John B. Watson: Article Analysis

John B. Watson (1878-1958), not to be confused with John H. Watson from Sherlock Holmes’ fame, left an indelible mark on the field of psychology. Prior to Watson, psychologists and philosophers theorized about internal, or mental, processes and consciousness. Myers (2013) states, “Watson urged his colleagues to discard reference to inner thoughts, feelings, and motives” (p. 268), and instead, “limit ourselves to things that can be observed…[i.e.] behavior—what the organism does or says” (Watson, as cited in Berger, 2014, p. 42). Watson’s views, along with Pavlov’s and Bechterev’s, would launch the behavioral school of psychology. The radical behaviorism Watson believed would not allow him to study or theorize about internal experiences such as emotions and their influence on thinking and behavior.

John B. Watson was born on January 9th in the year of 1878 in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. He was named after a prominent Baptist minister in hope that it would help him receive the call to become a preacher of gospel. He grew up in Greenville, South Carolina with his mother and father and three older siblings. The Watson Family was very poor, they claimed that the family lost their wealth in the Civil War. John’s mother Emma was very religious, her soul focus was on her farm, her kids and her religion. The Watsons attended the local Baptist church in their home town. In their home God and the Devil played a major role in their everyday lives. In his upbringing

Behaviorism was established to make psychology a respectable science, Sometimes called the “black box” psychology. Behaviourists believe we are all “products of our environment” John Watson, the founder of behaviourism said “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up and I’ll to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities and race of his ancestors.” (McLeod, 2016) So according to behaviorists, we learn our behavior. Behaviorists are concerned with three types of learning; Classical conditioning, Operant conditioning, and Observational learning

THe Behavioral perspective believes that our behavior is the result of the environment we are in. Behaviorists believe that psychologists should rely on the stimuli in the environment and our response to the stimuli. There perspective was that our behaviors are the result of our upbringing and environment. The behavioral perspective works on the molecular level to understand an individual 's behavior. They developed research generated evidence. John Watson was the founder of American behaviorism. Watson advocated that psychology is a science and it should be limited to observable, measurable behaviors. Watson studied babies and how they learned everything from their environment. He advocated that nurture was stronger than nature. Watson was famous for his experiment with Baby Albert and a white rat. Baby Albert did not fear the white at at first but began to fear it once it was associated with a loud sound. Watson proved through his experiments that parents should take

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

John B. Watson was born on January 9th in the year of 1878 in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. He was named after a prominent Baptist minister in hope that it would help him receive the call to become a preacher of gospel. He grew up in Greenville, South Carolina with his mother and father and three older siblings. The Watson Family was very poor, they claimed that the family lost their wealth in the Civil War. John’s mother Emma was very religious, her soul focus was on her farm, her kids and her religion. The Watsons attended the local Baptist church in their home town. In their home God and the Devil played a major role in their everyday lives. In his upbringing he went through harsh religious training that later led him to have a huge hatred to all forms of religion and became atheist. John’s father Pickens who he was closer to did not have the same religious views as John’s mother. Pickens drank alcohol and had affairs during his marriage to

John B. Watson was born on January 9th in the year of 1878 in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. He was named after a prominent Baptist minister in hope that it would help him receive the call to become a preacher of gospel. He grew up in Greenville, South Carolina with his mother and father and three older siblings. The Watson Family was very poor, they claimed that the family lost their wealth in the Civil War. John’s mother Emma was very religious, her soul focus was on her farm, her kids and her religion. The Watsons attended the local Baptist church in their home town. In their home God and the Devil played a major role in their everyday lives. In his upbringing he went through harsh religious training that later led him to have a huge hatred to all forms of religion and became atheist. John’s father Pickens who he was closer to did not have the same religious views as John’s mother. Pickens drank alcohol and had affairs during his marriage to Emma, eventually in 1891 when john was 13 Pickens left his family. John was already a

The 20th century saw a response to Edward Titchener’s critique of Wundt’s experimentation. This contributed to the study of behaviorism by John Watson. Behaviorism was proposed to emphasizing the study of obvious behavior. In the final decades of the 20th century saw a rise of the cognitive science which is a interdisciplinary approach to studying the human mind. Cognitive science considers the mind as subject for investigation

     John B. Watson was an early psychologist that didn't agree with many other psychologist's ideas about learning only relating to consciousness and thought processes. As the founder of behaviorism, Watson studied learning in a behavioral perspective, an approach that emphasizes the relationship between outwardly observable behaviors and environmental events, rather than mental processes.

Though this theory mainly focuses on Skinner, another theorist named John B. Watson is mentioned. Watson believed that human behavior is the result of specific stimuli that elicited certain responses. His basic idea was that the conclusions about human development should be based on the observation of overt behavior rather than speculation. Watson was also a professor of psychology at Hopkins University and “By the time he left the field for good in the early 1930s, behaviorism had succeeded in taking center stage within American psychology” (Wozniak, 1997).

Imagine one day waking up and realizing that the sea animals in the entire ocean are no more. It’s estimated that about one-third of the earth love’s to eat sea food; therefore, most of the ocean contain sea animals, and with the smaller amount of the animals, there will be no sea food. Paul Watson dedicated his life to save the marine animals no matter what the cost, even his own arrest. Paul Watson is currently the founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society after he was kicked out of the Greenpeace in 1977. He had a fitting life experience with sea animals his entire life

After Joe Watson had been told he was deathly allergic to the sun and his frail lungs would not allow him breathe the outside air, also not to mention his high level of paranoia for potential of getting robbed outside at night, he decided that he would never leave his home for the rest of his life. He had done everything right—he went to a liberal arts college, got a salary job at a local car manufacturer, married a beautiful woman he loved, started a family, and continued to work hard. But after his health issues arose during his retirement and his wife had passed, the time to stay inside was now.

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

“Why don’t we make what can be observed the real field of psychology” (Watson, 1929). Watson (1878-1958) was born into a poor family in South Carolina. His mother was a religious woman, and his father drank a lot and had multiple affairs (Watson, 1999). Watson himself married twice, having two children in each marriage. He didn’t seem to have good relationships with his children – it is said that one of the main reasons for this may be because he used his children throughout his research. He studied in the University of Chicago where he later became known as the founder of Behaviourism. He wrote an essay in 1914 titled “Psychology as the Behaviourist views it” where he stated that behaviourism is an objective experimental branch of natural science (Watson, 1914). Behaviourism is a theory of learning that argues that all behaviours are acquired through conditioning (Carver & Scheier, 2012). Behaviourists believe

Although Watson was not the first to suggest an empirical and objective approach to psychological research he was the first to offer a coherent and organized program, and is often viewed as the catalyst for behaviorism, especially among American psychologists (Bewsbury, 2013). Perhaps the most famous behaviorist is B.F. Skinner (b.1904-d.1990). Skinner’s approach almost completely disregarded anything outside of observable behaviors, and his strict approach to looking at anything other than observable behaviors resulted in the development of the term radical behaviorism (Feist et al., 2013).