John B. Watson was a behaviorist in the early 20th century. He studied behaviors of animals and children in controlled environments to prove that children can be conditioned to certain behaviors. “Behaviorism is a school of psychology that takes the objective evidence of behavior as the only concern of its research and the only basis of its theory without reference to conscious experience” (behaviorism, 2003, p.111). Watson is a well known behaviorist even though his theories were not scientifically proven and disregarded by some in the arena of behaviorism (good therapy website). Even though he was well known in his field, I do not agree with his overall theories. His wife and the mother of his two sons also did not believe in his child raising theory.
Watson was born in South Carolina in January of 1878. He led a troubled teenage life, and was arrested twice for fighting and disorderly behavior. He did poorly in high school. With the help of his mom he was able to get into Furman University in South Carolina. He turned his school life around while there and earned a master’s degree by the age of 21. Watson then went on to the University of Chicago where he studied psychology and that is when he began to develop his behaviorist theories (good therapy website).
In 1913 Watson published an article which became known as “The Behaviorist Manifesto”. His colleagues did not accept his beliefs as being scientifically valid due to a lack of evidence to prove his theory. His theory focused on the external and outward behavior of people rather than the internal emotional and psychological conditions which was more typical of his time pe...
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...s in this field. Behaviorism can be used to improve our understanding of children and the learning process. However, factors other than environmental need to be taken into account. Children’s natural curiosity, prior knowledge, and early nurturing also play important roles in how children learn and behave (education website).
Works Cited
Althouse, A. (2010, September 12). Althouse: "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee...". Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/09/give-me-dozen-healthy-infants-well.html
Behaviorism. (2003). In Merriam-Webster (11th ed., p. 111). Springfield, Ma USA: Merriam-Webster,Inc.
Good therapy (2013, September 18). John Watson Biography. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/john-watson.html
Behaviorism, or learning theory is one of three “grand theories” of human development. The focus of behaviorism is observable behavior, with no reference to mental processes. As a learning theory behaviorism, assumes that learning occurs via interactions with the environment, through the process of conditioning.
behavior as a response to a stimulus. A few of John B. Watson's literary works
Watson. Behaviorism is the “science of behavior” (Pearson) and it disregards the consciousness issue in psychology at the time and focused instead on the observable behavior. Watson believed that all behavior is learned, and he tested that theory with the experiment called “Little Albert”. In the case study, it is stated that her eating disorder started after her parents started fighting her junior year of high school. That would mean the root of her problem originated with her parents
In 1913 a new movement in psychology appeared, Behaviorism. “Introduced by John Broadus Watson when he published the classic article Psychology as the behaviorist views it.” Consequently, Behaviorism (also called the behaviorist approach) was the primary paradigm in psychology between 1920 to 1950 and is based on a number of underlying ‘rules’: Psychology should be seen as a science; Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events, like thinking and emotion; People have no free will – a person’s environment determines their behavior; Behavior is the result of stimulus resulting in a response; and All behavior is learned from the environment. How we process these stimuli and learn from our surrounds
This quote was stated by none other than a determined man who is best known for behaviorism and the Little Albert experiment, John B. Watson. Mr. Watson’s life story intrigued me greatly to study his theory and also to write about it for my research paper. Mr. Watson didn’t have a “Brady Bunch family” where there was positivity and smiles all around in contrast; he had a hard life in his early stage but, managed to still excel in life. His work was based on the findings of Ivan Pavlov who discovered classical conditioning. (Theories of Learning in Educational Psychology , 2013) Mr. Watson made history by being the founder of behaviorism which paving the way for another pioneer of psychology Mr. Burrhus Frederic Skinner also known as B.F Skinner which discovered operant conditioning.
Behaviourism main theorist included Skinner, Pavlov and Thorndike who describes this theory as having a ‘stimulus and response’. Petty states, ‘learners are motivated by expected reward of some kind (such as praise or satisfied curiosity); learning will not take place without it’ (Petty, 2009:15-16). In addition, there should be immediate reinforcement otherwise this will cause a delay in learning. Another principle of behaviourism is the learning should be step by step and not all at once and by doing so the learner has successions of successes which increase their motivation that leads ‘to more complex behaviour’. Petty also states that ‘effective teachers stress key points and summarise them at the beginning and at the end of the class and, makes use of old learning in developing new learning’ (Petty, 2009:16).
Watson was an American psychologist that helped path the way for other researchers in psychology. He was born on January 9th, 1878, in South Carolina. His mother was devoted to religion and she pushed her ideals and morals onto him. She prohibited smoking, drinking, adultery, and other sinful acts. This led to Watson growing up hating religion and eventually, opposing it. Also, Watson was a delinquent when he was young, he was arrested twice and did poorly academically; but, with the help of his mother and her connections, it gave him an opportunity to attend Furman University of South Carolina. This gave him a second chance and he didn’t take it for granted. Watson graduated with a master’s when he was 21. After he finished his years in Furman University, he was presented with an offer from University of Chicago, for his graduates study in psychology. Once he finished his graduate degree, he stayed there as a research
John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) has become well known for being the founder of behaviorism as a school of thought throughout American psychology. His view on psychology consisted of seeing it as a science of observation on behaviors. He believed that one must first observe a behavior in a certain environment or situation, then predict and determine the connection between the two. Much of his theory was based on the work of Ivan Pavlov’s observations through classical conditioning. Watson claimed that the process of classical conditioning could be used to explain any behavioral factor in human psychology. Classical conditioning involves the pairing of two different stimuli in producing a learning response from the participant. His belief on the topic was that single differences in behavior were caused by different experiences of learning.
Behaviorism and conditioning has its share of success stories especially when used to curb undesirable habits such as smoking and drinking, however they have also had their moments of darkness as well as seen in 1920 with John Watson and his little experiments that starred a young boy dubbed Little Albert. During Watson’s experiments to help explain conditioning, During his experiments Watson exposed Albert to a number of animals and recorded Albert’s initial reactions which were next to none at all. Watson then began exposing the same animals to Albert, and providing loud bangs that startled Albert at the same time. Eventually Albert began to cry at the sight of the animals even when they were not seen simultaneously with the loud bang.
John B. Watson was born in South Carolina in 1878 (John Watson (1878-1958), 2007). In 1913 he published an article on behaviorism, “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it (John Watson (1878-1958), 2007).” This article is often referred to as, “The Behaviorist Manifesto (John Watson (1878-1958), 2007).” Watson was the president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1915, and during this time he was awarded a gold medal for his contributions in the field (John Watson (1878-1958), 2007).
In conclusion, the theory of behaviorism is based on observable behaviors for easier quantification and data collection. Effective techniques such as behavior intervention and discrete trial training originate from this school of thought. The approaches are very essential in altering the maladaptive behaviors in adults and children (Cherry, 2011). Today, conditioning and the use of reward and punishment are used to help people learn accepted behavior and in other cases to help them stop problematic behavior (Coon & Mitterer, 2008). This has made behavior modification and training easy and possible. Therefore, Dr. John Watson played a tremendous role in the transition of psychology from the work of earlier scholars to the modern scholars.
There are five main contributors to behaviorism. They are Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, B.F. Skinner, Albert Bandura, and Joseph Wolpe. The beh...
As the name implies, behaviorism focuses on people’s behaviors, which are directly observable, rather than on the mental systems underlying these behaviors (Narasimhan, 1998). Language is viewed as a kind of verbal behavior and it is proposed that children learn language through imitation, reinforcement, analogy, and structured input (Fromkin, Rodman & Hyams, 2003).
Watson had come up with a new psychological study which consisted that of behaviorism. His new study of adjustive behavior had been primarily said it had nothing to do with the conscious content in one’s mind. Watson believed that animal and human seem to just adapt to the environment around them and results in their behavior can be predicted to a certain extent. Watsons’ goal was to come up with a technique in which the leaders of society can control behavior.
Like stated before this theory does not fit into behaviorism. It fits into constructivism which is “[N]ot believe in innate ideas, but in knowledge that is constructed by each individual in interaction with his or her environment” (Pulaski, 1980, p). Cognitive Development Theory uses the environment help to construct knowledge. “[T]hrough their make-believe were assimilating and consolidating as part of their experience the customs and manners observed in their environment” (Pulaski, 1980, p. 28). In just playing make-believe the child had learned about manners and customs without knowing it at the time. As they get older, they go into the next stage and can understand more complex concepts. With constructivism, they need to be active learner and this is something that happens in Cognitive Development Theory. With that is a need to socialize with other people or students. At a young age “[C]hildren 's verbal interactions are primarily composed of collective monologue conversations”(Wadsworth, 1970, p.69). So at a young age they are becoming active learners so when older they can have better discussion about topic and go deeper into