Johnston and Pennypacker’s Impact on the Science of Behavior

Learning refers to the acquisition, maintenance, and change of an organism’s behavior as a result of lifetime events. The behaviour of an organism is everything it does, including covert actions like thinking and feeling. An important aspect of human learning concerns the experiences arranged by other people. From earliest history, people have acted to influence the behaviour of other individuals. Rational argument, rewards, bribes, threats, and force are used in attempts not only to promote learning but also to change the behaviour of people.

Within society, people are required to learn socially appropriate ways of doing things. As long as a person does what is expected, no one pays much attention. As soon as a person’s conduct substantially departs from cultural norms, other people get upset and try to force conformity. All societies have codes of conduct and laws that people learn; people who break moral codes or laws face penalties ranging from minor fines to capital punishment.

Clearly, all cultures are concerned with human learning and the regulation of human conduct.

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Theories of learning and behavior have ranged from philosophy to natural science. When Socrates was told that new discoveries in anatomy proved that bodily movement was caused by the arrangement of muscles, bones, and joints, he replied, “That hardly explains why I am sitting here in a curved position talking to you” (Millenson, 1967, p.3).

About 2,300 years later, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead asked the famous behaviourist B. F. Skinner a similar question. He said, “Let me see you account for my behaviour as I sit here saying, 'No black scorpion is falling upon this table'” (Skinner, 1957, p.

457). Although there was no satisfactory account of behaviour in the time of Socrates, a science of behaviour is currently addressing such puzzling questions.