Chapter 28 Image in Behavior John Watson
In the thesis which I recently advanced1 I had scant time to discuss two topics, which may seem to many to be stumbling blocks in the way of a free passage from structuralism to behaviorism.
The first of these, and by all odds the more serious of the obstacles, is the "centrally aroused sensation" or "image." If thought goes on in terms of centrally aroused sensations, as is maintained by the majority of both structural and functional psychologists, we should have to admit that there is a serious limitation on the side of method in behaviorism. Imagery from Galton on has been the inner stronghold of a psychology based on introspection. All of the outer defenses might be given over to the enemy, but the cause could never be wholly lost as long as the pass (introspection) to this stronghold (image) could be maintained.
So well guarded is the image that it would seem almost foolhardy for us to make an attack upon it. If I did not perceive certain signs of weakening on the part of the garrison, I think I should agree with Professor Cattell that I am becoming too radical, and that I should better admit the claims of imagery and try to work out a scheme for behaviorism which will embrace the image. Suppose we consider this aspect of the question first: Does the inclusion of the image weaken the claims of the behaviorist? I am ready to admit that it does. Take a case like that ordinarily urged. Some one suggests in words that I borrow one thousand dollars and go abroad for a year. I think over the situation—the present condition of my research problems, my debts, whether I can leave my family, etc. I am in a brown study for days, trying to make up my mind. Now the train of thoughts going on in my mind, according to the upholders of the image, has no adequate behavior counterpart while it is in transit. The behaviorist, observing me, might note that my appetite had departed, that I was smoking and drinking more than usual, and that I was distrait.
Finally, experimental tests might show that my ability to make fine coordination had been seriously interfered with, that my dynamometric threshold was lowered, and so ad infinitum. The introspectionists would say that all of these tests failed to give anything like a complete record of my "mental content" or of the "totality of conscious processes." Indeed, they would urge that such tests have only an analogical reference. Only direct observation of the mental states themselves by the method of introspection will ever tell whether I am grieving over past sins or whether I am really trying to reach a decision about going abroad! If we grant this, and such an impulse is very strong, the behaviorist must content himself with this reflection: "I care not what goes on in his so-called mind; the important thing is that, given the stimulation (in this case a series of spoken words) it must produce response, or else modify responses which have been already initiated. This is the all-important thing and I will be content with it." In other words, he contents himself with observing the initial object (stimulation) and the end object (the reaction). Possibly the old saying "a half loaf is better than no bread at all" expresses the attitude the behaviorist ought to take; and yet I for one dislike to admit anything which may be construed as an admission of even partial defeat.Feeling so, I prefer to attack rather than to remain upon the defensive. I spoke above of certain signs of disaffection and mutiny among the ranks of the faithful. These signs manifest themselves in three different ways: (1) The attempt on the part of Woodworth, Thomdike, and others to question the dogma of the image and to show that thought processes may go on independently of imagery—or, indeed, as I understand it, even independently of peripherally initiated processes. To this last contention I do not accede, as I shall undertake later to show. It is needless for me to discuss this phase of the problem at any length before this laboratory.
(2) The failure on the part of the most earnest upholders of the doctrine of the centrally aroused sensation to obtain any objective experimental evidence of the presence of different image-types. I refer here to the researches of Angell and of Femald. I think this admission paves the way for the complete dismissal of the image from psychology. Furthermore, I believe that most psychologists are willing to admit that introspection furnishes no guide for the determination of one's own image-type. In this field, above all others, introspection, if it is a legitimate method at all, ought to yield its best results. It is just here that it has failed, except in the case of a few fortunate men who seem to have become adept in the use of it. We who are less happy in its use must forever do without this wonderful Aladdin's lamp which, upon demand, illumines the dark places of the human mind. (3) The attempts even of the structuralists to reduce the so-called higher thought processes to groups of obscure organic processes. I have in mind the recent work on recognition, abstraction, etc.All of these tendencies, initiated by the psychologists themselves, lead directly over to my principal contention, viz., that there are no centrally initiated processes.2
The environment in the widest sense forces the formation of habits. These are exhibited first in the organs which are most mobile: the arms, hands, fingers, legs, etc. By this I do not mean to imply that there is any fixed order in their formation. After such general bodily habits are well under way, speech habits begin. All of the recent work shows that these reach enormous complexity in a comparatively short time. Furthermore, as language habits become more and more complex there arise associations (neural) between words and acts. Behavior then takes on refinement: short cuts are formed, and finally words come to be, on occasion, substituted for acts. That is, a stimulus which, in early stages, would produce an act (and which will always do so under appropriate conditions) now produces merely a spoken word or a mere movement of the larynx (or of some other expressive organ).
When the stimulus produces either an immediate overt response (as, for example, when I tell John to go to the sideboard and get an apple, taking it for granted that he goes), or a delayed overt response (as, for example, when I ask an engineer to think out and make an apparatus for the conversion of salt water into sweet, which may consume years before overt action begins), we have examples of what one may call explicit behavior. In contrast to behavior of this type, which involves the larger musculature in a way plainly apparent to direct observation, we have behavior involving only the speech mechanisms (or the larger musculature in a minimal way; for example, bodily attitudes or sets). This form of behavior, for lack of a better name, I will call implicit behavior.3 Where explicit behavior is delayed (i.e., where deliberation ensues), the intervening time between stimulus and response is given over to implicit behavior (to "thought processes").
Now it is this type of implicit behavior that the introspectionist claims as his own and denies to us because its neural seat is cortical and because it goes on without
Image in Behavior 201 adequate bodily portrayal. Why in psychology the stage for the neural drama was ever transferred from periphery to cortex must remain somewhat of a mystery. The old idea of strict localization of brain function is in part responsible. I feel, however, that religious convictions are even more largely responsible for it. I do not mean that the men originally responsible for the transfer were aware of this religious tendency at all. When the psychologist threw away the soul he compromised with his conscience by setting up a “mind" which was to remain always hidden and difficult of access.4 The transfer from periphery to cortex has been the incentive for driving psychology into vain and fruitless searches of the unknown and unknowable. I am quite sure that if the idea of the image had never taken such firm hold upon us we would never have originated the notion that we are seeking to explain consciousness.
We would, have been content to study the very tangible phenomena of the growth and control of explicit and implicit habits.It is implied in my words that there exists or ought to exist a method of observing implicit behavior. There is none at present. The larynx, I believe, is the seat of most of the phenomena. If its movements could be adequately portrayed we should obtain a record similar in character to that of the phonogram.3 Certainly nothing so definite as this could be obtained, but we should get a record, at least, which would largely reveal the subject's word-habits, which, if I am not mistaken, make up the bulk of the implicit forms of behavior.
Now it is admitted by all of us that words spoken or faintly articulated belong really in the realm of behavior as much as do movements of the arms and legs. If implicit behavior can be shown to consist of nothing but word movements (or expressive movements of the word-type) the behavior of the human being as a whole is as open to objective observation and control as is the behavior of the lowest organism.
Notes
1. 'Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," Psychological Reoiao, March, 1913.
2. I may have to grant a few sporadic cases of imagery to him who will not be otherwise convinced, but I insist that the images of such a one are sporadic, and as unnecessary to his well-being and well-thinking as a few hairs more or less on his head.
3. It may be said in passing that the explicit and implicit forms of behavior referred to throughout the paper are acquired and not congenital.
4. The tendency to make the brain itself something more than a mechanism for coordinating incoming and outgoing impulses has been very strong among psychologists, and even among psychologically indined neurologists.
5. 1 have been trying to find out whether any of the spoken phonographic records can be read by experts in that work. I have not been able to ascertain this information, but I am sure there is nothing inherently difficult about the problem. Records of laryngeal movements could likewise be read directly.