John Watson Championed Behaviorism and Founded Behaviorist School of Psychology
John B. Watson, Founder of Behaviorism
John B. Watson (1878-1958), American Psychologist
John Watson (1878-1958), American psychologist, is often referred to as father of behaviorism. In founding the concept of behaviorism, he argued that all animals, including human beings, were complex machines that respond to situations according to the way the brains are wired and the accompanying experience that has conditioned their minds.
In rejecting introspection, Watson advocated a purely objective psychology that solely concerned with observable behavior. He took his ideas of behaviorism into the advertising industry after being forced out of academia. And how did he do this? As executive of one of the largest advertising agencies in the U.S., he tried to move advertising away from its main preoccupation of merely presenting information about products into becoming a media that appeal to non-rational emotions.
Brief Profile of John B. Watson
The founder of behaviorism, John Broadus Watson, was born on January 9, 1878, in Greenville, South Carolina. His teenage life was not a happy one. He was 13 years of age when his father left home after a string of extra-marital affairs that left him and his deeply religious mother to fend for themselves.
He received his PhD in psychology from the University of Chicago in 1903. In 1905, he married Mary Ickes. The couple had two children and divorced in his early 40s. He left the academia after an affair with one of his research students, Rosalie Rayner, who he eventually married, and they had two sons.
After leaving the academia, Watson continued his career in the advertising industry, however, bringing along his behaviorism ideas and trying to implement it.
Watson Detracts Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis
At the advent of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud was creating his idea of psychoanalysis, the process of introspective questioning in which a person reveals deeply-hidden damaging experiences. Freud’s idea was that a kept issue can be dealt with once identified. Despite Freud’s highly acclaimed concept of introspection and psychoanalysis, John Watson detracted it.
Birth of John Watson’s Behaviorism
Five years after getting his PhD, Watson was appointed professor of comparative and experimental psychology at John Hopkins University. During this time, he had also developed the foundation of his concept of behaviorism.
In his concept of behaviorism, John Watson argued that all animals, including human beings, were complex machines that respond to situations according to the way their brains were “wired” along with the experiences that conditions their minds. With his concept, Watson believed that this understanding of behavior could lead to ways of treating people suffering from mental disorders.
In 1913, Watson presented his “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association (APA). He offered an alternative definition of psychology as the “science of behavior” in review of the failings and/or limitations of Freud’s introspective analysis. This year marked the birth of a more scientifically sound psychological school as outlined in his address to the APA.
John Watson’s Experiment of Little Albert
In 1919, Watson began to test his theories in humans, looking at conditioning and controlling people’s emotion. One of the experiments he conducted involved a baby known as Little Albert, he conditioned to have a fear of white rats. His test convinced him that human beings had three basic emotional reactions: fear, rage, and love – that such emotions could grab people’s attention that force them to respond.
Despite criticisms that he made no attempt to explain the physical processes in the brain where his findings of behavior underlie, through behaviorism, he worked relentlessly towards making psychology into a true science. His ideas continued in the works of fellow American psychologist, B.F. Skinner.
John Watson’s works include Behaviorism (1925) and a book on child-rearing, Psychological Care of the Infant and Child (1928).
Sources:
- McGovern, Una, Ed. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers (2002).
- Moore, Pete. E= MC²: London: Quintet Publishing Ltd. (2002).
- Steer, M. (Dr.), H. Birch and Dr. A. Impney, Gen. Eds. Science. Cassell Ilustrated, Octopus Publishing (2008).
Photo Credit:
John Watson, Founder of American Behaviorist Psychology, Wiki Commons (Author unknown).
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Alfred Binet: Pioneer in Intelligence Testing
French psychologist Binet influenced the measurement of abilities.
Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who established the first French psychology laboratory in 1889, and the first French psychology journal with Theodore Simon. He co-authored with Simon the Binet-Simon the Test of Intelligence.
Alfred Binet, French Psychologist
Alfred Binet was born in Nice, France on July 8, 1857. In 1883, he studied hypnosis with the pioneering neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpetrière Hospital in Paris. A year later, he married Laure Balbiani and the couple had two daughters. Six years later, he left Salpetrière Hospital to concentrate on studying his two daughters.
Francis Galton and Galtonian Approach
In the late 19th century, English scientist Sir Francis Galton made pioneering studies of individual differences in intelligence. He believed that people with good senses would be highly intelligent and that these individual differences in intelligence were also inherited. In his book Hereditary Genius, Galton argued that eminent fathers would raise eminent sons.
In 1888, Galton established his “anthropometric laboratory” in order to measure physical features of people and to assess their intelligence.
American psychologist James McKeen Cattell referred to these as “mental tests.” By 1901, no association had been found between physical features and intellectual performance, so Galtonian approach was abandoned.
Alfred Binet Begins Work on Intelligence Scales
In France, psychologist Alfred Binet began work on intelligence scales. His first attempts to measure intelligence were based on measuring the size of children’s heads, between the talented and poorly performing students. He did not find any substantial patterns and argued that individual differences in intelligence could only be detected by more complex processes such as memory, attention, comprehension, imagination and suggestibility.
Binet Devises a Test that Measures Children’s Intelligence
In 1904, Binet was appointed by the French minister of public instruction to develop tests that could measure intelligence in children. A new law has been passed requiring that all French children should be given an education. The problem was that not all children were not capable of learning as were others. Concerned with the low-achieving children, the government asked him to devise a test that could pick out slow learners.
The Binet-Simon Scale Test of Intelligence
The goal was to find a spectrum of tests that could clearly separate children into a normal and a slow group. In 1898, he was joined by Theodore Simon, a young physician who had experience studying retarded children, he constructed a series of specific tests. He developed a scale that differentiated slow learners from those who were able to keep pace with normal levels of instruction.
In 1905, Binet and Simon published their rationale and tests, in The Binet-Simon Test of Intelligence. It figured that any discussion of the cause of a mental retardation was irrelevant. The tests were designed to avoid anything resembling schoolwork, and instead, the tests included activities like remembering shopping lists. It is the intelligence alone they sought to measure, disregarding the degree of instruction the children had received.
This psychological method measured comprehension, judgment, reasoning, and invention. It gave an indication of the child’s general intelligence at that moment. Binet believed that the test reflected the nature of intelligence, as the child’s practical ability to adapt to circumstances are revealed.
Age Introduced as a Feature in the Test
In 1908, Binet and Simon introduced age into the scale. One useful feature of the tests was that an individual child’s score could be compared with the average score for that age. They said that if, for example, 75 percent or more of six-year-old children could pass a particular test, the test was placed at the six-year level. In addition, if a six-year-old child performed as good as the average eight-year-old, he would have a “mental level” of eight.
When his writings were translated into English, the term “mental age” was used, which implied an ordered developmental progression which he did not intend. He was not able to pursue the argument. On October 18, 1911, shortly after revising his tests, he died in Paris.
The Legacy of Alfred Binet
His greatest contribution was devising the first successful and practical intelligence testing which became the basis for IQ tests, a significant measurement of abilities, both in psychology and education worldwide.
Aside from psychometrician Theodore Simpn, Binet’s acquaintances also included philosopher John Stuart Mill and neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot.
Related Article:
Intelligence Testing of Alfred Binet
Sources:
Briggs, Asa, Consulting. Ed. Who’s Who in the 20th Century. Oxford: OUP, 1999.
Clark, John, Ed. Illustrated Biographical Dictionary. London: Chancellor Press, 1978.
Moore, Pete. E=MC². London: Quintet Publishing Ltd., 2002.
This article is originally written for Suite101, entitled “Alfred Binet and His Intelligence Tests”
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Carl G. Jung
Famous Psychiatrist Birthday, July 26.
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
Carl Gustav Jung was born today on July 26, 1875. He was a Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist, who founded the modern analytic and depth psychology. Jung was born in Kesswil, Switzerland, and died in Zürich, 1961, from a short illness.
Jung noticed that the myths and fairytales from different cultures contained certain similarities he called “archetypes”, and believed that these archetypes came from a collective unconscious shared by all human beings, and that if people could get in touch with these archetypes in their lives, they will be more happy and healthy.
In his now known “Jungian” philosophy, he emphasized the importance of balance and harmony and cautioned that modern people rely too heavily on science and logic; that they would benefit from integrating spirituality and appreciation of unconscious realms.
Based on his study of Christianity and other religions, Jung perceived that a person’s journey of transformation is the heart of all religions. It is a journey where self meets the Divine.
Unlike Sigmund Freud, Jung believed that spiritual experience was essential to an individual’s state of well-being.
Interested readers, check out this related link — Carl Gustav Jung and his Philosophy
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