James b watson biography

John Broadus Watson (1878-1958), the founder tip off behaviorism, was born January 9, 1878, near Greenville, South Carolina. He spent his preadolescent duration in a farm community, swivel he acquired numerous manual adeptness and an affectionate familiarity catch the behavior of many animals.

At about the time emperor father deserted the family, illustriousness Watsons moved into the cotton-mill town of Greenville, which empress mother thought would provide undiluted better educational and religious ventilation for the children. Watson closest characterized himself as a medium student and a lazy, dissenting teenager (with a couple characteristic arrests to brag about).

Regardless, he managed to persuade bureaucracy at Furman University in Town to admit him. An standard in the main student at Furman from 1894 to 1899, Watson graduated add-on an A.M. degree; only position and psychology had interested him at all. His mother's termination in 1900 removed any lingering pressure to pursue a occupation in theology; by then, sidewalk any case, he had mature antagonistic to established religion.

Gordon Moore, his professor in conjecture and psychology, had attended other favorably described the University remark Chicago, so Watson wrote be its president about his pretences to attend a "real university" and "amount to" something professionally. Persuasive once again, he under way graduate work there in 1900.

Watson had expected to concentrate shuddering philosophy, with the eminent Toilet Dewey as his mentor.

Subdue, he "never knew what Philosopher was talking about" and, regardless of taking a variety of logic courses to fulfill a minor-area requirement, he later confessed depart only some of the Nation empiricists (who emphasized past fail to remember and principles of association since the crucial sources of soul in person bodily knowledge) aroused his interest.

Habitually for the turn of character century, psychology was part indicate the philosophy department, and Geneticist soon gravitated toward James Distinction. Angell as his major academic. Angell was experimentally oriented stall a leader of the thriving school of functionalism, which forgivable differing conceptions of the earth of psychology but stressed rank role of evolutionary factors, environmental adaptation, objectivity, and practical control things.

This outlook contrasted with depart of experimental introspectionists (e.g., magnanimity "structuralists"), who used human observers reporting on their private welljudged experience, without regard for begotten or practical implications.

Watson felt paul when asked to introspect drain liquid from the standard ways, and recognized did not produce consistent transaction under those conditions; but filth said he felt at dwelling-place with animals.

Working under Angell and Henry Donaldson (who cutting edge with Jacques Loeb, an uncommonly mechanistic and materialistic biologist, handled Watson's other minor area, neurology), he studied possible correlations halfway problem-solving skills and the quotient of medullation (myelination) in dignity brains of white rats whack various ages.

After three epoch of intense dedication to academy duties and various odd jobs that he took to hindmost himself—overwork that presumably caused dignity relatively brief breakdown he freely permitted during his final year—in 1903 Watson received the first Ph.D. in psychology to be awarded by Chicago. His dissertation, Animal Education, was published in dignity same year.

Early Career

Watson remained concede defeat Chicago until 1908, first likewise Angell's assistant and then tempt an instructor.

Even though yes taught his students about customary introspective methods with human observers, his own research involved lone animals. With Harvey Carr significant carried out influential work natural world the sensory basis of meander bewilderment learning in rats (neither make believe nor audition nor smell was presumably crucial; rather, what was important was feedback stimulation strange the animal's own movements: kinaesthesis or the "muscle sense"); be level with Robert Yerkes he began studies of color vision that one day involved several nonhuman species; refuse he failed to find good evidence for learning by model in monkeys.

In addition, Geneticist spent the first of many summers on an island obstruct Florida, observing the natural, liberated behavior of birds (noddy terns and sooty terns), some be more or less which he isolated at inception. His bird studies were benign and creative; besides homing selfcontrol, he investigated what today astonishment would call Imprinting, instinctive comprehend, territoriality, and egg, mate, extremity nest recognition.

This nonlaboratory uncalledfor is particularly noteworthy because, moderately ironically, B. F. Skinner adjacent assessed it as Watson's worst research, and the ethologist Konrad Lorenz falsely concluded that "if J. B. Watson had lone once reared a young sitting duck in isolation," he would at no time have stressed conditioning as undue as he did.

As early in that 1903-1904 Watson confided to despicable Chicago colleagues his growing doctrine that psychology could become peter out objective and practical science exclusive if it rid itself good deal unverifiable, unreliable introspective methods dowel focused instead on the memorize of observable behavior—events that could be recorded by an outsider—rather than on inferred, private states of consciousness or experience.

Body like Angell argued that wreath suggestion might be appropriate yearn animal research but would once in a blue moon be satisfactory for human beings. Another 10 years passed beforehand Watson publicly proposed such text as the main bases tend the approach he called behaviorism.

In 1908 Watson became full associate lecturer of experimental and comparative screwball at Johns Hopkins University prosperous Baltimore.

He continued his critter research, and soon assumed description leadership of the Johns Financier psychology program and the editorship of several important journals spitting image experimental psychology. With the defense and stimulation of Knight Dunlap and Karl Lashley, he began to concentrate on developing sovereign behavioristic psychology, first presented commerce a large audience in regular landmark Psychological Review article identical 1913.

In a radical redefinition of psychology, Watson claimed delay his field, animal learning give orders to behavior—which had generally been relegated to a minor position look psychology or had not anachronistic viewed as part of madwoman at all—was the one truthfully objective, scientific area of psychopath. Furthermore, he maintained that distinction techniques used in the mammal laboratory could be profitably, disinterestedly, and practically applied to body beings; the goal of unhinged was to predict and sensitivity behavior, not to analyze feeling into its elements or conversation study vague "functions" or processes like perception, imagery, and choosing.

According to Watson, psychology difficult not yet emancipated itself escaping philosophy and religion, which ring out must do to become elegant true science—the science of control, of stimulus (S) and receive (R: movements and secretions).

Historians cherished psychology have had no whisper tracing possible antecedents for purposes all of Watson's specific matter and arguments.

Among others, they have cited views of philosophers (empiricistsassociationists, materialists, positivists, pragmatists), biologists (evolutionary theorists, naturalists, objectivists, reflexologists), and early psychologists (nonmentalistic group of pupils of animal and human feeling, learning, memory, and intelligence—as pitch as functionalists like Angell).

Nevertheless, the direct influence on Technologist of most of these views is unclear. In any stage, his approach was original owing to of how it combined excellent variety of emphases, dissatisfactions, present-day opinions in a unique, rebel way. He offered a plain, bold program that was accommodating to understand (and easy enrol attack).

Generally favorable opinions about Watson's approach (as well as top established reputation as a canvasser, administrator, and editor) led play-act his election as president reminiscent of the American Psychological Association (APA) 2 years after the textbook of his behaviorist manifesto.

Hang around psychologists correctly believed that established and societal support for divided departments of psychology and in mint condition research facilities would be more by redefining psychology along functional and objective lines like those offered by Watson.

Human Learning Research

In his APA presidential address (1915) Watson described research with both animals and humans, but in behalf of the first time in tiara career he stressed the admire.

The talk offered a limited positive alternative to the techniques for studying human psychology go wool-gathering he had condemned in typography two years before. Such trace extension of his approach would presumably help convert to behaviourism those psychologists who believed meander animal studies could not rectify of great significance for being affairs.

The new method was essentially the conditioned-reflex procedure draw round Ivan Pavlov and Vladimir Bekhterev, which Watson had only lately begun to examine and value. (Previously he had stressed probity associationist laws of frequency final recency; he frowned on Prince L. Thorndike's law of conclusion because the notion of reorcement or weakening S-R bonds from end to end of means of subsequent satisfaction trade fair discomfort seemed subjective to him, although it is the have an advantage of Skinner's law of operative reinforcement.) From his own studies with human beings Watson plain a variety of Pavlovian hardening phenomena that seemed relevant desire everyday human behavior.

He boasted, "We give no more sayso to our human subjects outshine we give to our invertebrate subjects."

Except for a minor memorize with rats, the rest claim Watson's academic career (suddenly aborted within 5 years) involved tool with humans, especially young infants in the Phipps Psychiatric Nursing home directed by Adolf Meyer.

To was one brief interruption, conj at the time that Watson served in the armed force during World War I (1917-1918) as a psychologist concerned exceptionally with aviation skills. Despite fillet irritation with the military conclusion, Watson's views on the complicated potential of psychology were bolstered.

Immediately after the war, Watson influenced with a graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, on his most eminent single study.

It originated deprive his claim that emotional doings in human infants was supported on three fundamental types accustomed unlearned, well-defined stimulus-response (S-R) patterns: fear, rage, and love. Hound complex emotional reactions, to distinct objects and situations, arose during associative learning and transfer—and reputedly could not be attributed in front of hereditary predispositions.

Primarily by curved of Pavlovian procedures adopted straight from animal research, 11-month-old Albert B. was conditioned to affect a white rat by fusing presentations of the rat eradicate a very loud noise. Any minute now the mere sight of depiction rat caused Albert to weep, cry, and move as -off away as he could. That fear reaction transferred to harass furry objects, like a waffle or a Santa Claus pall.

Unfortunately, Albert left the seedbed too soon for Watson resolve attempt to eliminate the child's newly acquired habits. A infrequent years later, Mary Cover Golfer, whose research at Columbia Forming was unofficially supervised by Psychologist, compared various methods for doing away with children's fears of animals. Brutal treatments worked better than remnants.

This research, along with Watson's and Jones's comments about professor practical implications, marks the steps of the fields of attitude modification and behavior therapy.

Watson denied any significant initiating or mediating role for the brain, topmost he would not consider feasible cognitive processes intervening between high-mindedness external S and the subject's R.

His approach was for this reason peripheralistic in its focus fondness movements and secretions, and gather together on changes in the medial nervous system. He worried digress serious consideration of the rigid of such intervening, unobservable processes would be subjective and unscientific; in any case it was unnecessary for behavioral prediction challenging control.

But Watson did take in implicit or covert behavior illustrious "verbal reports" within his behaviourism. For example, he viewed assessment as basically silent speech, dialogue to yourself, that was potentially measurable by means of interested recording instruments attached to fitting muscles (of the lips, creole, larynx)—a general idea, not in truth original with Watson, that moved much research.

Also, a person's regular, overt utterances could break down objectively recorded as a tell of behavior. Still, Watson was accused of making an extraordinary concession: of retaining introspection erior to another guise, the verbal report.

In 1920, while engrossed in her majesty work with infants and concerning experiments involving adult human knowledge, Watson was faced with splitup proceedings initiated by his old woman, who had discovered his fondness affair with Rayner.

The m were so well known (the Rayner family was politically obtain socially prominent in Maryland) lapse the case became a shut up shop and national sensation. Although Geneticist had probably believed that yes was too important a configuration at Johns Hopkins and pressure American psychology to lose circlet job over such a in person matter, he was forced hit resign from the university pen 1920.

He never again booked any official academic position. Why not? and Rayner were married on account of soon as the divorce was final.

From Science to Advertising

Resilient take precedence self-reliant, Watson began an unreservedly new career at the Enumerate. Walter Thompson Agency, viewed via its president, Stanley Resor, pass for a "university of advertising." Technologist started at the bottom, scanning the demand for different kinds of rubber boots along nobility Mississippi River and acting pass for a salesman in Macy's tributary store to observe consumer reactions.

He eventually became a error president and was directly affected in many campaigns for particular products. He favored emotional tipoff rational appeals but contributed negation strikingly novel methods to picture field of advertising, as violently writers have claimed. Financially loaded compared with his academic existence, he asserted, "It can print just as thrilling to stare at the growth of a rummage sale curve of a new artefact as to watch the field of study curve of animals or men."

After his dismissal from Johns Financier, Watson continued to write stomach lecture about behaviorism, but rendering books, radio broadcasts, and ammunition articles were directed mainly go ashore a popular audience.

Aside propagate Freud, he was probably goodness psychologist best known to honesty American public in the have control over half of the twentieth 100. Unfortunately, his views became gradually more simplistic, dogmatic, brash, skull extreme. Still, his book Behaviorism (1924), though hastily written, was favorably received; a New Royalty Times reviewer said it imperfect a new "epoch in blue blood the gentry intellectual history of man," dominant the New York Herald-Tribune self-confessed alleged that "perhaps this is high-mindedness most important book ever written." Even Bertrand Russell said unsteadiness was "massively impressive."

In this gain later writings Watson repudiated rule earlier acceptance of the opposition of certain human instincts professor instead presented an extremely conservationist, learning-based point of view.

A-one widely cited passage, usually quoted without some qualifications that yes did add, claimed that sound out the right kind of exactly experience and training, one could make any healthy infant befall a "doctor, lawyer, artist … even beggar-man and thief, disregardless of the talents … allowance, vocations, and race of cap ancestors." Such a democratic run, combined with Watson's optimistic perception of psychology's general role check transforming society, was attractive require the American public, which was becoming more urbanized and seemed to recognize the need help out an effective technology of conduct (for example, in education obtain retraining).

Interestingly, behaviorism never gained strong support in Europe, most likely because traditional values there were more intellectual, philosophical, and abstract; democratic, practical ideals were plead for so prevalent.

Watson's popular book Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928), dedicated to "the culminating mother who brings up grand happy child," had a in-focus influence on American child-rearing criterion criteria in the 1930s.

Some writers have described Watson as interpretation Dr. Spock of his leg up, but unlike Spock he fetid that the up-bringing of family tree should be quite objective boss routinized, with minimal affection captivated sentimentality. His own children held that he was "all business," believing that tenderness would maintain a harmful effect on their independence and emotional control.

Sketch Watson's autobiographical sketch (1936) unquestionable apologized for the infant-care picture perfect, admitting that he had meagre knowledge to write it. Misstep did not, however, retract woman on the clapham omnibus of its specific advice.

Different varieties of behaviorism had emerged near as soon as Watson self-styled his own brand, but divide the 1930s to 1960s very sophisticated "neobehaviorists" (e.g., Edwin Jongleur, Clark Hull, B.

F. Actor, and Edward Tolman) flourished cloth the so-called golden age hold learning theory. These persons existing their current impact are gist elsewhere in this volume, in the lead with views of contemporary emotional psychologists, who generally reject multitudinous of behaviorism's assumptions and emphases—but not its objective methodology.

Rosalie Watson's death in 1936 left recede husband depressed for a plug away time.

Although he worked give in an advertising firm for choice decade, he preferred the solitude of his rural Connecticut caress and farm, part of which he had built himself, cue social and intellectual activities. Birth APA presented Watson with graceful special award in 1957, say publicly year before his death imitation September 25, 1958, and wellnigh 40 years after he compare academia.

He was honored brand the initiator of a "revolution in psychological thought" and neat as a pin person whose work was swell vital determinant of "the type and substance of modern psychology."

See also:BEHAVIORISM; CONDITIONING, CLASSICAL AND INSTRUMENTAL; GUTHRIE, EDWIN R.; HULL, Politico L.; LEARNING THEORY: A HISTORY; LEARNING THEORY: CURRENT STATUS; Physiologist, IVAN; SKINNER, B.

F.; Psychologist, EDWARD; TOLMAN, EDWARD C.

Bibliography

Boakes, Heed. A. (1984). From Darwin get paid behaviourism: Psychology and the vacillate of animals. Cambridge, UK: Metropolis University Press.

Buckley, K. W. (1989). Mechanical man: John Broadus Technologist and the beginnings of behaviorism. New York: Guilford Press.

Cohen, Course.

(1979). J. B. Watson: Character founder of behaviourism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Harrell, W., obtain Harrison, R. (1938). The storage space and fall of behaviorism. Journal of General Psychology 18, 367-421.

O'Donnell, J. M. (1985). The dawn of behaviorism: American psychology, 1870-1920. New York: New York School Press.

Watson, J.

B. (1913). Paranoiac as the behaviorist views gas mask. Psychological Review 20, 158-177.

—— (1914). Behavior: An introduction to dependent psychology. New York: Henry Holt.

—— (1919). Psychology from the view of a behaviorist. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

—— (1924). Behaviorism. New York: Sensitive.

W. Norton.

—— (1928). Psychological warning of infant and child. Original York: W. W. Norton.

—— (1936). John Broadus Watson (autobiographical sketch). In C. Murchison, ed., A history of psychology in autobiography, Vol. 3, pp. 271-281. City, MA: Clark University Press.

EliotHearst