Watson
Alters Psychology's Course as Behaviorism Makes Its Debut
The
debate between structuralism and functionalism was only the prelude to
other
fundamental controversies in psychology. In the early l900s, another
major
school of thought appeared that dramatically altered the course of
psychology.
Founded by John B. Watson (1878-1958), behaviorism is a
theoretical
orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology
should
study only observable behavior. It is important to understand what a
radical
change this definition represents. Watson (1913) was proposing that
psychologists
abandon the study of consciousness altogether and focus
exclusively
on behaviors that they could observe directly. In essence, he
was
redefining what scientific psychology should be about.
Why
did Watson argue for such a fundamental shift in direction? Because to
him,
the power of the scientific method rested on the idea of
verifiability.
In principle, scientific claims can always be verified (or
disproved)
by anyone who is able and willing to make the required
observations.
However, this power depends on studying things that can be
observed
objectively. Otherwise, the advantage of using the scientific
approach
-replacing vague speculation and personal opinion with reliable,
exact
knowledge- is lost. For Watson, mental processes were not a proper
subject
for scientific study because they are ultimately private events.
After
all, no one can see or touch another's thoughts. Consequently, if
psychology
was to be a science, it would have to give up consciousness as
its
subject matter and become instead the science of behavior.
Behavior
refers to any overt (observable) response or activity by an
organism.
Watson asserted that psychologists could study anything that
people
do or say -shopping, playing chess, eating, complimenting a friend-
but
they could not study scientifically the thoughts, wishes, and feelings
that
might accompany these observable behaviors. Watson's radical
reorientation
of psychology did not end with his redefinition of its
subject
matter. He also staked out a rather extreme position on one of
psychology's
oldest and most fundamental questions: the issue of nature
versus
nurture. This age-old debate is concerned with whether behavior is
determined
mainly by genetic inheritance ("nature") or by environment and
experience
("nurture"). To oversimplify, the question is this: Is a great
concert
pianist or a master criminal born, or made? Watson argued that each
is
made, not born. In other words, he downplayed the importance of
heredity,
maintaining that behavior is governed primarily by the
environment.
Indeed, he boldly claimed:
Give
me a dozen healthy infants and my own special world to brnlg them up
in
and I'll guarantee to take 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 of his talents, penchants,
tendencies,
abilities, vocations and race of his ancestors. I am going
beyond
my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary
and
they have been doing it for many thousands of years. (1924, p. 82)
For
obvious reasons, Watson's tongue-in-cheek challenge was never put to a
test.
Although this widely cited quote overstated and oversimplified
Watson's
views on the nature-nurture issue (Todd & Morris, 1992), his
writings
contributed to the strong environmental slant that became
associated
with behaviorism (Horowitz, 1992).
The
behaviorists eventually came to view psychology's mission as an attempt
to
relate overt behaviors ("responses") to observable events in the
environment
("stimuli") . A stimulus is any detectable input from the
environment.
Stimuli can range from light and sound waves to such complex
inputs
as the words on this page, advertisements on TV, or sarcastic
remarks
from a friend. Because the behaviorists investigated
stimulus-response
relationships, the behavioral approach is often referred
to
as stimulus-response (S-R) psychology.
Although
it met resistance and skepticism in some quarters, Watson's
behavioral
point of view gradually took hold (Samelson, 1981). Actually,
psychology
had already been edging away imperceptibly from the study of
consciousness
toward the study of behavior for two decades before Watson's
influential
manifesto (Leahey, 1992) . The gradual emergence of behaviorism
was
partly attributable to an important discovery made in 1904 by Ivan
Pavlov,
a Russian physiologist. As you'll learn in Chapter 6, Pavlov (1906)
showed
that dogs could be trained to salivate in response to the stimulus
of
a ringing bell. This deceptively simple demonstration provided insight
into
how stimulus-response bonds are formed. Such bonds were exactly what
behaviorists
wanted to investigate, so Pavlov's discovery paved the way for
their
work.
Behaviorism's
stimulus-response approach contributed to the rise of animal
research
in psychology. Having deleted consciousness from their scope of
concern,
behaviorists no longer needed to study human subjects who could
report
on their mental processes. Many psychologists thought that animals
would
make better research subjects anyway. One key reason was that
experimental
research is often more productive if experimenters can exert
considerable
control over their subjects. Otherwise, too many complicating
factors
enter into the picture and contaminate the experiment. Obviously, a
researcher
can exert much more control over a
laboratory
rat or pigeon than over a human subject, who arrives at a lab
with
years of uncontrolled experience and who will probably insist on going
home
at night. Thus, the discipline that had begun its life a few decades
earlier
as the study of the mind now found itself heavily involved in the
study
of simple responses made by laboratory animals.
Ironically,
although Watson's views shaped the evolution of psychology for
many
decades, he ended up watching the field's progress from the sidelines.
After
a heavily publicized divorce scandal in 1920, Watson was forced to
resign
from Johns Hopkins University. He left academia at the age of 42,
never
to return. Psychology's loss proved to be the business world's gain,
as
Watson went on to become an important pioneer in modern advertising
(Brewer,
1991).
Although
Watson's ideas proved very influential, they did not go
unchallenged.
One source of opposition was a school of thought called
Gestalt
psychology, which emerged at about the same time as Watson's
behaviorism.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONCEPT
CHECK 1.1
Understanding
the Implications of Major Theories: Wundt,James, and Watson
Check
your understanding of the implications of some of the major theories
reviewed
in this chapter by indicating who is likely to have made each of
the
statements quoted below. Choose from the following theorists: (a)
Wilhelm
Wundt, (b) William James, and (c) John B. Watson. You'll find the
answers
in Appendix A in the back of the book.
1.
"Our conclusion is that we have no real evidence of the inheritance of
traits.
I would feel perfectly confident in the ultimately favorable
outcome
of careful upbringing of a healthy, well-formed baby born of a long
line
of crooks, murderers and thieves, and prostitutes."
2.
"The book which I present to the public is an attempt to mark out a new
domain
of science.... The new discipline rests upon anatomical and
physiological
foundations.... The experimental treatment of psychological
problems
must be pronounced from every point of view to be in its first
beginnings."
3.
"Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such
words
as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly.... It is nothing
jointed;
it flows. A 'river' or 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is
most
naturally described."
Skinner
Questions Free Will as Behaviorism Flourishes
While
psychoanalytic thought was slowly gaining a foothold within
psychology
the behaviorists were temporarily softening their stance on the
acceptability
of studying internal mental events.They were not about to go
back
to making conscious experience the focus of psychology. However, many
did
admit that stimulus-response connections are made by a living creature
-an
organism- that should not be ignored entirely. Under the leadership of
Clark
Hull, this modified behavioral approach still emphasized the study of
observable
behavior, but it permitted careful inferences to be drawn about
an
organism's internal states, such as drives, needs, and habits. For
example,
Hull (1943) argued that if an animal ate eagerly when offered
food,
it was not farfetched to infer the existence of an internal hunger
drive.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photo
caption
I
submit that what we call the behavior of the human organism is no more
free
than its digestion.
B.F.
SKINNER 1904-1990
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This
movement toward the consideration of internal states was dramatically
reversed
in the 1950s by the work of B. F. Skinner (1904-1990). Skinner set
out
to be a writer, but he gave up his dream after a few unproductive
years.
"I had," he wrote later,"nothing important to say" (1967, p.
395).
However,
he had many important things to say about psychology, and he went
on
to become one of the most influential of all American psychologists. In
response
to the softening that had occurred in the behaviorist position,
Skinner
(1953) championed a return to Watson's strict focus on observable
behavior.
Skinner did not deny the existence of internal mental events.
However,
he insisted that they could not be studied scientifically.
Moreover,
there was no need to study them. According to Skinner, if the
stimulus
of food is followed by the response of eating, we can fully
describe
what is happening without making any guesses about whether the
animal
is experiencing hunger. He asserted that finding out how stimuli and
responses
are associated is all we need in order to understand and predict
behavior.
Like Watson, Skinner also emphasized how environmental factors
mold
behavior. Although he repeatedly acknowledged that an organism's
behavior
is influenced by its biological endowment, he argued that
psychology
could understand and predict behavior (through stimulus-response
analyses)
adequately without resorting to physiological explanations
(Delprato
& Midgley, 1992).
The
fundamental principle of behavior documented by Skinner is deceptively
simple:
Organisms tend to repeat responses that lead to positive outcomes,
and
they tend not to repeat responses that lead to neutral or negative
outcomes.
Despite its simplicity, this principle turns out to be quite
powerful.
Working primarily with laboratory rats and pigeons, Skinner
showed
that he could exert remarkable control over the behavior of animals
by
manipulating the outcomes of their responses. He was even able to train
animals
to perform unnatural behaviors. For example, he once trained some
pigeons
to play PingPong! Skinner's followers eventually showed that the
principles
uncovered in their animal research could be applied to complex
human
behaviors as well. Behavioral principles are now widely used in
factories,
schools, prisons, mental hospitals, and a variety of other
settings.
Skinner's
ideas had repercussions that went far beyond the debate among
psychologists
about what they should study. Skinner spelled out the full
implications
of his findings in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971).
There
he asserted that all behavior is fully governed by external stimuli.
In
other words, your behavior is determined in predictable ways by lawful
principles,
just as the flight of an arrow is governed by the laws of
physics
Thus, if you believe that your actions are the result of conscious
decisions,
you're wrong. According to Skinner, we are all controlled by our
environment
not by ourselves. In short, Skinner arrived at the conclusion
that
free will is an illusion.
As
you can readily imagine, such a disconcerting view of human nature was
not
universally acclaimed. Like Freud, Skinner was the target of harsh
criticism.
Much of this criticism stemmed from misinterpretations of his
ideas.
For example, his analysis of free will was often misconstrued as an
attack
on the concept of a free society -which it was not- and he was often
mistakenly
condemned for advocating an undemocratic "scientific police
state"
(Dinsmoor, 1992). Despite all the controversy, however, behaviorism
flourished
as the dominant school of thought in psychology during the1950s
and
1960s (Gilgen, 1982).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Table
1.2
Overview
of Five Contemporary Theoretical Perspectives in Psychology
1. Perspective: Behavioral
o Its Influential Period: (1913-present)
o Principal Contributors: John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, B. F.
Skinner
o Subject Matter: Effects of environment on the overt behavior of
humans and animals
o Basic Premise: Only observable events (stimulus-response
relations) can be studied scientifically.
2. Perspective: Psychoanalytic
o Its Influential Period: (l900-present)
o Principal Contributors: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung,
Alfred Adler
o Subject Matter: Unconscious determinants of behavior
o Basic Premise: Unconscious motives and experiences in early
childhood govern personality and mental disorders.
3. Perspective: Humanistic
o Its Influential Period: (1950s-present)
o Principal Contributors: Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow
o Subject Matter: Unique aspects of human experience
o Basic Premise: Humans are free, rational beings with the
potential for personal growth, and they are fundamentally
different from animals.
4. Perspective: Cognitive
o Its Influential Period: (1950s-present)
o Principal Contributors: Jean Piaget, Noam Chomsky, Herbert Simon
o Subject Matter: Thoughts; mental processes
o Basic Premise: Human behavior cannot be fully understood without
examining how people acquire, store, and process information .
5. Perspective: Biological
o Its Influential Period: (1950s-present)
o Principal Contributors: James Olds, Roger Sperry
o Subject Matter: Physiological bases of behavior in humans and
animals
o Basic Premise: An organism's functioning can be explained terms
of the bodily structures and biochemical processes that underlie
behavior.
click HERE to return to homepage