John B. Watson's Theory: The Father Of Behaviorism

Behaviorism was established in the year 1913 by John B. Watson whose is known as the “father” of behaviorism. He published behaviorism called “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it” (Cherry, 2016). In his paper theorist John B. Watson said: “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.” Which, he meant that experiences we live through every day form our behaviors. According to Kendra Cherry, she stated that other behaviorists believed that any person could be trained to perform any task. Throughout the years of the 1920’s and 1950’s behaviorism grew to become famous in the world of psychology.

The beginning stages of behaviorism began around the 1900’s by a Russian theorist called Ivan Pavlov with classical conditioning. Classical conditioning has to do with learning new behaviors through experiences. Pavlov is famous by his experiment called “Pavlov Dogs.” The reason he did this experiment is when he noticed his dog would not only salivate when seeing food but to other things as well. (McLeod, 2008). His research began by presenting a dog with

Operant conditioning, is a type of learning in which the behavior has consequences. Skinner was influenced a lot by Watson’s behavioristic theories, but Skinner believed that Watson's psychology proposed serious shortcomings (Sammons, p.1). Through the whole experiment with Little Albert since they had adverse effects long term for the infant. The way Skinner studied operant conditioning is by during experiments on animals which is called “Skinner Box” which studies animal behavior (McLeod, 2007). He believed that to change negative behavior reinforcement must be used. He identified three types of responses that follow the