Behavioral Approaches and Personality 139superiority and that psychology’s approach should be aban-
doned. In radical behaviorism no recognition is given still
that work in traditional psychology has any value or that it
can be useful in a unification with behaviorism. This charac-
teristic is illustrated by the Association of Behavior Analy-
sis’s movement in the 1980s to separate the field from the rest
of psychology. It took a PB publication to turn this tide, but
the isolationism continues to operate informally. Radical be-
haviorism students are not trained in psychology, or even in
the general field of behaviorism itself. While many things
from the “outside” have been adopted by radical behavior-
ism, some quite inconsistent with Skinner’s views, they are
accepted only when presented as indigenous developments.
Radical behaviorism students are taught that all of their fun-
damental knowledge arose within the radical behaviorism
program, that the program is fully self-sufficient.
Psychological behaviorism, in conflict with radical behav-
iorism, takes the different view: that traditional psychology
has systematically worked in many areas of human behavior
and produced valuable findings that should not be dismissed
sight unseen on the basis of simplistic behaviorist method-
ological positions from the past. Psychology’s knowledge
may not be complete. It may contain elements that need to be
eliminated. And it may need, but not include, the learning-
behavior perspective and substance. But the PB view has been
that behaviorism has the task of using traditional psychology
knowledge, improving it, and behaviorizing it. In that process,
behaviorism becomespsychologizeditself, hence the name of
the present approach. PB has aimed to discard the idiosyn-
cratic, delimiting positions of the radical behaviorism tradi-
tion and to introduce a new, unified tradition with the means to
effect the new developments needed to create unification.
An example can be given here of the delimiting effect of
radical behaviorism with respect to psychological measure-
ment. Skinner insisted that the study of human behavior was
to rest on his experimental analysis of behavior (operant con-
ditioning) methodology. Among other things he rejected self-
report data (1969, pp. 77–78). Following this lead, a general
position in favor of direct observation of specific behavior,
not signs of behavior, was proposed by Mischel, as well as
Kanfer, and Phillips, and this became a feature of the field of
behavioral assessment. The view became that psychological
tests should be abandoned in favor of Skinner’s experimental
analysis of behavior methodology, an orientation that could
not yield a program for unification of the work of the fields of
personality and psychological measurement with behavior
therapy, behavior analysis, and behavioral assessment.
It may be added that PB, by contributing foundations to
behavior therapy, had the anomalous effect of creating enthu-
siasm for a radical behaviorism that PB in good part rejects.
For example, PB introduced the first general behavioral
theory of abnormal behavior and a program for treatment
applications (see Staats, 1963, chaps. 10 & 11), as well as a
foundation for the field of behavioral assessment:Perhaps [this] rationale for learning [behavioral] psychotherapy
will also have to include some method for the assessment of
behavior. In order to discover the behavioral deficiencies, the re-
quired changes in the reinforcing system [the individual’s emo-
tional-motivational characteristics], the circumstances in which
stimulus control is absent, and so on, evaluational techniques in
these respects may have to be devised. Certainly, no two individ-
uals will be alike in these various characteristics, and it may be
necessary to determine such facts for the individual prior to be-
ginning the learning program of treatment.
Such assessment might take a form similar to some of the
psychological tests already in use.... [H]owever,... a general
learning rationale for behavior disorders and treatment will sug-
gest techniques of assessment. (Staats, 1963, pp. 508–509)At that time there was no other broad abnormal psychology-
behavioral treatment theory in the British behavior therapy
school, in Wolpe’s approach, or in radical behaviorism. But
PB’s projections, including creation of a field of behavioral
assessment, were generally taken up by radical behaviorists.
Thus, despite its origins within PB (as described in Silva,
1993), the field of behavioral assessment was developed as a
part of radical behaviorism. However, the radical behaviorism
rejection of traditional psychological measurement doomed
the field to failure.
That was quite contrary to the PB plan. In the same work
that introduced behavioral assessment, PB unified traditional
psychological testing with behavior assessment. Behavior
analyses of intelligence tests (Staats, 1963, pp. 407–411) and
interest, values, and needs tests (Staats, 1963, pp. 293–306)
were begun. The latter three types of tests were said to measure
what stimuli are reinforcing for the individual. MacPhillamy
and Lewinsohn (1971) later constructed an instrument to mea-
sure reinforcers that actually put the PB analysis into practice.
Again, despite using traditional rating techniques that Skinner
(1969, pp. 77–78) rejected, they replaced their behavioral as-
sessment instrument in a delimiting radical behaviorism
framework. Thus, when presented in the radical behaviorism
framework, this and the other behavioral assessment works
referenced earlier were separated from the broader PB frame-
work that included the traditional tests of intelligence, inter-
ests, values, and needs and its program for general unification
(Staats, 1963, pp. 304–308).
The point here is that PB’s broad-scope unification orien-
tation has made it a different kind of behaviorism in various
fundamental ways, including that of making it a behaviorism