Abstract
Intentional behaviorism entails, first, theoretical minimalism, in which an extensional model of behavior is formulated and tested by standard third-personal techniques of hypothesis testing. This identifies the point at which extensional explanation breaks down requiring the investigator to make recourse to intentionality in order to account for action. The second stage, intentional interpretation, is the generation of an account of consumer action, viewed as an idealized economic and social system that optimizes various combinations of functional and social reward. This interpretation, which comprises conative, affective, and cognitive description of action, is guided and constrained by the findings of the initial, theoretically minimalist stage. The question now is how this intentional interpretation is to be appraised, tested according to its usefulness as an explication of actual consumption activity and experience. The third stage, cognitive interpretation, assesses how far the intentional interpretation is supported by theories of cognitive structure and functioning.
This chapter is abstracted and slightly revised from Chaps. 1 and 2 of Foxall, G. R. (2018). Context and Cognition in Consumer Psychology: How Perception and Emotion Guide Action. London and New York: Routledge. © G. R. Foxall. All rights reserved. Reproduced by kind permission of Routledge Publishers.
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Notes
- 1.
A comprehensive account of intentional behaviorism is available in Foxall (2020), Intentional behaviorism: a research methodology for consumer pyschology. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. A recent account can also be found in Foxall, G. R. (in press), in Intentional behaviorism: a research methodology for consumer psychology, L. Kahle et al. (Eds.) The APA Handbook of Consumer Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
- 2.
Economic behavior has provided the focus for the development of the intentional behaviorist research paradigm, but it is believed to be applicable to human behavior in general, if only because operant behavior is fundamentally economic.
- 3.
I do not deal with the concept of contingency representation in any detail in this abstract. A comprehensive account of its derivation and explanatory significance can be found in Chaps. 3 and 4 of Foxall (2018).
- 4.
See Chaps. 5 and 6 of Foxall (2018).
- 5.
For a treatment of the behaviorist, intentional, and cognitive perspectives that the BPM elucidates, see Foxall (2016b).
- 6.
For an account of this phase of the research program, see Foxall (2017).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
Micro-cognitive psychology. Stanovich’s (2009) tri-process theory elaborates the dual-process models that separate mental processing into a system that relies minimally on working memory and which can respond rapidly to environmental events (often referred to as system 1 or S1) and a system that draws heavily on working memory to produce behavioral alternatives based on consideration of the longer-term outcomes that will ensue (S2). I have described the tripartite theory as it may be applied in intentional behaviorism at some length elsewhere (Foxall, 2016a, b, c) and will only sketch it here. The minds posited by Stanovich and the relationships among them can be explicated in terms of a business analogy which, in the way of analogies, is not perfect but provides an initial outline. The reflective mind is the policy-making function which sets out the overarching goals of the enterprise, the styles of managerial behavior that will be employed to achieve them, the kinds of product the firm will bring to market, and the markets it will serve in order to succeed. The algorithmic mind is the strategic planning function which deliberates on how to achieve the objectives of the enterprise, the specific product markets it will enter, the composition of its marketing mixes, the permitted range of tactical behaviors it will adopt in pursuit of its strategic goals, and the product markets from which it will withdraw for the same reason. Finally, automatic mind represents the operational level of decision-making and action, which recognizes the opportunities and threats currently presented by the marketplace to which it can respond spontaneously by tactical action. The policy-making function of the reflective mind can overrule such tactics if it has the chance, issuing orders to the strategic function of the algorithmic mind which in turn proposes alternative courses of action and ensures that the operational level of business activities represented by automatic mind will conform to overall corporate objectives. If the operational managers of an actual firm were to respond automatically and on the basis of habit to every apparent opportunity presented by the marketplace, they might score some notable successes, but they would also on occasion land the company in deep trouble. Mostly, therefore, the managers responsible for this level are well briefed and well trained in following corporate policies, and there are mechanisms in place to ensure their conformity. The analogy is not quite accurate in this respect. Automatic mind is assumed always to attempt to operate on a more stimulus-response basis, automatically and autonomously reacting to the prospect of immediate gain by behaving on behalf of the entire enterprise. As may be the case in real-world business, the strategic and policy levels of supervision are not always able to countermand such behavior before it has occurred. Similarly, automatic mind’s responses to stimuli must be monitored and, where necessary, either terminated before they have disastrous consequences or assuaged by complementary actions. The dual- and tri-process theories of cognitive processing brought to bear on these concerns propose that behavioral responding may be the outcome of either a mental reaction to environmental stimuli that is minimally controlled by working memory, sometimes called the impulsive system (or S1), or by a considered procedure in which alternative courses of action are comparatively evaluated and the one chosen that will be most effective in promoting the individual’s long-term welfare (S2). This latter system is deliberative, sometimes known as the executive system, and may act by countermanding the impulsive system. Dual-process theorizing and research has figured in intentional behaviorism.
- 11.
Macro-cognitive psychology. This entails looking to social institutions for the sources of decision-making. Collective intentionality is an approach to the explanation of shared actions in terms of shared desires, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions. For Searle (1995), it involves deontology, the ascription of status positions and of the roles that are proper to them, and ascription of the rewards and sanctions that will be arranged to follow actions that are considered by the relevant group to be pro- and antisocial. The deontological aspect takes the form of rules that portray, usually verbally, the contingencies that connect specific actions to the situations in which their enactment will attract particular rewards and sanctions. (See Searle’s exposition of collective intentionality: Searle, 1995, 2010. For other views, see, for instance, Tomasello, (2014, 2016). For further discussion in the context of intentional behaviorism, see Foxall, 2010a, b, 2016b.) The roles and actions specified in these rules require certain individuals to undertake particular functions for the execution of which they are accorded an appropriate status that is acknowledged by the entire community. Hence, a citizen who has fulfilled particular requirements such as having been successfully elected can be invested with the office of prime minister or president along with the authority and responsibilities that are deemed to go with it. Thereafter, social requirements are met by both the officeholder, who performs tasks assigned by the group and whose performance will be measured and rewarded or punished, and the rest of the community whose actions toward the person assigned to this role, such as due deference, are also laid down and rewarded or punished. Those assuming status functions enjoy deontic powers in the form of rights, permissions, and entitlements, but they also incur obligations and requirements (Searle, 2010). What this means is that social groups, acting collectively, have some capacity to invent for themselves the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment that will govern their actions, at least as far as the socially instituted and enforced informational reinforcement is concerned. (A society’s capacity to influence the course of the contingencies involved in utilitarian reinforcement is, it goes without saying, more limited.) Our interest in this capacity of humans to construct contingencies and to specify the collective intentionality that will be expected of members of the social group to which they severally belong lies in there being no reason why the individual group member’s mental processing of the deontic outcomes of collective intentionality should take the form only of beliefs-proper. Any individual, any given consumer, may equally fantasize about what is required in particular situations, form beliefs about what the rules are or how they may be fulfilled, and to what extent she will accord the necessary status position to those nominated to hold office. These beliefs may be accurate beliefs-proper insofar as they will lead to actions that are effective and lead to the individual’s actions being rewarded and the social group as a whole prospering; if they are erroneous beliefs-proper, they may not have this effect immediately, but by their very nature such rational beliefs are likely to be soon corrected. Neurotic beliefs, however, i.e., fantasies that are reinforced by evidence gained only through psychic-reality testing, may be dysfunctional for both the individual holding them and the social group, depending on how centrally they affect the working of the group dynamic. There is a further dimension: the entire social group may entertain neurotic beliefs and religious or political ideas about how the world works that will also prove dysfunctional to the extent of causing the eradication of the society as a whole.
- 12.
Meso-cognitive psychology. The consumer’s mental experience is not always a matter of the dispassionate weighing of beliefs and desires; often it takes the form of warring internal factions, what Ainslie (1992) envisions as strategically interacting interests whose distinct time frames lead to their propensity to conflict with one another. The short-range interest (SRI) seeks gratification when it is available even though it is inferior to that which is contingent on the deferment of consumption. This is the conflict between the SSR and LLR that we have already encountered. The long-range interest (LRI) is focused on the attainment of the superior but delayed reward. If we treat these interests in terms of the cognition and other intentionality they are likely to engender in the consumer, we may ask whether they represent beliefs-proper or neurotic beliefs. The intentional interpretations devised in the second stage of the employment of the intentional behaviorist research strategy must also cohere with the level of analysis at which this meso-cognitive psychology proceeds. There are several ways in which we can envision these two picoeconomic interests influence one another (Ross, 2012). Our understanding of their mutual effects reflects our assumption of whether they act contemporaneously or sequentially. Ross depicts contemporaneously interacting subagents of this kind as possessing either separate utility functions that are in conflict with each other or contrary time preferences. Each of these gives rise to its own style of economic modeling. For example, the actions of subagents with distinctly different time preferences can be related to their sub-personal neurophysiological functioning that governs their specific hyperbolic time preferences, a matter of the “competition between steeply exponentially discounting “limbic” regions and more patient (less steeply exponentially discounting) “cognitive’ regions” (Ross, 2012, p. 720). This picoeconomic portrayal depends heavily on the findings of neuroeconomic experiments employing fMRI scans of humans choosing between SSR and LLR (McClure et al., 2004; for discussion in the present context, see Foxall, 2016a).
- 13.
The question of the nature of action is much more complex than my simple distinction suggests. See, as examples of some recent thinking, Dancy (2000), Hornsby (1981), Sandis (2012), the whole collection of papers in Sandis (2009), and Steward (2012). I have also discussed action and agency at greater length in Foxall (2016b).
- 14.
I discuss action and agency in the context of intentional behaviorism and the explanation of consumer choice at greater length in Perspectives on Consumer Choice: From Behavior to Action, From Action to Agency (Foxall, 2016b, particularly in Chaps. 7 and 11). See also my Addiction as Consumer Choice: Exploring the Cognitive Dimension (Foxall, 2016a).
- 15.
For an account of consumer activity that treats it entirely as behavior, see my Advanced Introduction to Consumer Behavior Analysis (Foxall, 2017).
- 16.
Some authors argue that actions are the causes of activity rather than the activities themselves: so, for Dretske (1988), actions are the mental states that cause bodily movements. Others, e.g., Steward (2012), argue that there are both mental actions and physical actions. For Dretske, the content or meaning of a belief explains a movement by identifying why this mental state contributes to that movement. So the belief that s is F is a neurophysiological event (brain state) that, by virtue of its being selected in the course of operant conditioning, contributes to the causation of a movement because it carries the information that s is F. Operant selection of this kind provides the entity, here a brain state, with the function of providing the information, and this function confers upon the entity the status of being a representation. Acting “for a reason” in this way allows the explanation of the movement in terms of the content of the belief or other intention.
- 17.
The idea that we construct an intentional account by ascribing the mental operations the system “ought” to have given its history and circumstances is a vital component of Dennett’s intentional systems theory (IST). See Dennett (1987). Intentional behaviorism makes important use of this idea in the construction of the intentional interpretation which is its second stage.
- 18.
In the case of compulsive and addictive consumer actions, it may seem to stretch the point to speak of choice at all, but the same pattern of preference reversal, now accompanied by a striving to overcome the problem—both of which open the pattern of behavior to the charge of economic irrationality—is apparent. The possibility of at least delaying consumption remains, and the many instances in which individuals overcome addictions are testimony to the use of the term choice based as I have suggested on the underlying temporal conflict involved.
- 19.
See Radoilska (2013) for an interesting distinction between akrasia and weakness of will.
- 20.
Indeed, for Plato, who argued that the individual who knows what is good is incapable of acting otherwise. See also Davidson (2001).
- 21.
For a recent examination of this kind of social phenomenon, see Nichols (2017).
- 22.
A more comprehensive account is available in Foxall (2016b, Chap. 2).
- 23.
- 24.
Although it was always Skinner’s position that the behaviorist is compiling an agenda for the research program of the physiologist by demonstrating the environmental determination of behavior, other behaviorists are more actively engaged in research that entails the neurophysiological substrates of reinforcement.
- 25.
Skinner (1969) makes this important distinction. Contingency-shaped behavior is that which is explained by reference to its concomitant stimulation. An SD or MO sets the occasion for the performance of a behavior that has previously been reinforced in similar settings. On the basis of knowledge of this stimulus field, the behavior is predictable. Most important from the point of view of intentional behaviorism is that no representation is involved in the explanation of contingency-shaped behavior. Rule-governed behavior is explained by reference to the verbal behavior of an instructor (who can be the behaver herself), giving rise to a distinction between other-rules, provided by another person, and self-rules, worked out by the individual for herself. The verbal statement is said to specify the elements of the three-term contingency: as in “When you are in the store [consumer behavior setting comprising SDs and MOs], please pick up some eggs [response, R], and I will make you your favorite dessert [verbal MO relating the response to a reinforcer].” The only way in which a radical behaviorist can keep such an explanation within the bounds of the operant paradigm is by assuming that the words are SDs or MOs that influence behavior by virtue of their having been paired repeatedly with reinforcing or punishing behavioral outcomes. If this is done, there is again no question of representation entering into the explanation.
- 26.
In my Perspectives on Consumer Choice: From Behavior to Action, From Action to Agency (Foxall, 2016b), I emphasized the difficulties of employing prediction as a criterion of the validity of an intentional interpretation. However, the development of the concept of contingency representation and the use of the success semantics of Ramsey (1927) permits a more positive appreciation of this source of validation. The need to show how the intentional interpretation is supported, where necessary, by a coherent cognitive interpretation remains.
- 27.
I have written about the distinction between extensional and intentional language and explanations several times (e.g., Foxall, 2016a, b), but the following summary may be useful. Intentionality (with a “t”) is simple “aboutness” and refers to the fact that some mentalistic words such as believes or desires and perceives or fears refer to something other than themselves. That is, they have an intentional object: no one just believes; she believes that such and such is the case. Similarly, we desire that the bus will get here quickly, say, perceive that the light is brighter here, or fear that we have failed the exam. The intentional object in each case (the bus or the light or failing) has, Brentano (1874) pointed out, intentional inexistence: it exists in the proposition. This is the essence of aboutness (see Brentano, 1874, pp. 88–94). It follows that the intentional object need not exist anywhere else. I can believe in Santa Claus without anyone, myself included, having the slightest notion that Santa Claus exists in the real world. If I am to behave successfully as a parent (given particular social norms), it is sufficient that he exists in my imagination and that I can talk to my kids in the knowledge that he exists in theirs too.
Intensionality (with an “s”) is a linguistic phenomenon. It has implication for the way in which we employ sentences. For example, intensionality entails that the codesignative propositions cannot be substituted in a sentence that contains an attitude such as believes, desires, or feels without altering the truth value of the statement. Let me illustrate this in the case of a book called Inside Mr Enderby, written by Anthony Burgess under the penname Joseph Kell. Take the sentence, “John believes that Inside Mr. Enderby was written by Joseph Kell.” It is not valid to state, however, “John knows that Inside Mr. Enderby was written by Anthony Burgess,” for John may not know that Joseph Kell is Anthony Burgess. (Indeed, the editor who asked Burgess to review the book apparently did not! See Burgess (1990, p. 71) for this amusing incident.) The codesignative terms that follow “that” in these sentences are not therefore interchangeable without loss of the intentional sentence’s truth value. This is not the case for sentences couched in extensional language. Changing “Anthony Burgess wrote Inside Mr Enderby” to “Joseph Kell wrote Inside Mr Enderby” does no violence to its truth value.
Another way in which intentional and extensional sentences differ is in the nature of their referring to objects. The object of an intentional sentence has Brentano’s intentional inexistence and perhaps may, therefore, not exist outside that sentence, i.e., in the real world. If, speaking extensionally, I say that I am going to drive my car to Cardiff, then, if the sentence is to have any truth value, there has to be a car that is mine and there has to be a place called Cardiff that I can drive to. But if I say that I believe in Santa Claus or am seeking the Golden Mountain or praying for the Elixir of Life, the truth value of the sentence is not affected by the fact that none of these exists in a literal sense. It is crucial that a person who is to function competently and satisfactorily as a member of society understand the differences in truth value that separates extensional and intentional senses. I might spend some time imagining that the car in which I am going to drive to Cardiff is not the old rust bucket that I actually own but a sparkling new sport car. This is not a problem as long as I know I am fantasizing (or possibly speculating, hypothesizing, supposing) and that I know I must take my own car from the car park rather than the idealized alternative. Problem-solving, decision-making, and creativity all require the ability to engage in speculation, hypothesizing, and fantasizing from time to time, but all the more do they require, if they are to be successful, in our ability to switch from one of these modes of thinking and feeling to that which is governed by real-world correspondence.
- 28.
This methodology could be said to presume that perception is cognition-laden. See Foxall (2018), Chaps. 3 and 4.
- 29.
The objects of the ascribed intentionality might be said to exist in the external environment as Dretske (1995) argues, but what influences the actions of the consumer is her perception and conceptualization of the contingencies.
- 30.
I am clearly indebted to Daniel Dennett’s (1987) exposition of his research strategy beginning with intentional systems theory (IST) which is followed by sub-personal cognitive psychology (SPCP). Elsewhere (Foxall, 2016b) I explain in some detail what the intentional behaviorism research strategy owes to Dennett’s formulation and where I diverge from it.
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Foxall, G.R. (2021). Intentional Behaviorism. In: Zilio, D., Carrara, K. (eds) Contemporary Behaviorisms in Debate. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77395-3_13
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