yo ryan oh behavior analyst and creator all things behavior analysis on the daily ba here welcome we nerd out on psychology and today a quick overview of bf skinner's radical behaviorism that is this guy all right first quick definition radical behaviorism a thorough going form of behaviorism that attempts to understand all human behavior including private events such as thoughts and feelings in terms of controlling variables in the history of the person that is their ontogeny and the species or phylogeny all right broken down a bit more an approach to explain behavior in behavior analysis behavior is everything that we do a living breathing and functioning organism everything that we do non-human animals are included and when skinner says radical this is not the the meaning that you're probably thinking of it has a secondary definition meaning whole or all-encompassing that is it takes into account the totality of the human experience it's rooted in evolutionary science which means that variables are looked at through uh the effect that it has on the organism in some sort of way this may be through the lifetime of the organism which is your ontogeny the behavior that's required within the lifetime of your your you're living on this planet that is the skills and the experience that you have throughout your lifetime that you require that is your ontogeny and the skills and abilities that you have as a result of being a member of the species itself which would be your phylogeny things like your reflexes when someone hits you in your patellar tendon or you're blinking if something is like winds blowing dust into your face so let's get an example in here let's take something like asking a question to yourself of why someone may not have called you back let's say that you had a meeting or maybe it was a hot date regardless they stopped speaking to you this ghosting effect can be explained in different ways but a radical behaviorist would ask questions and gain insight through actual empirical data that help them better understand so is there some sort of event that happened that is keeping the person from responding back to you is it because their phone is on silent is it because they found someone new that can fulfill their interests in a different way than you these sort of questions would be asked looked at measured and as a result a more thorough understanding would come about that contradicts other widely held approaches like trying to understand someone else's mind or assuming things without tangible evidence or looking for answers that aren't rooted in ways that include the environmental variables so a couple common questions is this approach still viable yes well it's been a number of years since it was formulated i think it was 74 where skinner started to kind of like put this all together it's also transformed a bit and a different branch of philosophy has come about that's called functional contextuals which i'll link down below alright does the approach make room for things like the mind or the soul etc no remember it's rooted in evolutionary science it is a natural science and so no hypothetical constructs like that are a part of the explanation but they may be things which are stated that can then be analyzed through the lens of a behavior analytic uh perspective is this a predominant approach of bcbas board-certified behavior analysts uh unclear what the actual stats really are of how many practice from which different set of assumptions but many operate from the stance in our writings that is our empirical journals but there's a few other forms of behaviorism that are out there that you can explore as well in my next video coming out the day after this i'll share one of the other main approaches which is called method methodological behaviorism so that's it super quick this video is brought to you by people like you patrons people that actually support my efforts financially the last three years i've spent and uh a ton of time and and lost money like actually lost money creating these videos because i think they're important this field is important and there are important people like you doing important things that the world needs to hear about so if this is something that you're for consider supporting them below and uh thank you for your time that's your daily ba [Music]