Why Do We Think? Consequences of Regarding Thinking as Behavior

Abstract

Cognitive psychologists have made significant progress in explaining how people think. However, relatively little time and energy have been invested in understanding why we think–the factors that make us start or stop thinking, choose and change strategies and solutions. Such questions are linked to motivation and to discriminative and reinforcing stimuli. In this article, the idea that studying thinking as a form of behavior closely connected to antecedent stimuli and consequences leads to potentially important questions that are not presently being studied in the field of cognitive psychology. This is not an argument for reverting to behaviorism–rather, the argument is made that integrating a behavioral perspective on thinking would enrich cognitive psychology.