Bio: (1878–1958) American psychologist. John B. Watson studied classical curriculum at Furman University and got his Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the University of Chicago. He remained at the University of Chicago as an instructor until 1908, when he moved to Johns Hopkins University and became Assistant Professor and Chair of Psychology. In 1920 he was dismissed from Johns Hopkins University over a private scandal, and due to this his academic career was over, but, he had a very successful career in private advertising, after that. He founded and was the editor of The Journal of Experimental Psychology, and editor of journals The Psychological Review and The Journal of Animal Behavior, and was president of the American Psychological Association in 1915.

Watson is best known as a founder of the behaviorist approach to psychology. He defined behaviorism as an experimental branch of natural science aimed at the description, prediction, and control of behavior. Watson’s doctoral thesis, published under the title Animal Education: An Experimental Study on the Psychical Development of the White Rat (1903), focused on the relationship between the development of the nervous system and observed behavior in white rats. After his move to Johns Hopkins University Watson shifted his focus to human behavior. In the article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It”, he presented the basic tenets of behaviorism. Watson argued that the subject matter of psychology should be behavior. All other phenomena, like the mind, the psyche, feelings, values, thinking, and even speech, are irrelevant to behaviorism. Behaviorism was greatly influenced by Ivan Pavlov’s experiments on conditioned reflex. Watson deemed every behavior as a response to one or more stimuli. After birth, humans have definite reactions only to a few stimuli. All other behaviors have to be conditioned. This conditioning happens when an individual associates unconditioned stimuli with other stimuli.

Most of the conditioning happens in early childhood, hence the knowledge of child development is crucial for understanding how healthy and unhealthy personalities are formed; and for designing a behavioral social technology that would be used to alter human behavior. Watson believed that psychology should be used to predict and control behavior, in order to create a good society. He thought that behaviorism should educate individuals so they can understand their own behavior and alter it so they become healthy. Watson argued that the ultimate goal of psychology is to adjust individual needs to the needs of society.  

Watson did many observational and experimental studies on newborns and infants, and the results of those studies were represented in one of the first psychology films Investigation of Babies (1919),  the article “Conditioned Emotional Reactions”(1920), and in the child-rearing manual Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928). One of the main focuses of his research on babies was the difference between unlearned (instinctive) and learned behavior. His observation revealed that behaviors like crying, urination and defecation, sneezing and hiccoughing, erection of the penis, smiling, grasping, and blinking were unlearned. He concluded that behaviors like crawling, swimming, and handedness were learned. Watson argued that the beginnings of language are in unlearned vocal sounds. Watson found that three visceral emotional responses are unlearned – fear, rage, and love – while all other visceral habits are shaped by conditioning.

Watson’s most famous and, at the same time, controversial experiment was done on an eleven-month-old boy, known as “Little Albert”, the results of which were published in the article “Conditioned emotional reactions” (1920).  This baby boy didn’t show any obvious signs of fears or phobias except for sudden loud sounds. At the start of the experiment, Little Albert was lеft to play with the tame white rat, but on subsequent occasions, experimentators would make loud unexpected noises behind the boy, while he was playing with a rat. After some time Little Albert became afraid and distressed with just seeing the rat, and even more, of seeing any furry object. Watson's conclusion from this experiment was that it (the experiment) completely disproved psychoanalytic explanation for the causes of the fears, that is, that fears come from some unobservable internal mental processes. Watson argued that the experiment proved that all fears come from learning by association and that this knowledge can be used to treat fears and phobias in children by exposing them to situations where they would associate positive emotions with the object of the fear.

Watson wrote a popular child-rearing manual Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928). The manual encouraged parents to apply the principles of behaviorism in childrearing. It contains some quite controversial advice on how to raise children: “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning“ (1928:81– 2). Parents should impose strict routines and have control over the behavior and environment of a child. The goal of this kind of upbringing is to make children who are autonomous, bold, and self-reliant. Children should be adaptable, problem-solving, and work-oriented, and exhibit low attachments to places and people.

At the beginning of his career, Watson thought that instincts had an important role in learning, but he later changed his mind and downplayed the importance of instincts. In his book Behaviorism (1925) Watson stated: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up and I’ll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors”.

Watson was also a pioneer of behavioral pharmacology. In his advertising career, he introduced new marketing techniques, the most important of them being an association of an attractive image with the product that is promoted, when that product has no intrinsic connection with a product.

Main works

Animal Education: An Experimental Study on the Psychical Development of the White Rat (1903);

Kinaesthetic and Organic Sensations: Their Role in the Reactions of the White rat to the Maze (1907);

“Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It”, in Psychological Review (1913);

Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1914);

Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919);

“Conditioned Emotional Reactions”, in Journal of Experimental Psychology (1920);

Behaviorism (1925);

The Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928).