Behaviorism is a school of psychology aimed at shaping behavior through external influence. Broadly speaking, behaviorism views behavior as a reaction to specific stimuli—either positive (reinforcing) or negative (punishing). Behavior is shaped through combinations of positive and negative stimuli. This includes the creation of conditioned reflexes (classical conditioning, as in Pavlov’s dog) or training (operant conditioning—associating a given action with positive or negative consequences, and thus provoking or preventing it through reward or punishment).

Actions that encourage a given behavior are called reinforcement in behaviorist terminology. Reinforcement can be positive, when it encourages behavior through rewards, or negative, when it consists in the removal of punishment. Such training can also occur unconsciously, so that the subject does not recognize the real cause of their behavior or action and therefore rationalizes it differently to themselves and/or others.

Unlike psychoanalysis, behaviorism does not concern itself with deeper psychic processes. Its goal is to shape desired behavior through cause-and-effect relationships between behavior and reward or punishment—conditioning behavior by means of them.

It largely ignores consciousness and the psyche as phenomena and represents an attempt to reduce psychology to an exact science, consisting solely in the study of causal relationships between stimulus and response in human behavior. Necessary conditions for behaviorist methods and techniques are patience and persistence on the part of the practitioner. Because establishing a causal link between stimulus and response requires repetition and time, one cannot expect such a link to be formed on the first attempt—just as with animal training.

As early as the 1960s, the American psychologist B. F. Skinner developed so-called Radical Behaviorism, which предполага using language as a substitute for stimuli—meaning that specific words and expressions can function as rewards or punishments.

Although behaviorists argue that this approach has positive applications, being essentially a form of training and entirely lacking a humanistic vision and depth, behaviorism can be used for virtually any purpose.

And it is used. The distribution of rewards and punishments is a well-known manipulative technique through which the manipulated subject is trained toward a particular behavior. It finds application in government policies toward populations; in boss–employee relations (e.g., a “pat on the back,” a promotion, or a reprimand); in collective–employee relations; in communication; in personal relationships; and so on. An individual—or even a social group—can be trained to (not) do something without being aware of the training, while instead rationalizing their behavior with other arguments and being convinced by them.

The use of language as a substitute for stimuli is also observable on the internet. Most often it can be seen in the methods of trolls, who attempt to train certain participants in a discussion to react in a particular way to specific verbal stimuli. This is why insults and personal attacks are not always a sign of poor manners or loss of temper; they can function as punishment, aimed at conditioning the target not to do something undesirable to the trolls or manipulators. Conversely, words can also be used as rewards—praise, flattery, and “kind” treatment.

In some cases the goals are longer-term than eliciting an immediate reaction, especially when it is important to push the target of influence toward a specific developmental path. Then, once again, every step in the desired direction—working in favor of that development—is encouraged with “rewarding” remarks tailored to the individual’s psychological profile, while every deviation is sanctioned with posts that wound or provoke negative emotions, again calibrated to the target’s profile.

Behaviorist strategies of influence are often used in combination with other techniques, where the intensification of “rewards” or “punishments” aims to achieve deeper reinforcement or punishment.

Do you think you can be “trained”?
Have you ever acted while expecting praise from a partner, a boss, or someone else?