Watson JB

Watson, John B.

ACHIEVEMENT(S): Early 20th-century American leading exponent of the new science of behaviorism.

NICKNAME/ALIAS: in full, John Broadus Watson

DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 9 January 1878, near Travelers Rest, SC

DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 25 September 1958, in New York City, NY. Aged 80

DISCIPLINE: Psychologist

FIELD: Psychology

LANGUAGE: English

PARENTS: Pickens Butler Watson and Emma Keziah Roe

SIBLINGS: Unknown

SPOUSE: Mary Ickes, married 1904-19; Rosalie Alberta Rayner, married 1920

CHILDREN: Two children by first marriage; two sons by second marriage

EDUCATION: Greenville High School, 1890-94; Furman University, 1894-99;

University of Chicago, 1900-1903

MAJOR WORK: 'Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology', 1914

LIFE AND TIMES:

Watson spent the year 1899-1900 teaching as principal of the Batesburg Institute, near Columiba, S.C., and then began postgraduate research in experimental psychology at the Department of Philosophy (headed by John Dewey*) of the University of Chicago.

Watson studied for his doctorate under the functionalist psychologist James Rowland Angell, while also taking philosophy and physiology as minor subjects. He gradually became increasingly interested in his physiology classes, and was particularly

attracted to the reductionist ideas of the biologist Jacques Loeb (whose work persuaded him to view "man [as] an organic machine").

As a result, he began visiting the laboratory of Henry Herbert Donaldson where pioneering research was being done on the nervous system of a new research subject, the white rat, with which he became involved. Watson completed his first year at Chicago with a dissertation on possible neurological correlates of rats' problem solving - one of the first experimental (rather than anecdotal) studies of rats' behaviour.

In 1904, he was appointed as instructor at Chicago, and spent the next four years there establishing an extensive programme of behavioural research using rats. In 1908, Watson was appointed as professor of psychology at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, and here he immediately established a laboratory for research in comparative (i.e. animal) psychology.

The following year he became head of the departments of psychology and philosophy, and editor of the influential 'Psychological Review', and by 1912 he had successfully separated the departments of psychology and philosophy at Hopkins.

In 1913, now with his position within the academic establishment firmly established, he then dramatically announced, at the beginning of a series of popular lectures at Columbia University, his break with contemporary psychology and his inauguration of a new theoretical, deterministic approach to the subject.

In Watson's first lecture at Columbia, entitled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It", he outlined this new science of behaviorist psychology which he claimed should be studied under exacting laboratory conditions as a "purely objective experimental branch of natural science", dedicated to the "prediction and control of behavior". Watson then published his lectures in book form as 'Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology' (1914), an epoch-making work in which he argued for the use of animals in psychological research, described instinct as a series of reflexes activated by heredity, and promoted conditioned responses as the ideal experimental tool.

In 1915, Watson became a personnel consultant to the Wilmington Life Insurance Company and wrote on business psychology, stating that behaviorism offered a "purely American" solution to industrial relations and employee problems, allowing industrialists to match employees to jobs, and if necessary showing "how the individual may be molded to fit the environment".

After World War I he then founded, with fellow members of the CCPA, the first corporate personnel consultancy firm, the Scott Company (later the Psychological

Corporation).

In 1918, Watson returned to John Hopkins and again took up his investigations into infant behavior, but now moved from the observation and classification of infant reflexes to attempts at their modification. After only a short period of study, Watson became convinced that almost all emotion is learned rather than innate, and in a series of public lectures he condemned parents for conditioning negative reactions in their children, and

advocated the establishment of behaviorist-run schools to supplant the parental role in child rearing.

More controversial still, he cited as evidence for his theory of human emotional development an experiment - which he claimed proved both the innate fearlessness of infants and behaviorism's validity - in which he systematically conditioned fear of white rats and other furry objects in "Albert" , an 11-month old boy.

Following these lectures, Watson then published his definitive defence of behaviourism, 'Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist' (1919), in which he argued for the extension of the principles and methods of comparative psychology to the study of human beings, and staunchly advocated the use of conditioning in research. He also made a film of his infant research, having earlier studied the strong influence of public

health films upon social attitudes.

Watson began his advertising career in 1921 as an apprentice with the J. Walter Thompson Company, for whom he first worked as a travelling salesman in the rural South and later as a counter clerk at Macy's.

However, within a few months he had risen to the position of vice-president of the company, and as an account executive he was instrumental in the development of several modern advertising methods, including the move away from direct, rational appeals towards more indirect, emotional ones (e.g. his highly successful campaigns for Johnson & Johnson baby powder, which first aroused mothers' fears concerning hygiene and disease, and then offered a product associated with cleanliness, healing and science), and in the use of celebrity testimonials and radio advertising.

Watson was also employed by the company to deal with personnel problems, to which he applied methods of scientific management in order to control the behavior of white-collar workers.

During the 1920s he gave weekly lectures at the New School for Social Research, debated publicly with anti-behaviorists, and then in 1924 published his first popular book, 'Behaviorism', which is credited with inspiring many future psychologists, including the most famous behaviorist, Skinner*.

The success of this work convinced Watson of the possibility of applying behaviorism to many aspect of everyday life for the general reader, and to this end he wrote 'The Ways of Behaviorism' (1928) and

'Psychological Care of Infant and Child' (1928), which were serialized in 'Harper's' and 'McCall's' respectively. The latter book in particular became a bestseller, and his ideas on childrearing - including his admonition to parents against showing their children any physical affection in order to free their offspring from "maternal smothering" - was taken to heart by many American parents. He also published a revision of 'Behaviorism' in 1930.

ASSESSMENT: John B. Watson was a 20th-century American psychologist who, as

professor at John Hopkins University (1908-20), codified and publicized behaviorism, an approach to psychology restricted to the objective, experimental study of the relations between environmental events and human behavior.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None

ONELINER: JB Watson, pioneer in behaviorism

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

EB, ANB

Buckley, Kerry W., Mechanical Man: John Broadus Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviorism, 1989