When World War one comes to a close
a battle of a different sort begins. Only this time, the weapons are
words and the soldiers are scientists. This new battle will rage between two
diametrically opposed views of human behavior. On one side are the scientists who
see our personalities as unchanging, fixed at birth,
biologically determined; and on the other side are those who believe we can change-
that we are influenced by our experiences, and what we learned along
the way. When the debate heats up in the United States, life is changing rapidly
and dramatically. It's an unsettling time for most people who yearn for stability
and normalcy and certainty. What scientists have to say about human behavior- whether
it's fixed at birth and predictable or shaped by the environment and
changeable, will have a profound effect on how people view the future, how they see
each other, and even how they live their lives.
But not everyone believes that biology is destiny. For many scientists, it's your experiences in life that count-
your upbringing, your education, your environment.
Chief among these scientists is psychologist John Watson, who offers a
theory that is the mirror opposite of eugenics.
Over the years, Watson studies the behavior of babies- hundreds of them!
To Watson, we arrive in the world a blank slate - tabula rasa.
Nearly everything is learned, even things we think are instinctual, like fear. To prove that environment
is more powerful than genetics, Watson designs an experiment for an infant
known as little Albert. He's so confident, he films it for posterity. At
first, Albert shows little fear, even when Watson places a burning newspaper in front
of him. Albert is also unafraid when he encounters a white rat for the first
time in his life, but then Watson shows Albert the rat accompanied by a loud
clanging noise- one of the few things that upsets little Albert.
Then he does it again, and does it again. Eventually, Albert learns to fear not just the rat,
but all furry things, even without the loud noise. In Watson's mind, the little Albert
experiment is a success, because it proves that fears are learned not inherited.
Watson calls his theory behaviorism and begins to popularize it.
He urges parents to take active control of their children's upbringing by shaping
their environment-
to think of the home
as a scientific laboratory.
Science was increasingly important in the popular mindset. If science said
something, if scientists tested, if scientists experimented, well then, it must
be so! But the appeal of behaviorism runs deeper. It's egalitarian philosophy
and outlook seems to reflect the very spirit of democracy. Watson was the voice of the
American Dream, and the American dream was that this is the land of opportunity
You can become what you would like to be, even if you're not there yet- And, at least, if you don't do
it in- in your lifetime,
this is the land in which children can do it. The American
dream of opportunity draws millions of immigrants. They come by the ship load to
fill the jobs of a rapidly expanding economy, to seek a better life,
but the arrival of new immigrants increases all kinds of fears,
some are economic- that the immigrant worker will lower the wages of American workers
or take their jobs altogether, all the while crowding their cities and their
schools-
and there are also biological fears.
Charles Davenport and others in the eugenics movement worried that the new
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe are bringing defective genes with
them.
They have no faith that America will transform the immigrants. If anything they fear the immigrants will
transform America.
This is the pinnacle of the eugenics movement in the United States.
There are new immigration laws. There are new
marriage laws forbidding mixed-race marriage,
or even new sterilization laws preventing criminals, epileptics, or the insane from
reproducing.
Laws
are designed to protect the gene pool.
One person who truly understands the manipulation of human behavior and it's
terrifying potential is a rising politician in Germany. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party
come to power in the early '30s by using every technique propaganda has to
offer, to influence the German people.
In films like this one, he promotes the credo of the Nazi party- beauty, strength, health,
eugenic ideal. It is in
Hitler's campaign for power that the centuries two opposing views of human
behavior- whether behavior is fixed or malleable- come together with no apparent
contradiction to the German people.
Hitler's Germany, the fact that mass murder- that genocide had been committed in the name of racial
purity, in the name of a eugenically inspired racial cleansing was very
frightening to people, even the people that previously may have been attracted
to a kind of idealism that was also part of the idea of eugenics. And so you see
in the years after World War Two, a real pulling back from explanations of mental
illness, of intelligence, of all sorts of behaviors, uh, rooted in genetic
understandings, and a turn instead toward environmental understandings. In
the 1950s, millions of Americans scanned the daily papers with the
latest advice from Dear Abby or Ann Landers. These twin sisters from Sioux city, Iowa, are
the most popular advice columnists of the country. Americans love advice. They're
hell-bent on self-improvement, optimistic about their prospects and guided by a new
religious belief that they can always change for the better. The opposite view-
that behavior is fixed at birth and can't be changed is still associated with
Nazi Germany where eugenics was used to justify genocide. So Americans embraced
scientists who believe the opposite- that when it comes to behavior, it's the
environment that counts, and virtually anything is possible.
-can see the idea that we could engineer the household, we could engineer the family, we could engineer
all different aspects of society.
Well, some scientists engineer shiny new consumer goods for an
eager public, Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner seeks nothing less than the
engineering of human nature.
In experiments with subjects as simple as pigeons, Skinner declares that with the right
social engineering, we can create a new breed of human being.
Skinner is firmly in the behaviorist tradition pioneered by John Watson in
the 1920s. Like Watson, Skinner contends that with the right
tools, we can predict and control behavior. He develops a system called
operant conditioning to prove that a behavior will be repeated by a subject
when rewarded. Repetition leads to reinforcement, and Skinner believes that
if it works for pigeons, why not people?
In Skinner's mind, behavior is behavior- up and down the evolutionary scale, and it is all learned.
One of the great successes is an education. People are taught to do more
complicated tasks than anyone had thought possible, by breaking down behavior into small
steps and giving positive reinforcement along the way. The essence of Skinner's work was that we could
manipulate the environment in ways that would permit us to produce any kind
of behavior that we wished, and we could develop individuals in ways that made
every possible future open to them. The idea that anything is possible
has enormous appeal in the '50s- a time when the country is changing at a
mind-boggling pace.
Before man learned how to control fire and put it to work, it was man's greatest enemy. In much the same way, your emotions can be your own greatest enemy.
Under control, your emotions can make you healthier and happier, and improve the
lives of people around you. I think of fire in connection with emotions, because when you
become stirred up, when your emotions influence your actions, it affects not only yourself, but people around you. Psychologists find that control of
emotions can be gained by understanding the stimulus-response pattern. Nature endows us at birth with three general patterns of
emotional response: Rage, as the response to the primary stimulus of thwarting- something interfering with our behavior, our actions; Fear, as the response to loud noises or loss of
support; and the emotional response to love is usually the result of a show of affection or favors, and these seem to be the emotions with which
we start life. Then as we grow up, many everyday things and social situations
become associated with these primary stimuli, partly by a process called
"conditioning". Let's take a look at a slice of every day life, to understand how some stimuli can bring
about various emotional responses. What might happen to you, or to me?... Or to Jeffrey Moore.
Jeff is an ordinary, and healthy, and well-balanced young fellow. He usually
gets along well with people- and on this particular Friday afternoon, Jeff and his pals are discussing a big triple date tonight.
Jeff: My dad's gonna let me have that car tonight. Friend 1: Oh! Friend 2: The car! That's super! Friend 1: That sounds swell, Jeff, but, well, I don't know if I'll be able to go. I-I've got quite a headache. Jeff: Oh, really, hm..? Friend 1: Yeah... Jeff: Well, how about lettin' Jeff do the soda trick, fix ya up a snappy salsa? Friend 1: Ok... Friends: Hey, watch-... <garbled panicked voices> Friend 1: HA! Some jerk. Janitor: OKAY, BUB... I saw the whole wise stunt. Now, uh... Just suppose you clean it up. Friend 1: Go on, wise guy! Clean it up! Friend 2: Yeah, it's right on the floor there... I go to the washroom. Jeff: Wise guys, eh? Well, suppose I don't pick you up tonight! I got a
darn good notion of lettin' you guys walk to the party. Friend 1: What's got into him? Friend 2: Gee, I don't know! Why is Jeff angry? What's the stimulus that brings on this sudden emotional response of anger or mild rage? Well, it might be that Jeff feels thwarted as he fails in the fancy trick
to impress his pals. So he gets mad at his pals.
Of course Jeff's going to get the car ready for the party tonight. He wouldn't really miss a
chance to impress the gang. But, hm... starter won't work. Again, his behavior is thwarted, and a habit it is being developed- a habit
of allowing such things to annoy him. Jeff's losing control of himself. His thinking is
becoming muddled, and he's careless in his actions. The madder he gets, the worse it becomes. Did
you ever hear anyone say, "I was so mad I couldn't see straight"? Severe emotional
stress often decreases efficiency. See what I mean? And of course it's the of the
wrench. This is called "projection". He's projecting the blame to the wrench. Let's see how the
rest of the family is doing.
Joan: Mother! Mother, oh, it's wonderful! I love the new dress you made! Mother: Oh, thank you Joan dear! See how the new dress tends to stimulate Joan's love for mother? This makes both mother and Joan happier. But how does it affect Jeff, and how does his anger affect the others? Joan: Oh, you're the sweetest, bestest mother a girl ever had! Mother: I'm glad you liked the dress, Joan. Joan: Oh, I'm so happy! I could be a model! Or a covergirl! Jeff: Say, what's gotten into that crazy kid sister? Mother: Oh, Jeff, don't be that way!
Notice how mother seems to become angry herself because of Jeff's anger. Perhaps she shouldn't, but anger is a violent emotion, and we often see
an induction of behavior, or a spread of
emotion to other persons, almost like a contagious disease. Sometimes, rage, fear, and love are aroused together, at the same time.
Of course, Jeffrey's family didn't realize that he had been exposed to one irritating situation after
another, an accumulation of stimuli which brought about an abnormally strong response. And what did this do to Jeff- this sort
of uncontrolled emotional outburst? Well, he regrets some of the things he said, but he can't unsay them.
He's tired. That feeling of fatigue may spoil a good time on his date tonight, and if this sort of
flare-up is repeated often, that might lead to a permanently walked personality.
What could Jeff do to keep better control? Well, we say he could:
1. Eliminate the stimulus. 2. Modify the stimulus.
3. Modify the response. With these three ideas in mind, let's examine Jeff's episode again.
To control his emotions, Jeff eliminates the stimulus- the failure to impress his pals by trying
such fancy tricks only when he can do them successfully. But sometimes, the trick fails.
There are many times when you can't eliminate the stimulus. Try to modify the stimulus.
Standing off and looking at himself,
Jeff realizes that a slip like that won't really hurt his standing with the gang.
Taking it all lightly, as a good sport, Jeff impresses the gang a lot more than
if he gets angry over such a little thing. It helps to recognize and understand
the emotional patterns. Then, it's easier to eliminate or modify the stimulus. And
there's another, even more valuable way to control your emotions: Modify the
response. Rather than get in the habit of getting angry, Jeff can substitute. He can
modify his response by seeing the humor in the situation- what good does it do to
get angry about this? When Jeff's in the habit of controlling his emotions, his thinking is straighter. Push the button.
No starter. Let's see... Pull the light switch. Hm?! No light! That means something.
Reason it out. No horn either! So... must be a dead battery. That's straight thinking,
unmuddled by emotional disturbances. And it's a simple thing to call the
garage or someone for a push and a recharge. Don't need to fly off the
handle and take it out on the things and the people around. When he tries to
understand his emotions and those of people around him, Jeff has less trouble
controlling himself and he and those around him are happier.
The more he exercises control of his emotional behavior, the easier it becomes to meet
the next situation without losing control.
Yes, via better understanding of the emotional patterns of everyday life and
by knowing how you respond to various stimuli, you can develop better control
by eliminating the stimulus, or by modifying the stimulus, or by modifying the
response. You can control the fire of your emotions. You can balance your
emotions and use them so that your personality becomes more pleasant, and
you and those around you are a great deal happier and healthier.
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