Bliss in that dawn: The beginnings of operant psychology in the UK

Abstract

Although the first research in the UK to achieve what amounted to operant conditioning (Grindley, 1932) was published in the same year as Skinner’s pioneer publication no similar procedure seems to have been carried out in Britain until Hurwitz founded an operant laboratory at Birkbeck, (then Birkbeck College), University of London, in the early 1950s, presumably inspired by his meeting with Skinner in 1951, and their subsequent friendship. It certainly was an import from America, fortified by local solutions for providing suitable control equipment. The author was a student of Hurwitz at Birkbeck (1957–1961) and was researching (1961–1964) close by at University College (UCL). There follows a largely biographical account of how operant conditioning, initially mostly in rats, spread around universities in the UK. Many of the people concerned, and others not mentioned, shared their ideas at meetings of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group (EABG) that informally sprang up in the early 1960s, initially without funding or its own journal. In coordination with the later emergence of the European Association for Behaviour Analysis (EABA) and its associated journal (European Journal of Behaviour Analysis) the organisation of the EABG has become established in Bangor, and holds regular biennial meetings at University College, London, alternating with those of the EABA in other parts of Europe. The EABG continues to attract many foreign attendees, including from the US, but some of its earlier enthusiasts no longer attend, whilst those attending mostly see themselves as Behaviour Analysts, reflecting changes both in the theory and practice of operant psychology. While operant technology remains a useful tool for those seeking a broad biological and authentic evolutionary understanding of behaviour, the philosophy of operant psychology as an all-encompassing approach to behavioural science has proved divisive.