Methodological Behaviorism from the Standpoint of a Radical Behaviorist.

McDowell (2013) wrote a theory paper. He compared two kinds of behaviorism. One is methodological behaviorism. The other is Skinner’s radical behaviorism.

He says methodological behaviorism now uses hidden things like ‘mind’ to explain acts. That move looks like mentalism. He wants us to drop it and stay with Skinner’s path.

The paper finds that methodological behaviorism drifts toward mentalism. It uses made-up insides to explain outsides.

Radical behaviorism skips the inner stuff. It stays with action and the world. So it keeps the science cleaner.

Lord et al. (1986) already warned against mentalistic talk. McDowell (2013) echoes that warning but points the finger at methodological behaviorism itself.

Critchfield (1996) asked us to test mental words as verbal behavior. McDowell (2013) shows why that job is still urgent.

Malagodi (1986) said radical behaviorism needs to grow into a full worldview. McDowell (2013) answers by sweeping out the last bits of mental dust.

When you write a behavior plan, skip hidden causes like ‘he acted out because he was frustrated.’ Say what happened before and after the act. That keeps your treatment radical, not mentalistic. One clean sentence in your report can guard the whole field.

Methodological behaviorism is a prescriptive stance on how psychological science should be done. Its original and defining rule is that the terms and concepts used in psychological theories should be grounded in observable stimuli and observable behavior. Private events, such as thoughts, feelings, and sensations, are set aside because they cannot be publicly observed or agreed upon, so they are treated as outside the reach of a rigorous science.

This paper argues that the meaning of methodological behaviorism has drifted over time under the influence of operationism. A second feature became prominent in contemporary psychology: the emphasis on formally testing theories that rely on mediating theoretical entities from a nonbehavioral dimension, using the hypothetico-deductive method. In practice, the author argues, those mediating entities end up functioning as mental causes of behavior, even if only indirectly.

The contrast is with the radical behaviorism of B.F. Skinner. Where methodological behaviorism excludes private events from science, radical behaviorism includes them, but reinterprets what they are. For Skinner, thoughts and feelings are not nonphysical mental causes; they are behavior, private behavior that happens inside the skin and follows the same operant principles as public behavior, involving antecedent circumstances and reinforcing consequences.

So the two schools split on two points. First, whether private events belong in a science of behavior at all: methodological says no, radical says yes. Second, how to explain behavior: methodological behaviorism tends to appeal to inner mediating entities as causes, while radical behaviorism explains both the participant's and the scientist's behavior in terms of environmental history rather than mental agents.

This distinction is foundational to ABA and appears regularly on the BCBA exam. The field rests on radical behaviorism, which is precisely what makes Skinner's account of verbal behavior and private events possible. A methodological behaviorist would refuse to analyze private events; the radical behaviorist treats them as behavior to be understood through the same three-term contingency.

For practitioners, the practical upshot is that self-reports, urges, and covert self-talk are legitimate targets of analysis, not unscientific distractions. Understanding that ABA is built on radical, not methodological, behaviorism clarifies why the field takes private events seriously while still insisting on environmental, function-based explanation.