A history of the term radical behaviorism: From Watson to Skinner.
The phrase "radical behaviorism" no longer means "ignore the mind"—it means private events are behavior too.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors traced how the phrase "radical behaviorism" changed owners.
At first it described Watson’s hard-line rejection of mind talk.
By the 1960s the same label belonged only to Skinner’s view that private events are also behavior.
What they found
The term flipped meaning inside one generation.
Watson’s old slogan vanished and Skinner’s philosophy kept the name.
How this fits with other research
Coleman (1987) shows why the label stuck.
That paper argues Skinner’s three-term contingency gives the clearest unit for applied work.
LaFrance et al. (2020) and Geckeler et al. (2000) still use "radical behaviorism" the Skinner way.
Together they show the field kept the word but swapped the story.
Why it matters
When you say "radical behaviorism" parents or co-workers may still hear "ignore thoughts and feelings."
This history lets you correct the myth fast.
Tell them Skinner counted private events as behavior, then move on to your A-B-C data.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This paper describes the origins and evolution of the term radical behaviorism. John B. Watson's coining of behaviorism in 1913 is presented first, followed by a discussion of the uses of "radical" within psychology during these early years. When the term radical behaviorism first emerged in the early 1920s, its referent was Watson's behaviorism, most specifically his stance on consciousness. In the 1930s, B. F. Skinner described his own position with the term radical behaviorism in an unpublished manuscript, and then in 1945 first referred in print to his views as such. Today, radical behaviorism is generally applied to Skinner's views alone. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of a similarity in Watson's and Skinner's positions on consciousness, which seems a possible historical and philosophical connection between their respective radical behaviorisms.
The Behavior analyst, 1987 · doi:10.1007/BF03392404