Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Arthur W. Staats is professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Internationally known as an innovator, he is the inventor of the "time-out" concept that so many parents have used with their children as well as the creator of the token-reward system (token economy) to modify behavior patterns. In 2006, Child magazine recognized him as one of "20 People Who Changed Childhood." He is the author of six books, more than fifty chapters, and over eighty journal articles, among other publications.

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The MARVELOUS LEARNING ANIMAL

Prometheus Books

Contents

Chapter 1: Of Paradigms and Fallacies, of Sciences and Things...............................11Chapter 2: Such a Body! The Versatile Animal................................................47Chapter 3: Such a Brain! 100,000,000,000 Neurons Buy a Lot of Learning.....................67Chapter 4: Learning Child Development.......................................................97Chapter 5: Marvelous Learning: The Missing Link.............................................147Chapter 6: Marvelous Learning of Personality................................................171Chapter 7: Marvelous Learning of Abnormal Personality.......................................209Chapter 8: On the Origin of the Human Species...............................................255Chapter 9: Who We Are.......................................................................293Chapter 10: The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said, to Talk of Many Things......................327ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................................................................355REFERENCES..................................................................................359

Chapter One

Once obscure, the word paradigm was made a catchy concept a few decades ago by Thomas Kuhn (1962). There was even a New Yorker cartoon with a beggar asking a potential client, "Can you paradigm?" in place of the Depression-era original "Can you spare a dime?" Kuhn's definition bedazzled the history of science and philosophy of science worlds. Science wasn't just the objective search for truth via fact and theory. Scientific paradigms consisted of much more—methodology, beliefs, convictions, technology, and problems to be solved. Paradigms garnered adamant loyalty. A new paradigm—like Einstein's initially was—couldn't expect an open-armed reception. It had to scratch and fight for acceptance through obstacles of disbelief. For scientists, contrary to popular belief, exhibit human motivations that interfere with that legendary objectivity of their stereotype (Toulmin 1972).

Scientific paradigms—despite their glamorous fruits of problem solution, application, and research creativity—may also contain errors large and costly, to society as well as science. Although improving on the previous paradigm, a new one generally has its own problems and limitations. When those problems are fundamental or extensive enough, and this becomes recognized, another paradigm may be put forth that better deals with the field—abandoning unproductive endeavors, indicating important problems, and projecting new avenues of application and research. Its arrival produces a period of doubt and struggle with the old paradigm, a scientific revolution that may culminate with the acceptance of the new paradigm. This then becomes the primary framework that generates the normal science activities that elaborate its expectations and produce its advances.

A paradigm exists with respect to human behavior and human nature. It is not clean-cut, systematically constructed like advanced theories, but rather is composed of many poorly articulated bits and pieces. The paradigm consists of a mix. If a history of the paradigm existed, it would show that it began long ago, with animistic belief that everything from atolls to zebras contained spirits that determined their nature and behaviors. Volcanoes erupt and oceans storm when their spirits become angry. A human behaves badly when his or her spirit is evil or when an evil spirit invades him or her. As animistic beliefs advanced in many steps to yield modern religions, the spirit concept for humans became the soul. When the search for knowledge brought forth various science endeavors and then science fields, including an interest in human actions, the concept of the soul morphed into the concept of the mind, as well as the personality, the brain, and other internal causal processes or structures. The name psychology literally means the study of the mind, the Greek term psyche meaning either "soul" or "mind."

A theory of human behavior and human nature exists in the common language that we all learn. We can see elements of the common conception of human behavior and human nature in religious and literary writing, as in the Bible and Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky, in descriptions of types of human behavior and their causes. We can see that people behave peculiarly, destructively, because of a mental disease. We can see numberless explanations of behavior—behaviors occur because of inner states such as intelligence, anxiety, honesty, ambition, laziness, greed, and cruelty. Those trait concepts and many others are the conceptual tools by which people explain their own behaviors and the behaviors of others. A child does well in school because she is intelligent, a boy picks on others because he is a cruel bully, and another works all the time because he has ambition. Why does an adult protect children? Human nature. Why have people gone to war throughout history? Human nature. What gave humans the nature that determines their behavior—God, Mother Nature, or genetic evolution? All of these concepts are used to explain human actions.

There are differences in people's complex sets of beliefs, so the paradigm varies for different people. But we all grew up absorbing the explanations of human behavior our language provides for us. That language is part of each of us, rock-hard belief, so natural it is not open to consideration, giving all of us a common core theory. We accept things that fit with these beliefs, and are poised to reject things that do not. That informal theory of human behavior and human nature functions covertly, not realized for what it is and what it does. It affects the beliefs, interpretations, and plans of scientists as well as of lay people, setting gross guidelines for what to study and how to do so. I call this paradigm "The Great Scientific Error" because although it serves many of our purposes—much better than the conceptions of bygone days—it contains profound error and misdirects us in many, costly ways. Billions-of-dollars ways.

This paradigm is implicit, unrealized, and should be brought to light systematically, described, made evident. With such an account it would be possible to consider and work on the paradigm, improve it, address its various problems, as well as understand the widespread effects it has on everyone. No books have been written to describe the Great Scientific Error paradigm. I have come to recognize the paradigm because my fifty-plus-year program of work has on so many fronts taken a contrary view. My aim in this book centers on presenting a new paradigm, so I cannot devote this book to the full consideration of the old paradigm that is needed. But I can introduce the Great Scientific Error and I can additionally flesh out that introduction here and throughout the book and thereby call for a more complete work.

DARWIN'S FALLACY

Explanation of origin is central in a conception of human behavior and human nature, humanness. Before Charles Darwin, the dominant explanation of origin lay in the biblical account of God's creation of humans. Of course, that explanation of origin had many predecessors in the beliefs of many different peoples. A belief of an Australian Aborigine...