BEHAVIORAL THEORY: THE RELEVANCE, VALIDITY, AND APPOSITENESS THEREOF TO SOCIOLOGY.

In view of the revanchist ideology that often passes under the rubric of sociobiology, a perspective that insists on the learned nature of social behavior is welcome. Undoubtedly, a search for the causes and careers of human behavior is a legitimate enterprise in sociology, but in the context of Molm's paper, a different question must be raised regarding behaviorist sociology. The root criticism of behavioral sociology, it seems to me, is the one she attributes to symbolic interactionism. The view that human emit behavior, Molm contends, is not a mechanistic theory at all because operant behaviors are not automatically elicited by any prior stimulus, they simply occur not elicited by a stimulus. If something that is yet to happen is the cause of the behavior that is about to be emitted, then surely it is the anticipation of receiving the reinforcement that is causing the behavior. I am sure Molm is correct that the argument about behavioral sociology is really about behavioral sociology is really about the goals and aims of science.