Perspectives Paper

Ever heard a certain song that triggers your brain to recall something from the past. Then, you should know that you been conditioned to respond in a certain way when you hear that favorite song you known about for a long time. Throughout human history behaviorism has played a big role in the evolution of psychology. The three main characters that contributed on to the creation of behaviorism were Pavlov, Watson, and Skinner all helping behaviorism evolution into an important idea in psychology . Overall, behaviorism is very common around the world and being everywhere daily in ads or life situations.

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

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).

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.

According to the famous “Rats maze” experiment, Watson began by challenging the underlying assumption of instinct (Berntson and Cacioppo, 2000). Watson and Morgan (1917) are considered to be

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.

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

Behavioural Psychology originated in the late 19th to early 20th century and was concerned with the prediction and control of the observable, measurable, external aspects of human experience. Behaviourist psychologists rejected the introspective method used by previous philosophers and psychologists and instead relied on using observation and data that was objective and empirical. This is known as an anti-mentalist approach; Behaviourists considered the workings of the mind

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

This good effect led to the cats repeating the action. Watson was considered the Father of Behaviorism; “behaviorism… is a theory of learning based on the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment. Behaviorists believe… responses to environmental stimuli shape our actions” (“An Overview of Behavioral Psychology”). His most famous experiment also involved animals, but the animals were not the main subject of the experiment. A baby boy, less than a year old, was not afraid of white rats at the beginning of the experiment, but by using classical conditioning, the appearance of white rats by the end of the experiment scared the baby. Any object that resembled white rats also scared the baby. B.F. Skinner was an important American psychologist that broadened Thorndike’s Law of Effect. Skinner worked with negative and positive reinforcements on white rats; the rats would have to perform a task, and if done correctly, they would be rewarded, which was the positive reinforcement. The negative reinforcement was when the rat had to perform a task in order to avoid a shock. The shock was the negative reinforcement. Skinner also introduced

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).

   First began by John B. Watson, behaviorism is one of the most widely studied theories today. B.F. Skinner and His Influence in Psychology B.F. Skinner was one of the most famous of the American psychologists. He was

     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.

Psychologists in the 1960s were heavily influence by behaviorism; theory of cognition that focuses on behavior instead of thoughts, feelings, or

However, there were problems understanding cognition by simply studying the behaviour of an organism. This approach to psychology caused a lot of conflict and disagreements in the academic world (e.g. from Noam Chomsky, Ulrich Neisser). It was frustrating for psychologists working in this field to ignore the brain because, according to behaviourism, the internal