BEHAVIORISM:Edward Lee Thorndike, Law of belongingness

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History and Systems of Psychology PSY502

Lesson 17

BEHAVIORISM

One of the greatest developments in the history of mankind is the industrial revolution of the 18th

century. It marked the advent of a completely new era of thinking and approach towards gaining

knowledge. A rational approach was adopted and the ancient speculative methods given by the Greeks were

rejected. The industrial revolution had a deep impact on the development of human thoughts; therefore the

discipline of psychology was also bound to be impacted.

The path of this influence on psychology is easily traceable. As industry developed and manual

labor was shifted to machine labor, there were a number of changes in society and human behavior. New

towns were established, close to the factories; housing shifted from huge farm houses to small houses; labor

working hours and habits changed; dependence on modes of living changed as well. One of the impacts of

the industrial revolution was that, as the production shifted from manual labor to factories, the production

increased rapidly. Therefore, new markets were sought and it became imperative to predict and control

human behavior, in order to sell more. Another aspect of this development was that the attention of

researchers now shifted towards these workers aiming at getting maximum productivity from the industrial

labor. This productivity was based on human behavior and the result was that, the need to study human

behavior arose. As mentioned earlier, man had become more rational in his approach and had disposed of

speculation as a means of gaining knowledge. This made him focus on concrete facts and adopt scientific

approach in his study. Psychologists started analyzing, predicting and controlling human behavior since it

was visible while consciousness was not. It gave birth to the school of thought now called the Behaviorist

School.

Edward Lee Thorndike

Edward Lee Thorndike was an American behaviorist philosopher/psychologist, who was born in

1874 and died in 1949. After completing his studies Thorndike moved to Harvard University, where

William James had set up his psychological laboratory. Thorndike had read James and was impressed with

his work on functions of consciousness. He set up his lab at Harvard, working with chicks but later

transferred to James' house where he did his experiments on cats which are his most famous experiments.

He devised the "puzzle box" which he used for these experiments.

Based upon his experiments he formulated what he called "laws of learning," or how learning takes

place. In other words, Thorndike made efforts to learn how the process of learning actually takes place.

Before we look at those laws, first let us have a look at the concept of learning that Thorndike proposed.

He said that learning takes place by stimulus-response connections rather than by association; according to

him learning takes place by two ways which he called laws of learning. The laws are as follows:

Law of effect

The law of effect states that all responses that followed by satisfaction are stamped into an

individual and he learns those responses. This means that any act that is performed by an

individual, when it is reinforced by a reward that brings satisfaction to the performer, the act

becomes learnt.

For example, if an animal such as a cat is rewarded with food if it performs a certain act, the act

shall be learnt by the cat. This is what Thorndike concluded through his experiments.

ii.

Law of exercise

The law of exercise states that responses that are repeated are also stamped in and become learnt.

This law does non focus on the reinforcement through satisfaction but states that when the

History and Systems of Psychology PSY502

individual keeps on performing a certain act, the act is learnt. In other words, the exercise that is

constantly performed by an individual is learnt by him or her.

The law of effect given by Thorndike is similar to Pavlov's law of conditioning by reinforcement

and the second law, i.e. law of exercise is similar to James's theory of habit formation due to repetition.

As mentioned earlier, Thorndike devised the puzzle box for his experiments. The puzzle box was a

box with a door operated through a lever in it. A string with a ring was attached with the lever, which

released the door of the box, when pulled. The box was big enough to accommodate a cat. Thorndike used

cats for his experiments. As the cat was trapped in the box, it tried hard to escape. The only escape possible

was through the door which opened by pulling the string attached to the lever. As the cat pulled the string

with its paw, the door of the box opened and it escaped. When the cat was put into the box a number of

times, it learnt to use the string to escape. Therefore, based on this observation, Thorndike came up with

his laws of learning.

Thorndike also emphasized on a concept important to learning, which he called the "Recency

effect." He saw in his experiments on cats that the last act in the series of acts by the cats, which is

reinforced, is learnt quickly. For example if a cat is rewarded for the last act which it performs in a series of

acts, the last one shall be learnt by the cat. Therefore, as the name implies, the law relates to the most recent

act performed by the subject which is learnt by it.

Thorndike performed further experiments to substantiate his laws of learning. This further

experimentation and observation lead him to repeal the law of exercise, and modify the law of effect. He

then proposed the "law of belongingness" to explain animal learning.

iii. Law of belongingness

The law of belongingness states that only relevant responses that "belong" to the learning situation

are learnt. For example, the moving of paws by the cat in the puzzle box is learnt but not pricking

of ears.

Thorndike could be classified as a behaviorist because he explained learning as a psychological

function in behavioristic, observational terms. He did try to look into consciousness but restricted his

studies to the behavior of animals and used comparative psychology to explain human behavior and

learning.

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