Origins of Behaviorism: Watson, Pavlov, and Skinner

Introduction

Although behaviorism is now considered part of psychology, the scientific study of human behavior started out as its own investigative field. In fact, early behaviorists actively endeavored to set themselves apart from the psychology of their day. Many behaviorists believed psychologists—particularly Sigmund Freud—focused too much on the subconscious mind. Behaviorism was the first attempt to study human behavior using the scientific method. A multitude of research trends and influences in the biological and social sciences led to the emergence of behaviorism as a separate school of thought around the end of the nineteenth century.

The most important theorists who contributed to the evolution of behaviorism as a separate school of thought presented their work as fundamentally different from the other life sciences like biology, but also different from psychoanalysis. Those early behaviorists, who laid the groundwork for future researchers, included John Watson, William James, Wilhelm Wundt, Edward Titchener, Ivan Pavlov, and B.F. Skinner. Each of these researchers approached the scientific study of human behavior using different research questions and methodologies, and each contributed tremendously to the early evolution of the science of psychology.

Early Foundations: Structuralism and Functionalism

The earliest foundations of behaviorism were laid on the groundwork established by the structuralism-versus-functionalism debate. Structuralists wanted to study psychology empirically, with the primary research goal of understanding the various structures of the human mind. Those structures included consciousness, volition, and emotions ("Structuralism, Functionalism, Behaviorism," 2009). In this sense, structuralism was akin to psychoanalysis, although the latter did not apply the scientific method or empiricism. Structuralism did, however, use introspection as a primary research methodology ("Structuralism, Functionalism, Behaviorism," 2009). Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener tried to show that they could use introspection as a scientific method with the goal of objectively understanding the structures of the human mind and consciousness. Early structuralists wanted to explore the study of human perception and cognition using scientific methods to measure human responses to stimuli.

Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener were the pioneers of the study of perception and cognition (Moore, 2011). Though a relatively little-known figure in early psychology, Wundt's experiments involved the perception and sensation domains of human experience. While it seems commonplace now to consider human perception, sensation, and cognition as objects of study, these were revolutionary fields of inquiry at the time. As Green (2009) points out, Wundt's work and other research in perception and cognition was primarily structuralist in nature. Only more recently has science evolved the tools, measures, and methods that can be applied to studying perception and cognition using empiricism.

Functionalism in many ways evolved as a reaction to structuralism and as a further means of legitimizing the field of psychology. Because functionalism used unreliable tools of measurement, it was difficult to establish alongside the natural sciences. Introspective methods were viewed as particularly problematic. Early behaviorists, especially William James and John Watson, believed that introspection is not a valid tool for scientific research, particularly because experiments cannot be replicated (Watson, 1913). Watson also believed that psychology used "esoteric methods" and could not establish itself as a natural science if it continued to rely on introspection and focus only on abstract concepts like consciousness (p. 163). Watson did not claim that the structures of the mind are not a worthwhile subject, but rather that they are simply not a scientific subject. Functionalists sought to make psychology a more objective endeavor and to show that it had pragmatic applications as well.

Functionalism was the movement that initiated what would later be known as behaviorism. William James and Chauncey Wright were among the founders of functionalism (Green, 2009). Later, the founding father of behaviorism, John Watson, drew heavily from functionalism by focusing not on the structures of the human mind—such as consciousness or emotion—but on how those structures functioned. In other words, functionalists were interested in what was observable and measurable using objective instruments and the five senses alone, without introspection and the "esoteric methods" Watson alluded to.

As Green (2009) also points out, functionalism was heavily influenced by Darwinism. Darwinism similarly sought to find logical, measurable, and provable answers using the scientific method. John Watson, William James, and Chauncey Wright were proponents of functionalism, which allowed researchers to apply the scientific method to behavioral science and behavioral psychology (Green, 2009). Another prominent functionalist who helped propel the early behaviorism movement was Edwin Burket Twitmeyer, who first studied the human "knee-jerk" reflex (Clark, 2004, p. 279). Twitmeyer's study of this reaction later became integrated with classical conditioning. Building on Twitmeyer's work, Ivan Pavlov became the first researcher to methodically study classical conditioning.

The drive to make psychology a more scientific field meant that functionalists like Watson—and later Pavlov and Skinner—would dominate psychological discourse throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Green (2009) notes some of the practical contributions of functionalism: "Applications of psychology that emerged from the functionalist ethos included child and developmental psychology, clinical psychology, psychological testing, and industrial/vocational psychology" (p. 75). To resolve the tension between psychology and the social sciences and to infuse psychology with greater credibility, Watson advised that psychologists stop studying consciousness altogether. Watson suggested that researchers focus on behaviors instead, because mental states and consciousness are too ephemeral, and the methods used to study them too speculative. Interestingly, Watson even found problems with the study of sensation and perception—then being studied by Titchener—noting that even sensations and perceptions have introspective components.

John Watson: The Founder of Behaviorism

Behaviorism was a whole new paradigm of psychological research that grew out of functionalism but took the principle a step further. Watson was one of the first psychological researchers to actively investigate the nature-nurture debate. For Watson, environment was everything. He asserted that through the right training and behavioral methods, any infant could be shaped to become virtually anything—from a doctor to a thief. In 1920, Watson and Rayner conducted a now-famous experiment on an infant named Albert to test some of his research hypotheses. The experiment was later criticized as ethically problematic, but it still made a strong impact on the scientific community (Digdon, Powell, & Harris, 2014).

Essentially, Watson believed that nurture matters far more than nature. Nature is what gives human beings their instinctive tendencies and capacity for learning, but nurture—the environment—provides the stimuli. Watson's paradigm suggests an inherent equality among all people regardless of demographic features such as race, class, gender, and social status. He believed that a person is a product of their environment and that, with the right opportunities for learning, any human being can thrive. Many people simply lack such opportunities, or their formative years—from infancy through early childhood—do not provide the kinds of stimuli and experiences Watson considered essential.

Whereas psychology was establishing itself as the field that studied the human subconscious and unconscious, behaviorism was something different altogether. Behaviorism focused squarely on observable responses in the human body and behavior, having little to do with emotions and nothing to do with dreams. Behaviorism was also able to show people how they could potentially change their own behavior by developing new stimulus-response patterns. In this way, behaviorism became the basis for studying human motivation and learning. Even so, Watson's early research in behaviorism failed to capture the full nuances of human cognitive-behavioral responses.