What is John Watson's theory?
Mariano Casper
2025-07-15 00:27:26
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John Watson was an American psychologist who is generally recognised as the ‘father’ of the psychological school of behaviourism. Behaviourism refers to a psychological school which emphasises scientific and objective methods of investigation. Watson’s ‘manifesto’ stated a number of underlying assumptions regarding methodology and behavioural analysis, made it clear behaviourism focuses only on observable stimulus-response behaviours, and considers that all behaviours are learned through events and situations within the environment. All behaviour is learned from, and shaped by, the environment: Behaviourism stresses how environmental factors influence behaviour, virtually ignoring innate or inherited factors – which is essentially a learning perspective. Humans are born with a blank-slate mind and learn new behaviours via classical or operant conditioning. Behaviour is the result of stimulus-response: Even complex behaviours can be reduced to a simple stimulus-response association. Watson’s approach is termed ‘methodological behaviourism’. Psychology should be regarded as a science: Any theory must be supported by empirical data obtained via systematic observation and measurement of behaviour.
Natasha Greenfelder
2025-07-14 19:53:23
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John B. Watson was an American psychologist who codified and publicized behaviourism, an approach to psychology that, in his view, was restricted to the objective, experimental study of the relations between environmental events and human behaviour. He articulated his first statements on behaviourist psychology in the epoch-making article “Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It” (1913), claiming that psychology is the science of human behaviour, which, like animal behaviour, should be studied under exacting laboratory conditions. In his first major work, Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, he argued forcefully for the use of animal subjects in psychological study and described instinct as a series of reflexes activated by heredity. He also promoted conditioned responses as the ideal experimental tool. The definitive statement of Watson’s position appears in another major work, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919), in which he sought to extend the principles and methods of comparative psychology to the study of human beings and staunchly advocated the use of conditioning in research. Watsonian behaviourism became the dominant psychology in the United States during the 1920s and ’30s.
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