John B. Watson

1878-1958 · American · Behaviorism

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring 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.

John Broadus Watson made psychology a science of behavior and threw the mind out the window. In his 1913 manifesto — "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" — he declared that psychology must abandon consciousness, introspection, and the whole vocabulary of mental states, and confine itself to what can be observed and measured: stimulus and response, the prediction and control of behavior. Within a decade behaviorism had captured American psychology, and it held it for half a century.

Topics John B. Watson addresses

• behaviorism
• stimulus and response
• the conditioned reflex
• habit formation
• the three unlearned emotions
• the conditioned emotional reaction
• Little Albert
• radical environmentalism
• the dozen healthy infants
• prediction and control of behavior
• the rejection of introspection
• the rejection of consciousness
• thinking as subvocal speech
• implicit behavior
• comparative psychology
• behaviorist childrearing
• the objective method
• the rejection of instinct
• transfer and generalization of responses
• the behaviorist manifesto
• emotion as conditioned reflex
• conditioning in advertising

Questions to put to John B. Watson

Psychology as Natural Science

• Why do you think introspection can't be the basis of a scientific psychology?
• What do you mean when you say psychology should predict and control behavior?
• How is studying behavior different from studying consciousness?
• What makes your approach more scientific than the psychology you were trained in?
• Do you really think there's no difference between studying humans and studying animals?

Conditioning and Habit Formation

• How does a conditioned reflex actually work?
• What's the difference between a reflex and a habit?
• How do you explain complex human behavior using only stimulus and response?
• Can any response be conditioned to any stimulus?
• How long does it take to build a habit through conditioning?

The Emotions and Little Albert

• What are the three unlearned emotional reactions you think infants are born with?
• How did you condition fear into Little Albert?
• Why did Albert's fear spread to other furry objects?
• Can conditioned emotional reactions be removed the same way they're built?
• How do you explain adult emotions like jealousy or shame as conditioned responses?

Nature versus Nurture

• What do you mean when you say you could train any infant to become any specialist?
• How much of what a person becomes is really just conditioning?
• What evidence convinced you that talents aren't inherited?
• Are there any human differences that aren't built by the environment?
• How do you answer someone who says musical or mathematical ability runs in families?

Raising Children by Behaviorist Principles

• Why do you think affection and cuddling harm children?
• What does it mean to treat a child with objective kindness?
• How should parents actually build good habits in their children?
• What's wrong with comforting a child who's upset?
• How would a child raised your way turn out different from one raised with affection?

Thinking as Implicit Speech

• What do you mean when you say thinking is subvocal talking?
• Where exactly is thought located if it's not in consciousness?
• How did thinking become silent instead of spoken aloud?
• Can you think without using words at all?
• How would you measure or observe someone's thinking if it's just muscle movements?

Converse with John B. Watson on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in John B. Watson's own writing, cited to the page.