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Asked by anon-179010 to Amy, Claire, Daniel, John, Maria, Stephen on 13 Jun 2018.
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Stephen Baillargeon answered on 13 Jun 2018:
Operant conditioning can explain basically everything. B. F. Skinner, the guy who invented it was actually challenged by a philosopher who was a little sceptical. He said something along the lines of, “if your theory can explain all human behaviour, can you explain to me why I am now telling you that there are no pink lobsters falling from the sky?” Skinner responding by writing an immensely heavy book called Verbal Behavior. I have actually had many conversations with Skinner’s daughter and she is able to use his way of looking at behaviour to talk about nearly everything.
Attachment is not too hard to describe using the vocabulary of a Behaviorist. They might say that behaviours associated with a secure attachment are exhibited in the child and in a secure attachment are reinforced by attention and affection, which is among the most powerful reinforcers. In an insecure attachment, children learn one of several patterns, depending on the specific attachment style. They may learn that aggressive behaviour is the only way to get attention, or they may learn that attention is out of their control and affection and closeness do not lead to anythi g desirable. These behaviour patterns may have an influence over some friendships, but they are most frequently generalized to romantic partners. It seems like this generalization is biologically very normal. But with insecure styles, some aggressive or disinterested behaviour may be leftover from a time in early childhood where the conditioning had a very strong impact. The same behaviours typically elicit the same reactions, with anger getting attention, disinterest typically resulting in being left alone, so the behaviours are usually maintained unless interrupted early on in the individuals romantic life.
A behaviorist would probably suggest that when someone has an insecure attachment style, that they talk with their partners and make sure positive behaviour is rewarded with conversation and undesirable behaviour is ignored.
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Amy Pearson answered on 13 Jun 2018:
Operant conditioning is interesting and can explain learning processes. Its one possible facet of attachment (i.e. early feedback from a caregiver provides a punishment/reward that leads to the various types of attachment- Stephen goes into a little detail about this in his response).
However, it is reductionist to assume that human relationships can be reduced to a simple learning process (in my opinion). For instance, genetics and biology impact on the ability to form attachments to others. An example would be in something like Psychopathy, where psychopathic individuals may not gain feelings of pleasure/reward in the brain from a caregiver relationship and social interaction as a non-psychopath. Here learning theory alone cannot explain attachment. Taking one approach to explaining something so complex will inevitably face problems. One criticism of Psychology is that it doesnt have a Grand Unifying Theory the same way that other sciences do (one framework to explain everything) but I think this is actually a great thing about Psychology. We NEED to take into account biology, cognition, behaviour AND environment in order to try and understand how people think and behave.
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Claire Melia answered on 13 Jun 2018:
Operant conditioning is absolutely one of the most famous concepts within psychology. It has been replicated many many times and is clearly a pretty robust theory. Operant conditioning definitely has quite the role to play in attachment, but I wouldn’t commit to saying that it entirely explains attachment. As with anything, attachment is much more complicated. For example, I wouldn’t say that alcohol addiction, mental health, or even personality is 100% genetics or social learning, there is likely to be a combination of factors.
The evidence for this behaviourist approach to attachment is very messy and it leaves room for other theories to help explain attachment. So, yes it might explain some basis of attachment, but not all. There are other theories which need to be considered in order to fully explain attachment.
Sorry, nothing in psychology is quite simple as one nice clean theory, but that’s all part of the fun!
Claire 🙂 -
Maria Montefinese answered on 14 Jun 2018:
Hi! Thank you for your question! In my opinion the operant conditioning was a great step forward on the understanding of the learning processes. However, although I think that this process can explain some simple human behaviors, and it can be useful for teach children simple things, I think that for the attachment other factors are also important, such as, for example, social environment, personality traits, etc…and the operant conditioning can’t explain the complexity of our behaviours and decisions we make every day.
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