Jarek Janio Ph.D.

Psychology Today

[Excerpt]

I recently received an email from a community college professor in California. They’d heard I advocate for behaviorism as the foundation for teaching and learning. Their question was simple and sharp:

“If we define learning as behavior, what’s the point? Once you identify the expected behavior, ChatGPT is going to replicate it. So what can faculty do that ChatGPT can’t?”

It’s a fair challenge and it gets to the heart of why behaviorism is more relevant than ever.

Behaviorism Isn’t Just About Output. It’s About Conditions

Let’s be clear: ChatGPT can generate outputs. It can produce essays, simulate conversations, and summarize research articles. All of these are examples of observable behaviors. As B.F. Skinner, the founder of radical behaviorism, emphasized, the focus of learning must remain on the behaviors themselves and the environmental conditions that shape them. From this perspective, the question isn’t how these outputs were generated or what tool was used, but rather: who is performing the behavior, under what conditions, and how does that behavior change over time?

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