A Lightbulb's Behaviorism and Cognitivism

My mos spent many years in college and graduate school studying developmental psychology. She graduated college Phi Beta Kappa and went as far as to have completed "all but dissertation" in grad school.

Now my mom is in that age where she is not quite as sharp as she used to be and the days in front of her are fewer than those behind, so I try to engage her in conversation regarding things she should know or remember.

A few weeks ago I related that I look forward to the Christmas [pop-up village in Union Square every s=year so I can go to the booth run by the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild and ask them if they8 have, among their coffee mugs and finger puppets and refrigerator magnets dedicated to great scientists, and statesmen and writers, anything about Piaget. For those who don't know, Jean Piaget (no relation to the watch company) is to developmental psychology what Sigmund Freud was to psychoanalysis. He was the Elvis of the discipline, defining it gor the successive generations to study and either adopt his viewpoints or take on a different one.

Every year the response woudl be "Sorry, we don't have anything for Piaget," with a difference level of familiarity with the name for each person. My replay would be "I suppose it is still in development," a joke that only those who have that familiarity would get.

My mom did not quite get what I was trying to do there, so I explained that, first off, I was kind of hoping that I could find a gift for her that would relate to her particular field of study, and that I also thought that Piaget would be the ideal person in that field to be immortalized on a coffe mug.

After a bit of reflection, she agreed that it was fair to say that he was a person of such stature in that field, but that there were others also notable who held a different point of view on human development. One such person was B.F. Skinner.

To put labels on them, Skinner was a behaviorist, while Piaget was a cognitivist.

Yesterday I was having dinner with my mom and told her about the struggles I had trying to get an Uber driver to pick me up on Roosevelt Island. Where I was on the island was so close to the Queensboro Bridge, that I kept o n getting connected to drivers that were already on that bridge's on-ramp in Queens. This would have meant that they would have had to go into Manhattan, turn around, come back to Queens, go to the Roosevelt Island Bridge, thendrive down to where I was to pick me up. This woudl have take 20 minuts, so I kept on texting the drivers asking them to cancel the ride. I felt like one of thos echaracters on "Cheers"who kept on puching the electrick shock button thnking they would get the nut, proving themselves less smart that the lab animals who would push the other buton and get the nut.

My mom dwas unfamiliar with the comedy, but said that the test was pu9re behavioralism, straight from Skinner.

So I got to t hinking about how that would explain me continually trying to get a different result from the same action, like a gambler at the s;lot machines. I figured that I must have been hanging on to the year or two of success I have had using Uber to get me a car to go where I wanted to go. I wondered what Piaget woudl say about this.

My mom compare the two p[rinciplas thusly: Behaviorism is abot ustimulus-response. Cognitivism critiques behavioris by saying you might not be identifying the correct stuimulus, and yo are ignoring the ptential of the mind to think.

This gave me a brilliant idea on how to encapsulate the two theories: Lightbulb jokes.

You know those jokes where someione asks "How many [whatever] does it take to change a light bulb? Well the answer for Psychiatrists is "Only one, but the light bulb really has to want to change." So I aksed my mom what the lightbulb joke would be for these two scientific principlaes.

It took a while for her to get where I was coming from. I had to explain the point of a lightbulb joke (so stereotype a group of people) and the play on the word "change" in the psychiatrist version. what it came down to was that the point of formulating a scientific theory of human development and developmental psychology is to be able to predict behavior and affect it to a predictable and desirable result. To help my mom understand how this applied to the lighbulb jokes I said," Just think of the lightbulb as a baby."

"But a light bulb is not a baby." she replied."

"That's what makes it funny." I said. I think she finally understood what I was getting at, or at least was willing to make the journey, even if she didn't understand the desire to reach its intended destination.

So here's what we came up with:

How many behaviorists does it take to change a light bulb?
Just the one who can provide the stimulus.

How many cognitivists does it take to change a light bulb?
We'll never be able to figure all the factors involved.

So, did I get it right? Do I totally not undestand what I am talking about? Can you scome up with something better?

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