John Broadus Watson : An Experimental Study On The Psychical Development Of The White Rat

After receiving his Doctorate, Dr. Harlow became employed at the University of Wisconsin. He was an outstanding professor who reveled in educating students in psychology. He aided several students in obtaining their PhD as well. His students thought very highly of him. Lack of funding restricted Harlow of a functioning laboratory. With the assistance of his graduate students, he found a vacant building that was renovated. This lab became his “Primate Laboratory”. This was the first of its kind at that time. Throughout his career, Harry was recognized with several honors, which included the Gold Medal from American Psychological Foundation (LeRoy, 2008).

John B Watson the “father of behaviorism once quoted “ Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed and my own specified world to bring them up in and I will guarantee to take any one 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 pendants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors. Watson had a plan as to what he wanted to accomplish. He new what his goals were. He had a plan as to how he wanted to conduct the Little Albert Experiment and Classical Conditioning. Watson believed that psychology shoed be seen as a purely objective experimental branch of natural science, he wanted to see the prediction and control of behavior not just the understanding of the mind (Mcleod, 2008).

John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) was an American psychologist who became the leader of a revolutionary movement called behaviorism. He studied innate behaviors and experimented on it. The people, in the BNW, had their behaviors controlled through experiments from when they were small. Without his theories, Huxley couldn't have completed his novel.

Example; you have a cat and the cat just playing around with a ball and when you

Born in 1876 in Travelers City, South Carolina John B. Watson had an unsecular upbringing which played a role in his opposition to religion in his later years. Watson graduated from Furman University in South Carolina at the age of twenty-one with a masters degree in hand. John B.Watson started studying psychology at the University of Chicago which is where he started developing his behaviorist theories. Watson was greatly influenced by the works of Vladimir Bekhterev and Ivan Pavlov. In 1902, Watson married Mary Ickes Watson. Later down the line, Watson committed adultery with one of his graduate students at John Hopkins University. Which resulted in him marrying his second wife, Rosalie Rayner. After he quit teaching, Watson went into advertising, going big in just two years. In 1915, Watson was given the title of president of the American Psychological Association (APA), he was also given a gold medal for his

John Broadus Watson would explain Eleanor’s behaviour using the Theory of Behaviourism. Behaviourism is the scientific study of human behaviour that is heavily focused on using a stimulus-response association factor. He would describe Eleanor as a very pleasant child despite her aggressive behaviours towards boys and other misbehaviours. This is due to the fact that he believes all children are conditioned to act in a certain manner; they were not naturally born that way. He would explain that three distinctive traits were seen on Eleanor’s first day of Junior Kindergarten: rage, fear, and love.

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’s behaviorism theory states that children are “products of their environment, pieces of clay” and children are shaped by their parents and society. In his 1928 book on raising children,

John Watson pioneered a new approach to viewing psychology. By making known an underutilized approach to studying psychology, John Watson opened a whole new door to researching how and why people behave the way they do. John Broadus Watson left a huge impression on the world of psychology with his new and unconventional approach of behaviorism and his Little Watson experiment.

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

John Watson a theorist who rejected the idea of introspection and every part of the psychodynamic theory, suggested the Behaviourist view is an

Psychologists have been focused on observing and understanding human behavior for centuries, dating back to the Greek philosophers when psychology and philosophy were considered one.Today, Psychology is the study of human behavior, beginning before birth and lasting until death. It is clear that the observance human behavior is a vast and profound source of data for psychologists. Early philosophers relied on methods of observation and logic. A physiologist named Wilhelm Wundt in the 1800’s began using scientific research methods in his study of mental processes. However, the situation was totally different in the beginning of 20th century when psychology still struggled to be regarded as a separate discipline with practical value(Mastering,2011). Psychologists had only begun to be accepted as a science. It was John B. Watson who established the school of Behaviorism and inspired many other psychologists to study patterns of human behavior and their mechanisms. Watson 's contribution to psychology is important not to underestimate; he studied animal and human behavior to come up with a methodology that would give Psychology a respected status among other scientific disciplines. This essay will focus on the biography and works of John B. Watson with a purpose to show why his works are important for Psychology today(Hergenhahn & Henley, 2013).

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).

“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

     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.