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What was John B Watson's theory?
Watson's behaviorist theory focused not on the internal emotional and psychological conditions of people, but rather on their external and outward behaviors. He believed that a person's physical responses provided the only insight into internal actions.
What did Watson believe about thinking?
Watson's behaviorism rejected the studying of consciousness. He was convinced that it could not be studied, and that past attempts to do so have only been hindering the advancement of psychological theories. He felt that introspection was faulty at best and awarded researchers nothing but more issues.
What is John Watson best known for?
Watson is famous for having founded classical behaviourism, an approach to psychology that treated behaviour (both animal and human) as the conditioned response of an organism to environmental stimuli and inner biological processes and that rejected as unscientific all supposed psychological phenomena that were not ...
What did Watson believe about development?
Based on the results from his “Little Albert” study, Watson concluded that caregivers can shape a child's behavior and development simply by taking control of all stimulus-response associations.
What did John Watson believe about personality?
Watson believed that psychology should primarily be scientific observable behavior. He is remembered for his research on the conditioning process. Watson is also known for the Little Albert experiment, in which he demonstrated that a child could be conditioned to fear a previously neutral stimulus.
What does Watson say about behavior?
Behaviorism, according to Watson, was the science of observable behavior. Only behavior that could be observed, recorded and measured was of any real value for the study of humans or animals.
How did Watson view emotions?
Watson's most influential and well-known work was his study of emotions. Watson was particularly interested in studying the way that emotions could be learned. Watson believed that emotions were merely physical responses to external stimuli and that rage, fear, and love were all yet to be learned at birth.
Who is the founder of behaviorism theory?
John B. WatsonWhy Is John B. Watson Considered the Founder of Behaviorism? Given the many past and present tributes to John B. Watson, we might fairly ask why he is uniquely revered as the father of behavior analysis.
Who is the father of psychology?
Wilhelm WundtThe Father of Modern Psychology Wilhelm Wundt is the man most commonly identified as the father of psychology. 1 Why Wundt? Other people such as Hermann von Helmholtz, Gustav Fechner, and Ernst Weber were involved in early scientific psychology research, so why are they not credited as the father of psychology?
What did Watson use to explain human behavior quizlet?
What did Watson use to explain human behavior? shaping.
In what ways did Watson believe that behaviorism could be used to improve people and their societies?
In what ways did Watson believe that behaviorism could be used to improve people and their societies? It could improve society by using conditioning to change the behaviors of people. For example, it could stop crime.
How did Watson view emotions?
Watson's most influential and well-known work was his study of emotions. Watson was particularly interested in studying the way that emotions could be learned. Watson believed that emotions were merely physical responses to external stimuli and that rage, fear, and love were all yet to be learned at birth.
What did Watson use to explain human behavior quizlet?
What did Watson use to explain human behavior? shaping.
In what ways did Watson believe that behaviorism could be used to improve people and their societies?
In what ways did Watson believe that behaviorism could be used to improve people and their societies? It could improve society by using conditioning to change the behaviors of people. For example, it could stop crime.
What was Watson's Little Albert experiment?
The Little Albert Experiment demonstrated that classical conditioning could be used to create a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear, that is out of proportion to the danger. In this experiment, a previously unafraid baby was conditioned to become afraid of a rat.
What was John B. Watson’s childhood like?
John B. Watson grew up in a poor farming family. His father drank heavily, was prone to violence, and was frequently absent; he finally left the fa...
Where was John B. Watson educated?
As a young child, John B. Watson was educated in a one-room schoolhouse and at a modest private academy in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. He enter...
What did John B. Watson write?
John B. Watson wrote, among other works, Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1914); Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behavioris...
Why is John B. Watson famous?
John B. Watson is famous for having founded classical behaviourism, an approach to psychology that treated behaviour (both animal and human) as the...
Who influenced Watson's thinking?
Watson's thinking was significantly influenced by the earlier classical conditioning experiments of Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov and his now infamous dogs.
Why did Watson reject the concept of unconsciousness?
Watson's behaviorism rejected the concept of the unconscious and the internal mental state of a person because it was not observable and was subject to the psychologist's subjective interpretation. For example, Freud would ask his patients to tell him their dreams.
Why was Little Albert's experiment unethical?
In looking back, psychologists today view Watson's experiment as unethical because of the fear he instilled in the child in conducting the experiment and his lack of effort to undo the conditioned fear. Ethical guidelines in place today would never permit such an experiment to be performed.
Why did Watson think Little Albert was afraid of animals?
Over time, they conditioned 'Little Albert' to be afraid of the animals. Watson believed that this proved that emotions could become conditioned responses. Unfortunately, Watson did not remove the conditioning he instilled in 'Little Albert' and many wondered how the experiment affected the boy as he grew up.
What is Watson's theory of behavior?
Watson is best known for taking his theory of behaviorism and applying it to child development. He believed strongly that a child's environment is the factor that shapes behaviors over their genetic makeup or natural temperament. Watson is famous for saying that he could take a 'dozen healthy infants... and train any one of them to become any type of specialist he might select - doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief.' In other words, he believed that you can expose the child to certain environmental forces and, over time, condition that child to become any type of person you want. As you might imagine, this was radical thinking and a type of behavioral control that many people were not comfortable with at that time.
What is the origin of behaviorism?
By the time Watson began teaching at Johns Hopkins, the official discipline of psychology was barely 30 years old, having started in Europe in 1879. Watson was one of the early American psychologists to break the Freudian notions that our unconscious mind was behind most of our behavior.
What was the name of the lecture that Watson gave to Freud?
Watson made his most memorable declaration against Freud's theory at a lecture he delivered in 1913 at Columbia University titled 'Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.'. This lecture established Watson as a pioneer of a new school of thought that would later become known as behaviorism.
What did Watson do to help people?
Watson set the stage for behaviorism, which soon rose to dominate psychology. While behaviorism began to lose its hold after 1950, many of the concepts and principles are still widely used today. Conditioning and behavior modification are still widely used in therapy and behavioral training to help clients change problematic behaviors and develop new skills.
Where did Watson teach psychology?
Career. Watson began teaching psychology at Johns Hopkins University in 1908. In 1913, he gave a seminal lecture at Columbia University titled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," which essentially detailed the behaviorist position. 1 According to Watson, psychology should be the science of observable behavior.
What was the name of the experiment that conditioned a child to fear a white rat?
The "Little Albert" Experiment. In his most famous and controversial experiment, known today as the "Little Albert" experiment, John Watson and a graduate assistant named Rosalie Rayner conditioned a small child to fear a white rat. They accomplished this by repeatedly pairing the white rat with a loud, frightening clanging noise.
What did Merritte suffer from?
In 2012, researchers proposed that Merritte suffered from neurological impairments at the time of the Little Albert experiment and that Watson may have knowingly misrepresented the boy as a "healthy" and "normal" child.
What did Watson discover about the conditioning process?
Watson is also known for the Little Albert experiment, in which he demonstrated that a child could be conditioned to fear a previously neutral stimulus. His research also revealed that this fear could be generalized to other similar objects.
What is the theoretical goal of introspection?
Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.". 1 .
Where did John Watson grow up?
Early Life. John B. Watson was born January 9, 1878, and grew up in South Carolina. He entered Furman University at the age of 16. After graduating five years later with a master's degree, he began studying psychology at the University of Chicago, earning his Ph.D. in psychology in 1903.
What did Watson propose?
Unlike the ‘original’ Freudian psychology which explored the unconscious, emotional and other intangible concepts, Watson proposed that psychology should study observable behaviors measurable through the scientific method. He is best known for demonstrating this through the Little Albert experiment and the ‘dozen healthy infants quote’.
What is Watson's theory of behavior?
Watson assumed that our behavior is either a reflex evoked by a stimulus, or a consequence of our individual history of earlier exposure to reinforcements and punishments paired with our current motivational states and stimuli.
How did Watson and Rosalie Rayner conduct the experiment?
To conduct the experiment, Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner, placed the boy in a room where a white rat was allowed to roam around. First, the boy showed no fear. Then, Rayner struck a steel bar with a hammer, every time Albert reached out to touch the rat, scaring Albert and causing him to cry. Eventually, Albert tried to get away from the rat, illustrating that he had been conditioned to fear the rat. Weeks later, Albert showed distress towards any furry object, showing that his conditioning had not only been sustained but also generalized.
What did Watson use to train his baby to be afraid of a lab rat?
The ‘Little Albert’ Experiment. With the ‘Little Albert’ experiment, Watson used the method of classical conditioning to program a baby to be afraid of a lab rat. Earlier, Pavlov demonstrated how conditioning can trigger biological responses that are inherited genetically.
Why did Watson regret writing about child-rearing?
Watson allegedly admitted that he regretted writing about child-rearing as he realized he didn’t know enough about it to do so. Towards the end of his life, he became reclusive and prior to his death in 1958, he burned all of his recent papers.
How many children did Watson have?
Watson’s life and family. Watson, who had a difficult childhood, wanted to be a good father and applied his methods to his four children, John, Mary, James, and William. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out as planned. John complained throughout his entire life about intolerable headaches and died early in his 50s.
Who was the scientist who said if you gave a dozen healthy babies, you could shape them into anything?
John B. Watson famously claimed that if he were to be given a dozen healthy infants, he could shape them into anything; doctors, lawyers, artists, beggars, or thieves, regardless of their background or genetic predispositions. First, he completed experiments with 8-month old Albert and later, he applied his theory when raising his own children. In essence, he applied the scientific method to human psychology which he called behaviorism.
What did Watson find about animal research?
Instead, Watson turned to animal research. However, Watson found that even animal research required introspectionism. Descriptions of the animal's consciousness were used in writing up animal research. This struck Watson as absurd and unnecessary.
What was Watson's major plus?
As an animal researcher, Watson was aware of a major plus for behaviorism: it opened psychology to organisms with no language to describe their inner thoughts.
What chapter is Watson and Behaviorism?
Watson and Behaviorism | in Chapter 01: Psychology and Science
What did Watson say to the president of the University of Chicago?
Watson wrote to the president of the University of Chicago, declaring he would "never amount to anything" unless he got financial support to further his education. Apparently this tactic worked, because Watson obtained a fellowship.
What did psychologists feel about introspectionism?
Psychologists felt that introspectionism had failed. Their field had lost its original identity as the "science of consciousness.". In 1905, William McDougall wrote a textbook defining psychology as "the study of behavior.". By contrast, structuralism and functionalism were aimed at explaining mental contents, not behavior.
Was Watson a rebel?
Watson was a bit of a rebel from childhood on. He fought frequently as a teenager. He referred to his hometown church baptism, performed during his adolescence, as an "inoculation that did not take." Seeking to escape the confines of a small-town upbringing, Watson pursued higher education at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.
Who said that mind and consciousness are forbidden?
McDougall...had no particular complaints against the old subject matter [mind and consciousness], but he thought that behavior, too, deserved attention... In 1913 Watson went a step further. Psychology should study behavior, he said, and mind, the traditional subject matter, is now forbidden. (Epstein, 1987, p.333)
Early Life
Career
- Watson began teaching psychology at Johns Hopkins University in 1908. In 1913, he gave a seminal lecture at Columbia University titled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," which essentially detailed the behaviorist position.1 According to Watson, psychology should be the science of observable behavior. "Psychology as the behaviorist views it ...
Leaving Academia
- Watson remained at Johns Hopkins University until 1920. He had an affair with Rayner, divorced his first wife, and was then asked by the university to resign his position. Watson later married Rayner and the two remained together until her death in 1935. After leaving his academic position, Watson began working for an advertising agency where he stayed until he retired in 1945. Durin…
Contributions to Psychology
- Watson set the stage for behaviorism, which soon rose to dominate psychology. While behaviorism began to lose its hold after 1950, many of the concepts and principles are still widely used today. Conditioning and behavior modification are still widely used in therapy and behavioral training to help clients change problematic behaviors and develop new skills.
Achievements and Awards
- Watson's lifetime achievements, publications, and awards include: 1. 1915—Served as the president of the American Psychological Association(APA) 2. 1919—Published Psychology From the Standpoint of a Behaviorist 3. 1925—Published Behaviorism3 4. 1928—Published Psychological Care of Infant and Child 5. 1957—Received the APA's Award for Distinguished Sci…
Selected Publications
- Here are some of Watson's works for further reading: 1. Watson JB. Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review. 1913;20(2):158-177. doi:10.1037/h0074428 2. Watson JB, Rayner R. Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 1920;3(1):1-14. doi:10.1037/h0069608
Famous Quote
- "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going bey…