Who believed that learned observable behavior is the only thing worthy of scientific research?

Abstract

For radical behaviorists, talk about "private events" could be about any of four things: (a) private behavioral events, (b) physiology, (c) dispositions, or (d) explanatory fictions. Talk about private events as behavioral engages the influence of feelings, sensations, and covert opérant behavior. Analyses based on private behavioral events allow radical behaviorists to understand how those events contribute to contingencies controlling subsequent operant behavior, whether verbal or nonverbal. Talk about private events in physiological terms risks confounding explanatory categories. Although physiology necessarily participates in behavioral events, physiological events are not the same type as behavioral events, public or private. Rather, an organism's physiology is a material cause. To portray physiology as an autonomous, initiating cause, as traditional psychology often does, creates a variety of explanatory problems. Talk about private events as dispositions does not reflect anything literally private. Rather, dispositional talk reflects the probability of behavior engendered by contingencies. Dispositional talk is about effects, instead of causes or intervening variables as traditional psychology often portrays them. Finally, some talk ostensibly about private events is little more than an appeal to explanatory fictions. This talk, common in traditional psychology, owes its strength to the everyday social reinforcement inherent in "folk psychology." The talk represents a surrender to mentalism and methodological behaviorism, notwithstanding any claims that it is "theoretical."

Journal Information

Founded in 1973 under the name Behaviorism, Behavior and Philosophy is a journal devoted to the philosophical, metaphysical, and methodological foundations of the study of behavior, brain, and mind. In addition to original articles, critical or historical reviews and responses to articles are also welcome. While we hope that everything we publish will be scientifically and philosophically sound, we insist above all on clarity and directness, respecting Francis Bacon's dictum that "truth will sooner come from error than confusion." Every article should be accessible to an educated but unspecialized audience.

Publisher Information

The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies is a charitable, non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization whose mission is to advance the scientific study of behavior and its humane application to the solution of practical problems, including the prevention and relief of human suffering. The Cambridge Center was founded by Dr. Robert Epstein in 1981.

He was an American psychologist. He is best known for establishing the psychological school of Behaviorism. His theories, research, and work were influential to the field of psychology, and through that, he left his marks on the larger world. Continue reading this article to learn all about the man that helped develop the theories behind behaviorism psychology. We will also discuss modern alternatives to traditional behavior therapy, such as online therapy with qualified and licensed online therapists with BetterHelp.

John B. Watson Helped With Pioneering The Behaviorism Psychology Movement.

Who Was He?

Childhood and Early Education

Born on January 9, 1878, John Broadus Watson became more commonly known as John B. Watson in academic circles. John was born in Traveler's Rest, South Carolina. Watson's parents were Pickens Butler and Emma Watson.

Mother

His mother Emma Watson was a religious woman and, so she named John after a Baptist minister. Watson's mother hoped that he too would grow up and preach the Gospel and thus subjected him to harsh religious training. Watson's mother's method backfired as he eventually felt quite antipathetic towards religion and instead identified as an atheist.

Father

John's father, an alcoholic, left his family when he was 13 to live with two other women. His family was left in poverty, and eventually, Emma had to sell the family farm. At that time, John and his mother, Emma Watson, moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where Emma felt he might see more success in life. Indeed, in Greenville, John was exposed to many different people and started to view the world with a psychologist's mindset.

Advanced Education and Early Career

Despite Watson's tumultuous early life and the impoverished state of Watson's family, Watson knew he must attend college to improve John's own life. Up to this point, Watson had not been a very good student. However, John's mother, Emma Watson, had some connections, and she assisted Watson in gaining admission to Furman University. There, John Watson completed his classes but did not particularly excel in his academic endeavors. Watson also lacked social skills, which led to Watson being considered insubordinate by his instructors. John B Watson supported himself financially while in college. Watson later graduated with his master's degree at age 21. Watson accomplished this by changing his focus and putting forth great effort in his studies. Upon graduation, Watson worked for a year at a one-room school (that he titled "Batesburg Institute") in the roles of janitor, handyman, and even principal.

Career In Psychology

Eventually, Watson decided he must continue his education. A professor at Furman recommended that he attend the University of Chicago and study philosophy with John Dewey. Watson successfully petitioned the President of the university to allow him admission. Watson worked with the following influential minds:

DeweyJames Rowland AngelJacques LoebHenry Herbert Donaldson

B Watson's study and work in psychology began at the University of Chicago where he began developing what would come to be called behaviorism. B Watson disliked unobservable data. John B. Watson believed that psychology should only study what could be measured, seen, and observed in some way.

Early Career

Early in his career, he was influenced in this thinking by the work of Ivan Pavlov. Ivan Pavlov had discovered the relationship between stimulus and response and recorded his research showing that people and animals could learn to associate one thing with something else. His research was some of the earliest in what is now called “classical conditioning.” He included Ivan Pavlov's basic principles in his theories and study of psychology.

Doctoral Dissertation and Beyond

For his doctoral dissertation, Watson studied brain myelination and learning in rats. The resulting paper was titled "Animal Education: An Experimental Study on the Psychical Development of the White Rat, Correlated with the Growth of its Nervous System." Watson's dissertation showed that myelination was related to learning. After Watson graduated with his doctorate, Watson was offered a faculty position at Johns Hopkins University where Watson was offered the chair of the psychology department. Unfortunately, in October 1920, Watson was asked to leave the positions due to bad publicity. Watson was having a relationship with his graduate assistant, Rosalie Rayner, who Watson later married.

Significant Contributions

"Manifesto on Behaviorism"

Watson created the school of behaviorist methodology within psychology and Watson published his views on this psychological theory in 1913. Watson's article was entitled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It," and this article is commonly considered a manifesto on behaviorism. Watson's article outlined behaviorism as an objective branch of science that would base its theories and findings on experimental research using purely observable data. One goal of behaviorism that was listed in Watson's article was to understand how certain behaviors develop as a consequence of conditioning to external stimuli.

Area of Study

Watson was not particularly concerned with the following:

thoughtcognitionintrospectionor other forms of internal consciousness

Watson thought it was foolish to interpret the inner workings of the mind. Watson believed psychologists should concern themselves with only what they could see.

Views on Human Behavior

Watson applied his views to all parts of human behavior including language and memory. Watson believed the language to be a "manipulative habit." Watson's meaning of this term was meant to describe the human ability to manipulate the sounds made with the larynx. Watson believed that language and all behavior are conditioned (taught) in this case through imitation. Watson theorized that over time people learned to associate certain sounds or spoken words with certain objects, situations, or symbols.

Hypothesis

Watson hypothesized that just as people learn to associate sounds with objects or symbols, so too did people learn to associate certain feelings, behaviors, and other things with situations, objects, and symbols. This was Watson's blueprint for learning, through which Watson believed all people learn or can unlearn and relearn lessons as needed.

Most Influential Work

Watson's most influential and well-known work was his study of emotions. Watson was particularly interested in studying the way that emotions could be learned. Watson believed that emotions were merely physical responses to external stimuli and that rage, fear, and love were all yet to be learned at birth.

Little Albert

Watson was particularly interested in studying fear. Watson explored the aspect of fear by pairing an otherwise mundane stimulus (a loud bang), with the appearance of an equally non-dangerous object (a white rat) also called a “neutral stimulus”, the sudden unpleasant sensation of loud noise paired with the rat would produce a fear response. Watson studied this phenomenon in the famous and controversial "Little Albert" study. In this study, he used loud noises to condition (or teach) a baby to be fearful of white rats, rabbits, or another similar neutral stimulus. In another study, Watson also found that such fears could be unlearned through exposure to the feared object and learning new associations between stimuli.

Principles of Behaviorism

Moreover, Watson believed that the principles of behaviorism could be used to shape babies into anything an experimenter, parent, or another person might want. Watson famously said:

Quote

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any specialist I might select-doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts, and I admit it, but so have the advocates to the contrary, and they have been doing so for many thousands of years."

- John B. Watson

Controversy

Many find Watson's treatment of Little Albert and Watson's assertion that he could use behaviorism to shape any child into anything, alarming. Watson's study of Little Albert and his learned fears was met with controversy when it was determined that Albert had withdrawn from the study and did not receive treatment to repair his learned fears of white animals.

Rosalie Rayner would later joke about Albert as a grown man being terrified of all things white and fuzzy, which drew a more controversial critique of Watson's research. Because Albert was withdrawn from the study, whoever 'Little Albert' was likely never unlearned those fears.

Watson's most controversial points were made in response to Eugenics, which was a belief that those with undesirable genes should be eliminated and not allowed to pass on their genes, an attitude popular during Watson's time.

Debate

Watson emphasized the role of nurture and the ability for children to become anything, responding to the environment around them. Some of Watson's thinking and the behaviorist approach is how and why we know that some environments are helpful to the development of emotionally healthy children and adults and others are not. Despite Watson's recognition of the importance of nurture in the nature-nurture debate, Watson also believed that parents should not be particularly nurturing. Watson believed that children should be treated as adults and not given much attention or affection.

Watson thought that doing so would give children unrealistic expectations for their treatment in the world. This opinion later resulted in Watson receiving criticism, and Watson did later admit he perhaps did not know enough about child development to speak on such issues. Nonetheless, Watson's views were influential in the fields of psychology and child development.

John B. Watson Helped With Pioneering The Behaviorism Psychology Movement.

Lessons

He overcame environmental obstacles of his own and benefited from the nurturing of his early mentors at college, despite stating that nurture wasn't necessary or could affect a child's expectations in life. Perhaps his childhood lacked nurturing and his later success influenced that opinion. He contributed greatly to the understanding of certain behaviors, which may be conditioned by stimuli found in the environment, and revolutionized the treatment of some behaviors. Therapists today utilize a similar method of "exposure" to help clients move past fears and other commonly portrayed conditioned responses.

If in your own life, you have faced adversity, developed fears, and find yourself held back by your circumstances, the right people and experiences can also help you to overcome those barriers. Therapy is a tool that many people turn to for help to work past difficult situations and fears. For more information on how telehealth counseling can help you, click on the link above and read the following reviews left by BetterHelp users.

Conclusion

Many therapists use the principles of behaviorism that were initially developed and popularized by John B. Watson. However, many psychologists also recognize that the views of learning advanced by Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson underestimated the importance of thought or cognition. Cognitive-behavioral therapy or CBT is one of the most researched methods of therapy in use and shows success with all sorts of problems.

CBT was developed by Aaron Beck, who incorporated elements of behaviorism. CBT examines the links between events or external circumstances, thoughts or meaning derived from those, and resulting behavior to help people manage behavior and emotions.

Who believed in observable behavior?

What psychologist only thought observable behavior should be studied?

Who said the scientific study of observable behavior?

Who believed that observable behavior should be measured and verified?