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...
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 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 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 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.
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.
Where did Watson live after he retired?
He spent his last years living a reclusive life on a farm in Connecticut.
Who is James Lacy?
James Lacy, MLS, is a fact checker and researcher. John B. Watson was a pioneering psychologist who played an important role in developing behaviorism. Watson believed that psychology should primarily be scientific observable behavior. He is remembered for his research on the conditioning process .
Who is John Watson?
John Broadus Watson (January 9, 1878 – September 25, 1958) was an American psychologist who popularized the scientific theory of behaviorism, establishing it as a psychological school. Watson advanced this change in the psychological discipline through his 1913 address at Columbia University, titled Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.
What did Watson do?
Through his behaviorist approach, Watson conducted research on animal behavior, child rearing, and advertising, as well as conducting the controversial " Little Albert" experiment and the Kerplunk experiment. He was also the editor of Psychological Review from 1910 to 1915.
Why did Watson say that children should be treated as young adults?
As such, he warns against the inevitable dangers of a mother providing too much love and affection, because love—along with everything else understood by the behaviorist perspective— Watson argues, is conditioned.
How did Watson and Rayner conditioned Little Albert?
Watson and Rayner conditioned "Little Albert" by clanging an iron rod when a white rat was presented. First, they presented to the boy a white rat and observed that he was not afraid of it. Second, they presented him with a white rat and then clanged an iron rod. "Little Albert" responded by crying.
What did Watson do at Furman University?
There, he would complete a few psychology courses, though never excelling. He would also consider himself to be a poor student, holding a few jobs on campus to pay for his college expenses. Others thought him as quiet, lazy, and insubordinate, and, as such, he continued to see himself as "unsocial," making few friends. Nevertheless, being a precocious student, Watson would leave Furman with a master's degree at the age of 21.
What did Mary I discover about Watson?
In searching Rayner's bedroom, Mary I discovered love letters Watson had written to his paramour. The affair became front-page news during divorce proceedings in the Baltimore newspapers. The publicity would result in Johns Hopkins University asking Watson to leave his faculty position in October 1920.
How does Watson explain how a child learns to read words?
Lastly, Watson explains how a child learns to read words: a mom points at each word and reads in a patterned manner, and eventually, because the child recognizes the word with the sound, he or she learns to read it back. This, according to Watson, is the start of memory.
The life of John B. Watson
John B. Watson was born in Travelers Rest, South Carolina (United States), on January 9, 1878. His father, Pickens Butler Watson, suffered from alcoholism and left the family to set up a new home with two Indian women. His mother, Emma Kesiah Watson, was deeply religious and, undoubtedly, her husband’s departure strengthened her convictions.
Vocational training
John B. Watson first studied at Furman University, earning his BA at the age of 21. Later, he did his postgraduate degree at the University of Chicago, where he began an interesting investigation on the learning processes of the white rat. In fact, his doctoral thesis, which he presented at the age of 25, dealt with this topic.
A scandalous life
The life of John B. Watson, which ended in New York on September 25, 1958, was surrounded by scandal. He married Mary Ickes before completing his doctorate. They had two children who they named John and Mary, after themselves.
Who is John Watson?
John B Watson Biography : Founder of Behaviorism. John B. Watson (John Broadus Watson) was an American psychologist known for Watson’s Behaviorism. He was one of the important figures in the history of psychological thought during the first half of the twentieth century.
What was John B. Watson's contribution to psychology?
One of the significant contributions of John B Watson was in respect of behaviorism. He discarded the concepts of introspection, consciousness, and internal mental state. J B Watson believed it was high time that study of overt and observable behavior became the subject matter of psychology over the study of the mind.
What is the John B Watson manifesto?
In 1912-1913, Watson came up with an article in the Psychological Review titled ‘Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It.’. This John B Watson 1913 article is often known as the ‘The Behaviorist Manifesto’. This is because it initiated the wave of behaviorism in psychology.
What did John Watson do in his experiment?
He claimed to explain psychology in terms of stimulus and response, habit formation, habit integration, and the like. In addition to this, John B Watson is famous for the Little Albert Experiment. In this experiment, Watson worked with his graduate student Rosalie Rayner.
What is the Little Albert experiment?
The Little Albert Experiment. Psychology advocates, at times, consider John B Watson experiment same as the only contribution of John B Watson in psychology. However, John B Watson contributions are much more than the John B Watson experiment, or the Little Albert experiment.
What did Watson believe about the Little Albert experiment?
Watson believed humans had a limited collection of unlearned, inherent emotions like love, rage, and fear. And that, conditioning can stretch such emotions to a complex collection of emotions in adults. Thus, he undertook the Little Albert Experiment along with his collaborator Rosalie Rayner.
What is the John B Watson book about?
One of the popular John B Watson books includes John B Watson Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. J B Watson wrote this book in 1919. In this book, Watson dealt with the issue of examining psychology as a science of behavior. In addition to this, he discussed issues only a trained individual can observe.
What was Watson's most famous experiment?
The Little Albert Experiment. In his most famous and controversial experiment, Watson put his theory on conditioning to the test. The experiment became known as the 'Little Albert' experiment.
Where was John Watson raised?
He was raised in South Carolina by a mother with strict religious standards and an alcoholic father who abandoned John and his mother when John was only 13 years old. Watson struggled academically and was arrested twice during high school.
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.
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 is Watson'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.
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.
Who is the most famous psychologist to follow in Watson's footsteps?
A young psychologist named B.F. Skinner is the most notable behaviorist to follow in Watson's footsteps. Skinner further developed some of Watson's ideas and went on to become the most well-known psychologist of the second half of the 20th century.
Early Life
Career
Leaving Academia
Contributions to Psychology
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...
Selected Publications
Famous Quote
Overview
Use of children
One might consider the experiment Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner carried out in 1920 to be one of the most controversial in psychology. It has become immortalized in introductory psychology textbooks as the Little Albert experiment. The goal of the experiment was to show how principles of, at the time recently discovered, classical conditioning could be applied to condition fear of a white rat into "Little Albert", a 9-month-old boy. Watson and Rayner conditione…
Biography
Education
Behaviorism
Advertising career
Selected works
Further reading