Behaviorism : The Staple Of Psychology From The 1920 ' S

Classical Conditioning. Due to Pavlov’s success, Watson was inclined to do his own experimentation. His most famous, yet controversial, being on “Little Albert.” “Albert” was a child conditioned by Watson to be afraid of rats. Essentially, Watson would create a loud, banging noise. This would eventually lead to the fear of not just rats, but all fuzzy animals (John Watson - Little Albert, 2008).

What is Watson’s Classical Conditioning? Classical Conditioning was found by Dr. Ivan Pavlov. Watson’s research was influenced by Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Theory. Watson made a research on children’s emotions using the Classical Conditioning model. According to Watson, love, fear, and anger are the three kinds of emotions inherited by humans (Hall 1988). He believed these emotions could be learned through conditioning. He formed his hypothesis and carried out an experiment. John B. Watson’s classical condition experiment was on a child named Little Albert. This experiment was while a child was playing with a rabbit, smashing two bars to make a loud noise behind the child’s head. After hearing the loud noise the child

Watson’s Classical Fear Conditioning experiment with Little Albert today, is considered unethical. According to ethical guidelines of psychology, when performing an experiment, the experimenter should always protect the participant and should always perserve their welfare and dignity. In Watson’s experiment, Little Albert and the animals were both exposed to danger, as one of the sole purposes of the experiment was to create fear, Little Albert was put through distress. Little Albert developed a conditioned fear that being the conditioned stimulus the rat. Today psychologists are obligated to obtain the participants consent before proceeding with their research. However, in Little Albert’s case little is known about his voluntary participation, after all he was a child. Thus, Watson’s experiment will not be allowed today as it

During his experiments Watson used animals and not human subjects. He believed he could get the same results from animals that others did using humans. Traditional behaviorism identifies two basic types of conditioning. Classic conditioning is defined by the repeated exposure of an unconditioned stimulus that elicits an unconditioned response and a neutral stimulus. The developed neutral stimulus can develop the same response as the unconditioned stimulus. B.F. Skinner developed the more radical approach of Operant conditioning. Operant conditioning results when a behavior is followed by reinforcement or punishment (Burger, 2010).

In 1913 Watson gave a lecture called “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”. It was in this speech that Watson proposed the idea of an objective psychology of behavior called “behaviorism”. John saw psychology as the study of people’s actions and their ability to predict and control their actions. This became known as the behaviorist’s theory. During the next few years, different ideas about behaviorism was studied. (Muskingum.edu) Behaviorism came to be widely accepted among psychologists and the general public, becoming a popular field of study in the 1920’s through the 1960’s. It was a huge contradiction to the views of the eugenics movement, which claimed that heredity was the primary force determining a person’s potential and behavior. Behaviorism, with its promise of the possibility of change, and even improvement. (A science Odyssey, published by

Psychologists today like John B. Watson who wrote Behaviorism, believe that all human behavior is a result of conditioning. Therefore humans can be taught to act any way the manipulator wants them too. Behaviorism, a school of psychology, founded by John B. Watson, is the concept that all behavior stems from a form of conditioning. This conditioning could be being betrayed and thrown in jail, or having you father murdered. In Watsons’s book Behaviorism, Watson states:

The study that John Watson is best known for was that of Little Albert. In this study, Watson and his assistant placed an infant, baby Albert, in a room along with a white rat. At first, Albert attempted to reach out toward the rat as it moved around him however soon after Watson slammed together two steel pipes creating a noise loud enough to scare Albert. After this initial scare, the pipes were hit together each time Albert would reach for the rat eventually resulting in his complete fear of the rat and anything that resembled it (Watson & Rayner, 1920). It was in this study that Watson was using a strategy of conditioning that would pair Albert with an unconditioned stimulus and then conditioning him to become fearful of this stimulus. Do to his research in the field, Watson became known as the founder of behaviorism.

Another behavioural psychologist, Watson (1915) was influenced by Pavlov’s dogs’ (1902). Watson suggested that if reflexes can be conditioned in dogs, then they can be conditioned in human behaviour too (Gross 2010). Watson used Pavlov’s idea of classical conditioning to influence his experiment with Little Albert, where Watson successfully conditioned fear into an 8-month-old boy using a range of different stimuli.

Behaviorism has been a topic of many controversies in the early stages of developing. This paper will present a synthesis of several articles discussing behaviorisms and its development through various schools of theories, in addition known researchers and conclusions. The first article that illustrates behaviorism is, “Behaviorism at 100” by Ledoux (2012), which details the last 50 years of the study of behaviorism. The next article is “Behaviorism” by Moore (2011), maps the beginning of behaviorism with B.F.Skinner and addressing functionalism and structuralism. The article named “Psychology as the behaviorist views it”, written by Watson (1913) put his emphasis the aspects of psychology and how behaviorist view introspection. Green (2009) article “Darwinian Theory functionalism and the First American psychological revolution”, is very adamant to have is readers to know that functionalism was the foundation that behaviorism was built. Clark (2004) article “The classical origins of Pavlov’s conditioning”, give insight into classical conditioning abroad and in the United States. The last article named “Little Albert’s alleged neurological impairment” written by Digdon , Powell and Harris (2014), focus on ethical concerns and that may have been overlooked. The synthesis paper will provide behaviorism and conclusions that can draw overall messages from the articles mentioned above.

1) What roles did Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner play in the founding of behaviorism? Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner emphasize observable behavior that can be objectively measured. It is believed that all human behavior is learned and can be controlled with rewards and or punishments. Behaviorism is when a learner responds to environmental stimuli, usually starting off with a clean slate so to speak and then shaped through positive or negative reinforcement. Lots of early behaviorist work by Ivan Pavlov was done with his dogs and then generalized to humans.

Watson is known as the father of behaviorism. He was born on January 9, 1878 in Greenville, South Carolina. He attended Furman University at 16 and graduated with a master’s degree. Watson then attended the University of Chicago where he became interested in the field of psychology. Watson received his doctorate 1903 and later became an associate professor of psychology at John Hopkins University. John B Watson established behaviorism when he delivered his lectured entitled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” at Colombia University. Watson’s most famous experiment was the “Little Albert” experiment. In the experiment Watson conditioned a child to fear a white rat. He did so by pairing a white rat with a loud noise. Watson was asked to retire from Hopkins because of an affair he was having with his assistant. After leaving John Hopkins University Watson began working for an advertising agency where he used his knowledge of behaviorism to improve the effects of

John Watson, father of behaviorism, was a psychologist who was apt to using orphans in his experiments. Watson wanted to test the idea of whether fear was innate or a conditioned response. Little Albert, the nickname given to the nine month old infant that Watson chose from a hospital, was exposed to a white rabbit, a white rat, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspaper, and a miscellanea of other things for two months without any sort of conditioning. Then experiment began by placing Albert on a mattress in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, the child showed no fear of the rat.Then Watson would make a loud sound behind Albert’s back

Many ideas were shared between Watson, Tolman, and Skinner who all played a role in the forming of behaviorism. They did, however, differ on some of their beliefs as well as their methods of study. At this time, methods of studying psychology as well as psychology in general were in the developing stages. Watson was largely credited with the foundation of behaviorism, however, he was by no means the only one to make contributions. There has been some debate as to whether Watson’s contributions were enough to make him the “founder of behaviorism.” It is important to examine contributions from several of the early

The term behaviorism referred to the school of psychology founded by John B. Watson based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors (Staddon, 2001) . And this behavior could be researched scientifically . According to Pavlov, "Respondent Conditioning” resulted from the association of two stimuli, such as causing dogs to salivate at the sound a tuning fork. Consequently, Skinner developed “Operant Conditioning” where the “Stimulus-Response” association was elicited through selective reinforcement (rewards or punishments) to shape behavior. In this regard, behaviorism assumed that a learner was a passive recipient and responding to environmental stimuli. When applying the tenets of Behaviorism to teaching, Skinner asserted that the learner started off as a blank slate, and then his behavior was shaped via positive or negative reinforcement. Behaviorist

A significant piece of several psychological theories in the late nineteenth century was introspection, which is “the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes” (Press, 2013). In retort to this theory behaviorism came about. Behaviorism is predominantly concerned with observable and measurable aspects of human behavior. In other words behaviorism does not look at the biological aspects but it suggests that all behaviors are learned habits and changes in response to the environment. It endeavors to explain how these particular habits are formed. Behaviorism claimed that the causes of behavior was not necessarily found in the complexities of the mind but could be observed in one’s immediate environment, from stimuli that produced, reinforced, and punished certain responses also known later on as conditioning. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that the scientist began to discover the actual systems to learning, thereby laying a foundation for behaviorism. A theorist by the name of Ivan Pavlov was a major contribution to the discovering of significant behavioral theories.