Observer > 2004 > March
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172004Volume 17, Issue3March 2004

Presidential Column

Henry L. Roediger, III
Henry L. Roediger, III
Washington University in St. Louis
APS President 2003 - 2004
All columns

In this Issue:
What Happened to Behaviorism

About the Observer

The Observer is the online magazine of the Association for Psychological Science and covers matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology. The magazine reports on issues of interest to psychologist scientists worldwide and disseminates information about the activities, policies, and scientific values of APS.

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Up Front

  • What Happened to Behaviorism

    The year 2004 marks the centenary of B. F. Skinner's birth. I doubt that most members of the American Psychological Society (and even a smaller proportion of all psychologists) will pay much attention. After all, hasn't behaviorism passed from the scene? Don't we live in the age of the cognitive revolution, which still roars along and dominates most subfields within psychology? Doesn't the field of animal learning psychology, the spawning ground of behaviorism, belong to the 1950s, the same era as black and white television, three TV channels, and antennas on the house? Many readers in APS would probably answer yes to all three questions. If this is the right answer - and as you'll see, I don't necessarily think it is - then we can ask what happened. Let's go back a hundred years when psychology was a new field.

APS Spotlight

  • Affect Valuation: Theory, Measurement, and Cultural Variation

    Most people want to feel good. What people actually do to feel good, however, varies considerably. For example, some people surf, while other people sunbathe. Differences in people's behavioral choices may be in part due to differences in affect valuation [or the affective states that people value and would ideally like to feel]. People who surf may value excitement, while those who sunbathe may value calmness. Surprisingly, little research has been conducted on affect valuation. The notion of affect valuation could potentially account for inconsistencies between the psychological and anthropological literatures. On one hand, empirical studies in psychology suggest that affective experience has a high degree of heritability, and therefore, is biologically influenced. On the other hand, ethnographic accounts in anthropology suggest that affective experience is culturally constructed.

Practice

  • Faculty-Librarian Collaboration

    Some folks come to the college library fully expecting the experience be excruciatingly dull, and we are not necessarily referring to students. If truth be told, as a faculty member, I (first person throughout refers Sharon Hollander) probably would not have partnered with a librarian or even made my way across campus for a visit. However, one of my courses, "Psychological Basis of Education," mandates a library orientation session for students. Once in the session, I was impressed with the bibliographic instruction, or BI. I also realized that the majority of my students did not know how to navigate the library and make the best use of its resources. The era of the library as a quiet, orderly repository for scholarly knowledge is gone.

First Person

  • Psychology All-Stars with Paul Ekman

    RECENTLY, PAUL EKMAN shared words of wisdom on pathways to success for graduate students. Ekman is a professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School, and is renowned for his work on emotion and interpersonal deception. APSSC: Why did you choose psychology? PAUL EKMAN: I was studying Freud in a course on rhetoric and was very intrigued. My goal then was to be a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. I didn't change that goal until after I got my PhD. I was drafted in the army where there weren't a lot of opportunities to do psychotherapy, but there were many research opportunities where I could change how the army did things for the better. APSSC: How did you select your graduate program?

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  • Designing for Dissemination: For Rimer, Driving Application Means Using a New Map

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  • Our Beastly Selves: Exorcising the Ghosts of Anthropomorphism

    In his classic 1872 book, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, Darwin wrestled with the challenges associated with interpreting animal behavior. Can we use psychological attributes to refer to animals in the same way we use them to describe other humans? When Darwin argued that emotions exist in both human and nonhuman animals, his work was branded as anthropomorphic, inappropriately projecting human characteristics onto animals. Ever since, many scientists have been reluctant to attribute mental states to animals, a trend that was exacerbated by the rise of behaviorism with its emphasis on external, directly observable behavior.

  • Jamesland a Delightful Visit

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  • The Secret Vita

    A flurry of correspondence came to me after my January 2004 presidential column, "Vita Voyeur." It turns out that when I listed several types of vitae toward the end of the column, I missed one: The Secret Vita. Or, if one prefers a less sinister name, The Nonacademic Vita. Such vitae leave off all the usual academic claptrap that I wrote about last time and instead list items from the individual's other passion (or perhaps his/her real passion). Just such a Secret Vita has come to my attention, which belongs to Arthur Reber. He is noted for studying processes involved in implicit learning, but his Nonacademic Vita, below, indicates that his other passion is poker. ARTHUR S.

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