Thoughts and feelings seem very important. Is it true that behavior analysts ignore them?
Since thinking and feeling are things people do, they qualify as behavior, but they do present special problems for scientific study. For example, it is currently impossible for a researcher to observe and count the number of times a person thinks of an elephant or feels sad, but an individual can observe and count the number of times that he or she thinks of an elephant or feels sad. In addition, it is sometimes possible for researchers to identify physiological events that are reliably associated with particular thoughts and feelings. Subtle changes in perspiration in the palms, for example, are generally considered a good measure of fear.
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