Like psychodynamic theorists, behavioral theorists believe that our actions are determined largely by our experiences in life. However, the behavioral model concentrates on behaviors, the responses an organism makes to its environment. Behaviors can be external (going to work, say) or internal (having a feeling or thought). In turn, behavioral theorists base their explanations and treatments on principles of learning, the processes by which these behaviors change in response to the environment.

Many learned behaviors help people to cope with daily challenges and to lead happy, productive lives. However, abnormal behaviors also can be learned. Behaviorists who try to explain Philip Berman’s problems might view him as a man who has received improper training: he has learned behaviors that offend others and repeatedly work against him.

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Whereas the psychodynamic model had its beginnings in the clinical work of physicians, the behavioral model began in laboratories where psychologists were running experiments on conditioning, simple forms of learning. The researchers manipulated stimuli and rewards, then observed how their manipulations affected the responses of their research participants.

During the 1950s, many clinicians became frustrated with what they viewed as the vagueness and slowness of the psychodynamic model. Some of them began to apply the principles of learning to the study and treatment of psychological problems. Their efforts gave rise to the behavioral model of abnormality.

Learning theorists have identified several forms of conditioning, and each may produce abnormal behavior as well as normal behavior. In operant conditioning, for example, humans and animals learn to behave in certain ways as a result of receiving rewards—consequences of one kind or another—whenever they do so. In modeling, individuals learn responses simply by observing other individuals and repeating their behaviors.

In a third form of conditioning, classical conditioning, learning occurs when two events repeatedly occur close together in time. The events become fused in a person’s mind, and before long the person responds in the same way to both events. If one event produces a response of joy, the other brings joy as well; if one event brings feelings of relief, so does the other. A closer look at this form of conditioning illustrates how the behavioral model can account for abnormal functioning.

Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), a famous Russian physiologist, first demonstrated classical conditioning with animal studies. He placed a bowl of meat powder before a dog, producing the natural response that all dogs have to meat: They start to salivate (see Figure 2.3). Next Pavlov added a step: Just before presenting the dog with meat powder, he sounded a bell. After several such pairings of bell tone and presentation of meat powder, Pavlov noted that the dog began to salivate as soon as it heard the bell. The dog had learned to salivate in response to a sound.

In the vocabulary of classical conditioning, the meat in this demonstration is an unconditioned stimulus (US). It elicits the unconditioned response (UR) of salivation, that is, a natural response with which the dog is born. The sound of the bell is a conditioned stimulus (CS), a previously neutral stimulus that comes to be linked with meat in the dog’s mind. As such, it too produces a salivation response. When the salivation response is produced by the conditioned stimulus rather than by the unconditioned stimulus, it is called a conditioned response (CR).

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Classical conditioning explains many familiar behaviors. The romantic feelings a young man experiences when he smells his girlfriend’s perfume, say, may represent a conditioned response. Initially, this perfume may have had little emotional effect on him, but because the fragrance was present during several romantic encounters, it came to elicit a romantic response.

Abnormal behaviors, too, can be acquired by classical conditioning. Consider a young boy who is repeatedly frightened by a neighbor’s large German shepherd dog. Whenever the child walks past the neighbor’s front yard, the dog barks loudly and lunges at him, stopped only by a rope tied to the porch. In this unfortunate situation, the boy’s parents are not surprised to discover that he develops a fear of dogs. They are stumped, however, by another intense fear the child displays, a fear of sand. They cannot understand why he cries whenever they take him to the beach and screams in fear if sand even touches his skin.

Where did this fear of sand come from? Classical conditioning. It turns out that a big sandbox is set up in the neighbor’s front yard for the dog to play in. Every time the dog barks and lunges at the boy, the sandbox is there too. After repeated pairings of this kind, the child comes to fear sand as much as he fears the dog.

Behavioral therapists aim to identify the behaviors that are causing a person’s problems and then try to replace them with more appropriate ones by applying the principles of classical conditioning, operant conditioning, or modeling (Antony, 2014). The therapist’s attitude toward the client is that of teacher rather than healer.

Classical conditioning treatments, for example, may be used to change abnormal reactions to particular stimuli. Systematic desensitization is one such method, often applied in cases of phobia—a specific and unreasonable fear. In this step-by-step procedure, clients learn to react calmly instead of with intense fear to the objects or situations they dread (Tellez et al., 2015; Wolpe, 1997, 1995, 1990). First, they are taught the skill of relaxation over the course of several sessions. Next, they construct a fear hierarchy, a list of feared objects or situations, starting with those that are less feared and ending with the ones that are most dreaded. Here is the hierarchy developed by a man who was afraid of dogs:

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Desensitization therapists next have their clients either imagine or actually confront each item on the hierarchy while in a state of relaxation. In step-by-step pairings of feared items and relaxation, clients move up the hierarchy until at last they can face every one of the items without experiencing fear. As you will read in Chapter 4, research has shown systematic desensitization and other classical conditioning techniques to be effective in treating phobias (Antony, 2014).

The behavioral model has become a powerful force in the clinical field. Various behavioral theories have been proposed over the years, and many treatment techniques have been developed. As you can see in Figure 2.4, approximately 15 percent of today’s clinical psychologists report that their approach is mainly behavioral (Prochaska & Norcross, 2013).

Perhaps the greatest appeal of the behavioral model is that it can be tested in the laboratory, whereas psychodynamic theories generally cannot. The behaviorists’ basic concepts—stimulus, response, and reward—can be observed and measured. Experimenters have, in fact, successfully used the principles of learning to create clinical symptoms in laboratory participants, suggesting that psychological disorders may indeed develop in the same way. In addition, research has found that behavioral treatments can be helpful to people with specific fears, compulsive behavior, social deficits, mental retardation, and other problems (Antony, 2014).

At the same time, research has also revealed weaknesses in the model. Certainly behavioral researchers have produced specific symptoms in participants. But are these symptoms ordinarily acquired in this way? There is still no indisputable evidence that most people with psychological disorders are victims of improper conditioning. Similarly, behavioral therapies have limitations. The improvements noted in the therapist’s office do not always extend to real life. Nor do they necessarily last without continued therapy.

Finally, some critics hold that the behavioral view is too simplistic, that its concepts fail to account for the complexity of human functioning. In 1977 Albert Bandura, a leading behaviorist, argued that in order to feel happy and function effectively people must develop a positive sense of self-efficacy. That is, they must know that they can master and perform needed behaviors whenever necessary. Other behaviorists of the 1960s and 1970s similarly recognized that human beings engage in cognitive processes, such as anticipating or interpreting—ways of thinking that until then had been largely ignored in behavioral theory and therapy. These individuals developed cognitive-behavioral explanations that took both behaviors and unseen cognitions into account and cognitive-behavioral therapies that helped clients to change both counterproductive behaviors and dysfunctional ways of thinking (Redding, 2014; Meichenbaum, 1993; Goldiamond, 1965). Cognitive-behavioral theorists and therapists bridge the behavioral model and the cognitive model, the view to which we turn next.

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