct obser- Tvation.\The great value of studying behavior is that it permits direct observation, which is the most important tool in changing behavior. What Is Behavior? Behavior analysts study behavior. However, many students of human behavior believe that studying only behavior leaves out the most interesting human phenomena. They believe that behavior analysis deals with only trivial and mechanical aspects of human activity. So that you won't think that focusing on behavior is limiting, I will start by^hnwing you what behavior analysts mean by behaviorJ llehavior is anything that a person does (cf.
Catania, 1984). Behavior is physical, and it functions to do something. The best test of whether it is physical is whether yon ran nhsprvp i't. You might use your unaided senses, or you might use electronic instruments. Running is an obvious example of behavior: You can observe the action of the legs as they move the body somewhere. I will describe four broad categories of human activity that behavior analysts consider behavior, starting with examples that are clear to most people. I will progress to examples that confuse most people, such as many activities that people usually call mental. I hope to change your understanding of the unclear and murky examples so that they are clear to you. 1. Behavior is anything that a person dcrS . Clear examples of behavior for most people involve obvious body actions. You would probably label biting into an apple as behavior. You might also call hitting a ball, walking a mile, and jumping over a ditch behavior. You would probably label shouting as behavior. Behavior analysts consider such actions behavior because they are physical A Leading Philosophers View on Mental Events Mental events are identical with physical events (Davidson, 1980: p. 209). Behavior analysts view anything that people do, including mental and physical activities, as forms of behavior 2. Behavior analysts view anything that people do, including mental and physical activities, as forms of ______ 15
20 Lesson 2 or when they stop. You are unlikely to find out exactly when they space out or for how long, how many pages they read, or how many questions they answer. In other words, you will not find out precisely what happened. Given such vague data, the behavior analyst can learn little about what causes studying. It's like physicists trying to learn about gravity from someone telling them that an object falls pretty fast. Second, self-reports often cannot be checked. When people report on internal events, we usually cannot check their accuracy. When they report events with no one else present, we usually cannot check their accuracy. When they report events that happen rarely, we often cannot check on them. When they report on events that they hide from others, such as crime, deviant acts, or behavior they feel guilty about, we cannot check on them. We probably should not rely on the information contained in self-reports that cannot be checked. Third, self-reports are often wrong. Even when self-reports provide sufficient detail, we may find that they are simply not accurate. When we can check up on them, we often find that they are not correct reports of what happened. The errors some- o- times arise because memory is imperfect, but there is also the fact that people want to present a par- ^ ticular image to others. We should never assume that self-reports are correct unless we have verified that they are likely to be accurate. Over the years I have collected a number of examples of problems with self-reports. These ex- amples do not prove that all self-reports lack detail, are wrong, or cannot be checked, but they can give you a feeling for some of the problems that arise. For example, Mertz and his colleagues asked 266 people how many calories they usually eat (Mertz, Tsui, Judd, Reiser, Hallfrisch, Morris, Steele, & Lashley, 1991). He then fed them only the amount of calories they claimed to be eating. They lost weight! He concluded that most of his informants had been eating 25% more than they reported. This study clearly shows the dangers of relying on the self-report observations of informants. Mertzs findings are not unusual. La Pierre wrote a letter in 1934 to 128 owners of restaurants and motels, asking whether they would accept Chinese guests. Over 90% of them said no. Yet every single one of them had served La Pierre and his Chinese friend on a recent cross-country trip (La Pierre, 1934). La Pierre did this study before most Americans felt ashamed of discriminating, The owners probably feared that La Pierre didnt like Chinese and that they would lose his business if they admitted serving Chinese. If he had drawn conclusions from these self-report observations, he would have been seriously wrong! When Brickman asked students walking on a college campus if they would pick up litter, 94% of them said yes. Yet 20 feet from where they answered the question, the researcher planted some litter near a trash can. Only 1% of the students picked it up (Brickman, 1972). Based on the self-report observations, he would have drawn conclusions exactly opposite to reality. Hoelscher and his colleagues studied 21 anxiety patients. They lent the patients a relaxation tape and asked them to practice using it. Later the researchers asked how much time each patient practiced (Hoelscher, Lichstein, & Rosenthal, 1984). They also secretly observed how much time each patient practiced, using a hidden timer that recorded how long the patients turned the tape recorder on. The patients reported that they practiced 26% longer than the time shown by the hidden timer. This is another example of the inaccuracy of self-report observations, but the researchers made an even more important discovery. When the researchers used the patients self-report observations, they found no correlation with anxiety. However, when they used the time from the hidden timer, the researchers found an inverse correlation with anxiety. The more the patients practiced, the less anxiety they had. Thus, if the researchers had relied on self-report observations, they would have drawn the wrong conclusion. They would have concluded that relaxation practice had no effect, when it actually did. Many similar studies exist. Wicker reviewed 31 studies showing that what people say and do differ (Wicker, 1969). Lloyd reviewed additional studies concluding that self-report observations are hot accurate (Lloyd, 1980). Much research shows just how inaccurate un- trained observers are. For example, studies of rumor illustrate how inaccurately people report events (Allport & Postman, 1945). For another example, studies of eyewitness testimony show how inaccurately untrained observers report events. Read the box on nearly 2000 eyewitnesses who were wrong!
Definitions of Everyday Behaviors 23
Figure 2-4. Behavior analysts consider thinking to be a form of behavior, though it is a behavior that i, others cannot see. Thinkers may not call what they'* are doing behavior, but they are doing something. Behavior analysts call this private behavior. ior analysts can increase accuracy further by having someone else make an independent report. Accuracy would be greater if Mr. Patel openly checked up on one of his wifes meals each week. Accuracy would be greater if the behavior analyst told Mrs. Patel about any disagreements in the reports. These and other steps can improve the accuracy of such observations. Observing your own behavior is a form of direct observation when these safeguards are followed. ^ When people use a behavioral definition and write their observations immediately, and someone else makes an independent report, behavior, analysts call this a direct observation. When people do not use a behavioral definition, when they report from memory, or when no one makes an independent report, behavior analysts call this a self-report. y
Is Attention a Behavior? Part 1 Do you think of attention as something that goes on in the hidden recesses of the mind? One dictionary defines it as applying the mind to an object of sense or thought... a selective narrowing or focussing of consciousness and receptivity (Websters New Collegiate Dictionary, 1977, p. 72). Behavior analysts view it as something that people do. They view it as behavior! Jim Holland found one way to observe it. He placed a U.S. Navy recruit in a dark room with a button. When the recruit pressed the button, a light came on showing the pointer on a dial for a moment. The recruits task was to report whenever the pointer was deflected. Holland could tell when the recruit looked by observing when he pressed the button. He could tell whether the recruit was paying attention by whether or not he correctly reported deflections of the pointer (Holland, 1958). 8. Holland turned the concept of attention from a private event into one that can be directly g bse^ru-td ________________________ Summary This lesson teaches you the first tactic in using the behavioral strategy to solve human problems: to develop a behavioral definition that specifies exactly how to observe the behavior. Observing behavior is not a limitation, because behavior is anything that people do. You can observe obvious, subtle, internal, or private behavior. One approach to observing behavior is through self- reports. Unfortunately, that leads to problems: self-reports are usually inaccurate or of unknown accuracy. You can solve this problem by using the principle of direct observation to observe behavior. Using direct observations is usually a more accurate approach to observing behavior. Behavior Analysis Examples Some examples of behavioral definitions are given in the paragraphs that follow. They show how behavior analysts define behaviors that are subtle,