JOHN BROADUS WATSON
1878-1958
HIS MOTHER EMMA ROSE ROE
Devoted Baptist (Reedy River Baptist Church)
 Revival every year
 Believe in strict parenting

HIS FATHER PICKENS
His parents were wealthy and owned a lot of
land
 He had 9 siblings who were successful
 Ran away from home at age 16
 Drink a lot
 Became banished from his
family after marring Emma.

By the time John was born his parents were
very isolated from everyone
 His father tried to provide but couldn’t stick to
one job
 Alcoholic
 Unfaithful to his wife
 Was absent most of the time

1878 ~ John Broadus
Watson near
Greenville, South Carolina.
 4th of 6 children
 By the time he was 13 his father had left for
good
 Pickens tried to come back into his life when
John was famous but John wanted nothing to
do with him

CHILDHOOD
Grew up in poverty, unstable parenting
 But was mostly not unordinary for rural America
during this time. The often absent father and longsuffering mother were typical in American folklord
for this time period.
 At age 6 he started going to a one room school
 At age 8 he and his siblings started to go to The
Travelers Rest Academy (a private school)
 When he was 9, he was good at handling tools,
milking cows.

In 1890, Emma sold the farm and the children
moved to the large town of Greensville
 Did this for more opportunity's and to try and
get out of poverty
 This was a most likely a shock for Watson
 And said later in life that he has only a few
pleasant memories from living there

GREENSVILLE, 1890
YOUTH
John is now age 12 and going in to the 7th
grade
 Shy, Lazy, insubordinate, never made above a
passing grade
 The target of jokes, and fought often with
classmates
 “Swats”

YOUTH CONTINUED
“happiness it the state of being completely
absorbed in activity”
He felt like he needed to have control and staying
busy doing activities was a way to control
something
YOUNG ADULT
After school John would come home from
school and enjoy participating in “Nigger
fighting”
 It was his favorite thing to do
 He was arrested once for fighting with blacks
 He was also arrested for discharging a firearm
within city limits.
 Known as a troubled adolescent

YOUNG ADULT CONTINUED
1881, carrying concealed weapons was normal
 Watson carried a pistol to protect himself
 “that church membership had a good and
restraining influence upon all classes”
 Baptist Courier
 Started attending, Pendleton Street church

WATSON AND CHURCH
Watson was a member of the Pendleton Street
Church until late in his college years
 Transferred his membership to a larger church,
the First Baptist Church
 Edward
 Pickens

COLLEGE
At age 16, Watson started attending Furman
University’s “Fitting-school”, as a “subfreshmen”
 Founded in 1827
 Kappa Alpha fraternity
 Lived at home and
Worked in the chemistry
Lab to pay for school

Graduated with a master's degree at age 21….
 The purpose of college
 Watson the Principle
 His beloved mother passed away
 Letter to Harper

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
In the fall of 1900, he moved to Chicago and
once again was in shock of the big city
 Psychology at the time was considered to be one
of the newest professions with particular
promise.
 Became interested in the field of comparative
psychology and studying animals
 majored in psychology and minored in
philosophy and neurology
 Work ethic and breakdown

MARY ICKES
Background
 Meeting
 December 1903
they married and again in
the fall of 1904
 Later had two children
Mary and John

The youngest person to get a Ph. D. in
Psychology in 1903 from the University of
Chicago
 Consume himself with his career to solve his
emotional crisis
 Watson stated that he often mentored female
students but felt uncomfortable having them as
professional peers

1903
Watson took the position of instructorship at
the university of Chicago
 Made $1,000 per year
 Started to believe that observation of behavior
was key in understanding the behaviors.

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
March 1908 he accepted a full professor
position at Johns Hopkins and started in the
fall at age 29.
 He loved being there because he had freedom
 At 31 he became the director of psychology
 Editor of the Psychological review journal
 Pushed for psychology to be equal to natural
sciences
 1910, Watson and Robert M. Yerkes started the
Journal of Animal Behavior

Researched migrating and nesting of habits of
species of terns
 Traveled to
do give
speeches

WATSONS THEORY ON…
Behavior defined
“a biological problem while ignoring consciousness”
 Psychology defined
“Human activity and conduct”
 Goal of psychology
“not only to be able to predict behavior but to control
it”
 Psychology should be
“the observable fact that organisms, man and animal
alike do adjust themselves to their environment by
means of hereditary and habit equipment”

WORK ETHICS
“Determined to get a living wage”
 Drove himself at a frantic pace that brought
him to the brink of a nervous exhaustion
 Control
 He really wanted to make psychology a
“desirable field for work”
 “kept (his) nose to the grindstone”

1915, Russian psychologist Pavlov
 Tool for gathering data and modifying behavior
 Behaviorism = Observed, recorded and measured.
 John Hopkins Medical School – the clinic and
psychological laboratory
 “swing around to the human side”
 “I get about forty babies a month”
 1916, Found the key to human emotion
 FEAR, RAGE, & LOVE

WWI: MAJOR IN THE SIGNAL CORPS
In a group of scientists and engineers who
played a crucial role in developing policies that
would shape relationships among science,
government, and industry for years to come.
 Watson thought it was a good idea to mobilize
psychology for the war
 After the war Psychology showed its
achievements

WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?
The summer of 1919
 A grant from the
United States
Social Hygiene Board

"LITTLE ALBERT"
1920 did the Little Albert experiment with the
help of his assistant Roselie Rayner
 Alert was 9mos and have lived in the hospital
since birth
 Watson made no attempt to “recondition”
Albert after he was done with him
 Phobia of fur coats later in life
 Psychiatrist tried to find some sexual basis for
the fear

ROSALIE RAYNER
His mistress
 Came from a wealthy family
 Married on New Years Eve
 Forced to resign by the
administrative officials at
Hopkins
 James and William
 Died in 1935, at age 36

ADVERTISEMENTS
New York in 1921
 Became the vice president in the J. Walter
Thompson advertising agency
 He claimed he wanted to become an "honestto-goodness working advertising man“, but
really he wanted to show how great psychology
was in advertisements in hopes of someday
going back into psychology research
 Thought it was a thankless job

BOOKS
1914: Behavior: An
introduction to
comparative
Psychology
 1918: Psychology
from the standpoint of
a Behaviorist
 1925: Behaviorism,
revision in 1930.
 1928: Psychological
Care of Infant and
Child In addition

Retired, sold his estate (by this time Rosalie
had passed away)
 Bought a farm in Connecticut
 Spent much of his time building barns, and
outbuildings
 Had cows,
pigs and horses
as companions


“I could take a dozen healthy infants and train
any one of them to become any type of
specialist he might select, doctor, lawyer, artist,
merchant-chief and yes, even beggar-man and
thief”

……So what about his children?
BEHAVIORAL CHILDREN
Mary (a.k.a. Polly)
 Multiple suicide attempts later in her life
 John “little John”
 Rootless, stomach troubles, and headaches
through his life and died in his early 50s from
bleeding ulcers from stress
 Billy
 Became a successful Freudian psychiatrist, kill
himself on the second attempt.
 Jimmy
 Chronic stomach problems but did better later in
life.

FATHER OF “BEHAVIORISM”
In 1957, a year before his death, John Watson
was awarded the gold medal from the American
Psychological Association for his contributions
to the field of psychology
 At age 80 he died September 25, 1958, in New
York

HE IS BURIED AT WILLOWBROOK CEMETERY,
WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT
WORK CITED
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http://annascott29.blogspot.com/
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http://www.upstateancestry.com/Churches/Churches.html
http://facweb.furman.edu/~einstein/watson/watson2.htm
http://southernspaces.org/2004/carolina-piedmont
http://facweb.furman.edu/~einstein/watson/watson3.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tern#/media/File:Crested_tern444_edit.jpg
http://www.ediblegeography.com/spaces-of-prohibition/
http://study.com/academy/lesson/john-watson-and-behaviorism-theory-lessonquiz.html
http://facweb.furman.edu/~einstein/watson/watson4.htm
http://facweb.furman.edu/~einstein/watson/watson6.htm
http://facweb.furman.edu/~einstein/watson/watson7.htm
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=6614541&PIpi=71991950