In this capstone work, Arthur Staats synthesizes more than four decades of research, theory, and study into a new generation of behaviorism that offers insights and future directions for researchers, professionals, and students. Staats's unified theory of psychological behaviorism builds on current theories in child development, personality, psychological measurement, and abnormal behavior. His theoretical model provides new ways to consider human behavior as a whole that will have implications for research, theory, and practice.

I have been involved in constructing a unified theory for many years, in considering the state of psychology's unity-disunity, and in generally attempt- ing to persuade our profession to work on its unification. In this work I have had the opportunity to become acquainted with the works of a number of other psychologists whose statements indicated that they had something to say on these topics. I saw also that it would be very productive for psychology to have these individuals address themselves to psychology's disunity-unity, consid- ered as a problem that should be confronted and...