John Watson and His Contributions

¶ … John Watson and his contributions to the field of behavioral psychology. John B. Watson came to be known as one of the creators of behavioral psychology and an expert in the subject. He later left psychology and worked in advertising, creating a completely new niche of advertising that tried to market to people's behavior.

John B. Watson was an American psychologist. He was born in Travelers Rest, South Carolina in 1878. His father left the family when Watson was a young boy, and that affected him later in life. He attended Furman University in South Carolina and later got his masters degree from the University of Chicago. He became interested in the behavior of animals in Chicago, and wrote his dissertation on the relationship between behavior in the white rat and the growth of the nervous system. After graduation, he took a job in the psychology department at Johns Hopkins University, where he continued his studies on behaviorism (Watson, 2010).

Watson believed psychology as it was defined at the time was outmoded. A biographer writes, "In 1913 at Columbia University, Watson delivered a lecture entitled 'Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.' Before this speech the field of psychology was in disagreement over the ideas of the nature of consciousness and the methods of studying it" (Watson, 2010). He later expanded the speech into a book about behavioral psychology. In that book he wrote, "For the behaviorist, psychology is that division of natural science which takes human behavior -- the doings and sayings, both learned and unlearned, of people as its subject matter. It is the study of what people do from even before birth until death" (Watson, 1924, p. 4). He argued that before behaviorism, psychology was introspective, and that idea no longer worked. When he first began his research, he studied the behavior of animals, later he began to study humans, convinced that their behaviors, instincts, and reactions were the key to understanding human psychology. He also believed this was necessary to raise psychology to the level of the other sciences. In its infancy, other scientists often looked down on psychology, and Watson wanted this to change.

As his studies continued, he began to speak and write about his beliefs. Biographer Watson continues, "He proposed the idea of an objective psychology of behavior called 'behaviorism.' He saw psychology as the study of people's actions with the ability to predict and control those actions" (Watson, 2010). His theories were considered quite radical at the time, and his books created controversy. In fact, his theories became known as "radical behaviorism" (Watson, 2010). Watson continued to teach and do research at Johns Hopkins until 1920, when the university forced him to resign due to a sex scandal (he had several affairs during his marriages, which helped distance him from his children). Two writers note, "Six days later, under severe pressure from the university, Watson submitted his resignation" (Scull & Schulkin, 2009). He changed careers and entered the advertising business, where he spent the rest of his career. However, he still wrote about behaviorism and conducted experiments in it, becoming a leading authority on behavioral psychology.

Watson may be the most famous for the "Little Albert Experiment," which studied emotions in children. He believed that children have three basic emotions: fear, love, and rage. Biographer Watson notes, "He wanted to prove that these three reactions could be artificially conditioned in children. Watson used a little boy named Albert to test his theory. He repeatedly presented Albert a rat in conjunction with a sudden, loud noise to classically condition fear of the rat" (Watson, 2010). This was very similar to the Pavlov experiment where the scientist rang a bell and his dog began to drool, expecting food. He writes of the experiment, "We determined to take Albert and attempt to condition fear to a white rat by showing him the rat and as soon as he reached for it and touched it to strike a heavy steel bar behind him. We first showed by repeated tests that Albert feared nothing except loud sounds (and removal of support)" (Watson, 1924, p. 231). Later, Watson showed the fear transferred to other white objects, like a white furry hat, a dog, white yarn, and even Watson's white hair (Watson, 2010). Watson believed that he could teach behaviors, and that if he had twelve infants, he could teach them all to embrace certain careers by the time the reached adulthood.

After his Little Albert study, he studied other children to see if he could change their fear responses, and he managed to change their behavior in many situations. After his experiments he wrote, "Fear responses to cotton, the fur coat, and feathers were entirely gone. He looked at them and handled them and then turned to other things. He would even pick up the fur rug and bring it to the experimenter" (Bentley et al., 1928, p. 65). Watson believed that adults could be "reprogrammed" too, but that it was much harder, because they had spent years learning their behaviors, so they were much harder to undo.

Watson was also controversial because he felt love was a negative emotion that led people to make poor choices, and he thought parents should not show their children love. Another writer notes, "Watson warned parents about the dangers of coddling and spoiling, insisting that 'too much mother love' was ruining the temperaments of modern children. Assumptions about gender underscored much of the work of Watson and others, so much so that they rarely felt the need to spell these assumptions out explicitly" (Grant, 2004). In fact, his biographer maintains that Watson had poor relationships with his four children, and he died living the life of a recluse (Watson, 2010).

Watson also became an expert at child psychology, and wrote a best-selling book about his beliefs in 1928, called Psychological Care of Infant and Child. He still urged parents not to show too much love to their children, because it could make them too dependent as adults. He wrote of the emotion, "We are inclined to think that as the individual grows older persons, places and things tend to become generally associated with organic responses of one kind or another and to some extent specifically with those connected with love" (Watson, 1924, p. 271). His theories on love were not accepted by all his peers, and by the 1930s, he stopped working on psychology and turned his full focus to advertising.

Watson was extremely important to behavioral psychology because he was one of the first to identify it and study behaviors in an attempt to understand it. He developed the theory that all behaviors are learned, and can therefore be unlearned, that learning can occur in negative and positive ways, such as reward or punishment, and he proved these theories with many of his experiments. Behaviorism became one of the most popular areas of study in psychology, and behaviorists who followed Watson's ideas developed many of the classic psychological terms, such as classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and reinforcement. Psychologists commonly use these terms in psychology today, and they form the backbone of the Watson behavioral theory.

Pavlov discovered the idea of classical conditioning with his drooling dog, but Watson's experiments also proved it occurred, and it could be used to teach fear or undo fears. Watson believed that everything occurred as a result of conditioning, and this theory is still used in many areas of psychology today. In this new type of psychology Watson created, the psychologist did not study feelings and moods; it was more scientific and therefore more acceptable to other scientists. In addition, Watson's experiments showed a very important aspect of behavior, that it could be modified by adding or removing stimuli. Behavior modification is still extremely important today, and psychologists often use it to help people rid themselves of bad or destructive behaviors.