John B. Watson (1878 to 1958)
Behaviorism
Biography
John Broadus Watson was born in 1878 in Greenville, South Carolina, to Emma and Pickens Watson.
He earned his Bachelor's degree at the University of Chicago, and In 1903 he received his doctorate and later became an associate professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University. He wrote his dissertation about the relation between behavior in the white rat and the growth of the nervous system.
In the first years of the 20th Century, the field of psychology was in disagreement over the ideas of the nature of consciousness and the methods of studying it. In 1913 at Columbia University, Watson delivered a lecture entitled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." He claimed that the problem was the use of archaic methods such as introspection, and inappropriate subject matter. Instead, he proposed the idea of an objective study of behavior called "behaviorism." He saw psychology as the study of people's actions with the ability to predict and control those actions. This new idea became known as the behaviorist theory. His view of behaviorism was considered radical and was known for its extreme anti-mentalism, its radical reduction of thinking to implicit response, and its heavy and somewhat simplistic reliance on conditioned reactions.
In his earlier research Watson used animal subjects and later shifted to the study of human behaviors and emotions at Johns Hopkins University. He wanted to develop techniques to allow him to `condition and control the emotions of human subjects. He theorized that children have three basic emotional reactions: fear, rage, and love. He left academia to pursue an interest in advertising.
Theory
Watson coined the term "Behaviorism" in 1913. Behaviorism assumes that behavior is observable and can be correlated with other observable events.Thus, there are events that precede and follow behavior. Behaviorism's goal is to explain relationships between antecedent conditions (stimuli), behavior (responses), and consequences (reward, punishment, or neutral effect).
Watson's theory was more concerned with effects of stimuli. He derived much of his thinking from Pavlov's animal studies (classical conditioning). this is also referred to as "learning through stimulus substitution," a reference to the substitution of one stimulus for another. For example, the ringing of a bell eventually produced the same response as food for Pavlov's dogs.
Aspects of Watson's theory:
• He opposed mentalistic concepts
• He used contiguity to explain learning
• He considered emotion to be just another example of classical conditioning
• He rejected the notion of individual differences
• He thought complex behaviors came about through combinations of identifiable reflexes
• He was a chief proponent of "nurture" and believed that all human differences were the result of learning
• He believed that practice strengthens learning
While Watson's position fell short of his goal of explaining human learning, his work is now considered as an early beginning of the development of learning science.
Learning Theory Bibliography
Lefrancois, 1972
Watson, J. (1913). Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it. Psychological Review, 20, 158-177.
Watson, J. (1928). The ways of behaviorism. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers Pub.
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