Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

190 CHAPTER 5 LearningJohn Broadus Watson (1878–1958) Watsonfounded behaviorism in the early 1900s,emphasizing the scientific study of observablebehaviors rather than the study ofsubjective mental processes. His influencespread far beyond the academic world. Hewrote many books and articles for thegeneral public on child rearing and othertopics, popularizing the findings of the“new” science of psychology (Rilling, 2000).an exact or precise science, like physiology or chemistry. As Pavlov (1927) wrote,“It is still open to discussion whether psychology is a natural science, or whether itcan be regarded as a science at all.”At about the same time Pavlov was conducting his systematic studies of classicalconditioning in the early 1900s, a young psychologist named John B. Watsonwas attracting attention in the United States. Watson, like Pavlov, believed thatpsychology was following the wrong path by focusing on the study of subjectivemental processes (Berman & Lyons, 2007). In 1913, Watson directlychallenged the early founders of psychology in his landmark article titled“Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.” Watson’s famous articleopened with these sentences:Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branchof natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of itsdata dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation interms of consciousness.With the publication of this article, Watson founded a new school, or approach,in psychology, called behaviorism. Watson strongly advocated that psychologyshould be redefined as the scientific study of behavior. As he later (1924) wrote, “Letus limit ourselves to things that can be observed, and formulate laws concerningonly those things. Now what can we observe? We can observe behavior—what theorganism does or says.”But having soundly rejected the methods of introspection and the study ofconsciousness, the young Watson was somewhat at a loss for a new method toreplace them (Fancher, 1996). By 1915, when Watson was elected president of theAmerican Psychological Association, he had learned of Pavlov’s research. Watson(1916) embraced the idea of the conditioned reflex as the model he had been seekingto investigate and explain human behavior (Evans & Rilling, 2000).Watson believed that virtually all human behavior is a result of conditioningand learning—that is, due to past experience and environmental influences. Inchampioning behaviorism, Watson took these views to an extreme, claiming thatneither talent, personality, nor intelligence was inherited. In a characteristically boldstatement, Watson (1924) proclaimed:I should like to go one step further now and say, “Give me a dozen healthy infants,well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee totake any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless ofhis talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” I amgoing beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary andthey have been doing it for many thousands of years.Needless to say, Watson never actually carried out such an experiment, and hisboast clearly exaggerated the role of the environment to make his point. Nevertheless,Watson’s influence on psychology cannot be overemphasized. Behaviorism wasto dominate psychology in the United States for more than 50 years. And, as you’llsee in the next section, Watson did carry out a famous and controversial experimentto demonstrate how human behavior could be classically conditioned.behaviorismSchool of psychology and theoretical viewpointthat emphasize the scientific study ofobservable behaviors, especially as theypertain to the process of learning.Conditioned Emotional ReactionsWatson believed that, much as Pavlov’s dogs reflexively salivated to food, humanemotions could be thought of as reflexive responses involving the muscles andglands. In studies with infants, Watson (1919) identified three emotions that hebelieved represented inborn and natural unconditioned reflexes—fear, rage, andlove. According to Watson, each of these innate emotions could be reflexivelytriggered by a small number of specific stimuli. For example, he found two stimulithat could trigger the reflexive fear response in infants: a sudden loud noiseand a sudden dropping motion.