OUTLINE First Slide The Psychologist, the Baby, and the Hammer ● Little Albert ● Major contribution to the history of psychology and “behaviorism” ● Conditioned emotional response <script> Before I discuss the prominent person who proposed the school of thought, I will tackle first this groundbreaking experiment which led to the development of Behaviorism. The psychologist together with his assistant generated a conditioned emotional response from Little Albert, the most famous baby in the history of psychology, by pairing the loud startling noise of the steel rod which gained an unconditioned response after striking it with a hammer, and the white rat, a neutral object. They were able to elicit a fear reaction from Albert in response to the previously neutral object, the white rat, and then show that his fear response could be extended to other white furry things. The psychologist, Watson, therefore came to the conclusion that our adult fears, anxieties, and phobias must be simply conditioned emotional responses that we developed in childhood. Second Slide John B. Watson (1878-1958) - The Founder of the Behaviorism School of Thought Watson’s early life ● Furman University ● University of Chicago <script> John B. Watson had a melodramatic life. His family lived on the edge of poverty. He studied philosophy, mathematics, Latin, and Greek at Furman University in Greenville to pursue his mother’s dream for him, which was to enter seminary. But, after his mother’s death, Watson went to the University of Chicago to pursue graduate studies in philosophy with John Dewey. Watson became attracted to psychology by the work of the functional psychologist, James Rowland Angell. Watson’s academic career ● Instructor at the University of Chicago until 1908 ● President of the APA’s Division of Developmental Psychology <script> Watson became an instructor at the University of Chicago until 1908 and published a dissertation on the neurological and psychological maturation of the white rat, demonstrating his early preference for animal subjects. His colleagues recalled that he was not successful in introspection which may have helped him to direct his focus on objective behavior psychology. Watson became a professor at Johns Hopkins University in 1908 and was offered a chair of the psychology department and editor of the influential journal Psychological Review. After the publication of his famous Psychological Review article, he was elected as president of the APA’s Division of Developmental Psychology. Third Slide The Development of Behaviorism ● Psychic or mental concepts have no value ● Psychological Review article: Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It (Watson,1913) ● Book: Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1914) ● Book: Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (Watson, 1919) ● Applied psychologist at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency ● Laboratory studies of Consumer Behavior ● Behavioral Psychology as Pop Culture <script> Watson argued that introspection has no value for a science of psychology and published his famous Psychological Review article, the Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It in 1913, launching Behaviorism. In the next year, he published a book called Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, and asserted the acceptance of animal psychology in psychological research, and his proposals for behavioral psychology gained interest from younger psychologists. He intended his new behaviorism to have real world applications so he promoted applied psychology by becoming a personnel consultant to a large insurance company and offered a course for business students at Hopkins on the psychology of advertising and started an industrial psychology training program. However, John B. Watson’s promising career in the academe went down the drain because of his affair with another woman named Rosalie Payner, the young assistant in the “Little Albert” experiment. He was compelled to retire from Johns Hopkins University and never permitted to return to a full-time academic position, which almost altered the course of American psychology. As a result, in 1921, Watson began a second career as an applied psychologist at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. Not abandoning behavioral psychology, he proposed laboratory studies of consumer behavior as he believed that humans and machines are alike in a way that the behavior of consumers can be predicted and controlled like machines. Since Watson had only an indirect contact with academic psychology, he presented his propositions to the general public through lectures, radio addresses, and articles in popular magazines, expanding his reach and notoriety in the field. Fourth Slide Child-rearing Practices ● Psychological Care of the Infant and Child (1928) ● regulatory rather than permissive system ● transformed American practices ● emotional foundation deprivation ● Watson’s family suffered depression, alcoholism, suicide attempts, and death <script> Another dogma derived from the behaviorist approach, Watson published Psychological Care of the Infant and Child in 1928 which basically advocated the use of a regulatory system rather than a permissive system of child rearing. Parents, according to Watson, should be strict with their children and should never embrace, kiss, or allow them to sit on their lap. Watson's behavioral method was not exactly a success inside his own family, despite the fact that his technique altered American child-rearing practices. His two sons suffered from severe depression, which resulted in the suicide of one of them. His daughter attempted suicide as well, and his family's mental disorders were passed down to the third generation. Fifth Slide The Reaction to Watson’s Program ● Mary Whiton Calkins, Margaret Washburn, William McDougall, E.B. Titchener <script> Watson’s behaviorism approach was not embraced immediately or universally as it received little attention in the professional journals. Watson’s attack on the use of introspections stirred appeals from many psychologists. Mary Whiton Calkins, for example, claimed that certain psychological processes could only be examined through introspection. Margaret Washburn named Watson an enemy of psychology. Titchener remarked that behaviorism had overtaken the country like a tidal wave, and William McDougall issued a public warning against its popularity. On the other hand, younger psychologists acknowledged Behaviorism. By the 1920s universities were offering courses about the movement and professional journals accepted behaviorism studies. Sixth Slide The Methods of Behaviorism ● observation with and without the use of instruments ● testing methods ● the verbal report method ● the conditioned reflex method <script> From the previous reports, we have seen how scientific psychology was keen to associate itself with another well-established, and more respected natural science, physics. It adapted the natural science methods which are most evident in behaviorism. Watson insisted that psychology restrict itself to the objective study of behavior of which included: ● Observation with and without the use of instruments It is clear to all of us how other methods rely on observation as a foundation. ● Testing methods Objective testing methods were already in use, but Watson insisted on treating test findings as samples of behavior rather than evidence of mental traits. He asserted that a test is not for the measurement of intelligence or personality, rather, it is a measure of the subject’s response to stimulus while taking the test. ● Verbal report method Some psychologists criticized Watson for applying this method in behaviorism as he was known to be the opponent of introspection, and we all know that verbal report method is utilized in the experimental use of introspection. However, Watson suggested that speech reactions are another type of motor response. ● Conditioned reflex method Two years after the formal founding of behaviorism, Watson endorsed the conditional reflex method, in which he described conditioning in terms of stimulus substitution. Watson adopted this method because it allowed him to analyze behavior objectively, breaking it down into its simplest components, the stimulus-response (S-R) bonds. A response is conditioned when it becomes attached or connected to a stimulus other than the one that originally aroused it. An example of conditioned response is Pavlov’s dogs salivating to the sound of a bell instead of to the sight of food. The conditioned reflex methods are widely used by psychologists to conduct laboratory investigations of complex human behaviors. So to end my part of the discussion, I wanna highlight the difference between structuralism and behaviorism in terms of experimentation. For Wundt and Titchener, subjects were both the observers and the observed because they observe and report their own conscious experience. On the other hand, Watson’s behaviorism demoted human subjects in the sense that they were no longer called as observers; as they will only perform the test, will be observed by the true experimenters, the research psychologists, and nothing more. And that ends my discussion, thank you for listening! Katrina will be discussing the other important concepts of behaviorism! Kat! 1. What ethical and moral considerations do you think were involved in the Little Albert study? The Little Albert study was unethical in the sense that Watson instilled a fear of an innocent baby which generalized to not just white rats but to other stimuli. Watson did not follow the principle of free consent, and the participant was not given the option to withdraw. The study cannot be replicated and the trauma caused by Watson will follow Little Albert for the rest of his life, which is extremely unfair.on his part. 2. How did Watson establish a conditioned emotional response in Albert? Did that response generalize to other stimuli? If so, what kind of stimuli? Watson established a conditioned emotional response in Albert by pairing the unconditioned emotional response he got after striking the steel rod with a hammer, and the neutral object which is the white rat. Before the experiment, Albert did not show any fear to the white rat but after pairing it with the loud startling noise, he developed a fear every time he spotted the rat. Albert’s fear generalized to other white furry things such as a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, and a Santa Claus mask. 3. Was Watson concerned about the practical value of behaviorism? If your answer is yes, to what areas of everyday life did he apply his findings? He intended his new behaviorism to have real world applications so he promoted applied psychology by becoming a personnel consultant to a large insurance company and offered a course for business students at Hopkins on the psychology of advertising and started an industrial psychology training program. Furthermore, he also applied his findings on America’s child-rearing practices and on World War I, in which he served as a major in the US army and developed perceptual and motor ability tests for the selection devices of pilots. He also applied his behaviorist approach on consumer behavior in his second career as an applied psychologist at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. 4. Describe Watson’s approach to child rearing. What were the results of that approach within his family? Watson advocated the use of a regulatory system rather than a permissive system of child-rearing. Parents, according to Watson, should be strict with their children and should never embrace, kiss, or allow them to sit on their lap. This approach of Watson altered the child-rearing practices of American society. However, it was not exactly a success inside his own family. His son, James, shared in an interview that he and his brother were both deprived of any kind of emotional foundation. James and his brother suffered from serious depression that led to the death of his brother caused by sucide. Watson’s daughter with his first wife also made several suicide attempts, the other daughter with his second marriage also took her life years after the death of her half brother. Additionally, Watson’s granddaughter also suffered from depression, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts. 5. In Watson’s 1913 article, what criticisms did he make of structuralism and functionalism? On what basis did he argue that applied psychology could be called scientific? Watson consistently criticized the use of introspection which is an essential part of structuralism. Consciousness, he believed, has nothing to do with the science of human behavior. He also stated that unless the introspective technique is abandoned, psychology will remain divided on whether auditory perceptions have the quality of extension, if intensity is a feature that can be ascribed to color, and hundreds of other issues. In relation, he criticized functionalism which decries the use of elements in the static sense of the structuralists.Rather of breaking down conscious states into introspectively isolable pieces, it emphasizes the biological relevance of conscious processes. However, terminology like sensation, perception, attachment, emotion, and volition were employed by functionalists just as much as structuralists. Furthermore, he stated that experimental pedagogy, the psychology of drugs, the psychology of advertising, legal psychology, the psychology of testing, and psychopathology, which are all flourishing today, qualify applied psychology as scientific. 6. How were Watson’s ideas received by the younger generation of psychologists? Younger psychologists acknowledged Watson’s proposals of behaviorism. By the 1920s universities offered courses in behaviorism and the ideology was accepted in the professional journals. 7. What research methods did Watson accept for scientific psychology? The research methods Watson utilized and accepted for scientific psychology are observation with and without the use of instruments, testing methods, the verbal report method, and the conditioned reflex method. 8. Why was Watson’s use of verbal reports considered to be controversial? The use of the verbal report method in behaviorism became controversial because Watson was very vocal in opposing introspection. opponents of behaviorism contended that he was playing word games, offering merely a semantic change and that he let introspection sneak in the back door after throwing it out through the front. 9. How did the behaviorist’s view of the role and task of human subjects differ from that of the introspectionists? In introspection, human subjects were much more important than the experimenter because they were both the observed and the observer. On the other hand,Watson’s behaviorism demoted human subjects in the sense that they were no longer called as observers; as they will only perform the test, and will be observed by the true experimenters, the research psychologists. 10. Discuss how Watson’s subject matter and methodology continued the atomistic, mechanistic, empiricistic tradition. The methodology used by Watson in scientific psychology continued the atomistic, mechanistic, and empiristic tradition in a way that he studied human behavior by breaking it down into its component parts or elementary units, stimulus and response (S-R) bonds.
