J. B. Watson - Behaviorism

Hey ho(e)! Welcome to another serial of me teaching myself! Yeay!!! In this episode will be starring JB. Yo JB! Who's JB? Justin Bieber? Im Jaebum?

Nahh it's better than that two JB. It's JB Watson aka John Broadus Watson *chu..chu..chu..chu..* *explosion noises*. Damn that glasses be like O-O. 

Q: Who is J.B. Watson?

A: According to Wikipedia, J.B Watson was an American Psychologist born in South Carolina on 9 January 1878 (ew Capricorn #jk). He was the founder of the approach to psychology known as "behaviorism". He began his graduate study at the University of Chicago in philosophy and then switched to psychology. He took courses in neurology and physiology and began to do biological research with animals. During the year before he received his doctorate, Watson had an emotional breakdown and had sleepless nights for many weeks (ahoy! we're in the same boat :D). He described this period as causing him to become interested in the work of Freud. He eventually completed his dissertation, which caused him to develop a particular attitude regarding the use of human subjects.

• 1908: left Chicago and became a professor at Johns Hopkins University until 1911.
• 1911: published his first journal in Psychological Review about the approach of behaviorism in psychology.
• 1914:  published public lectures and a book (Watson’s Behavior) called further attention to a view of psychology that emphasized the study of observable behavior and rejected the use of introspection (observing one’s own mental states) as a method of research.
• 1915: elected as president of the American Psychological Association because his argument were received enthusiastically by American psychologists.
• 1919: expanded the theoretical base of his work by drawing on the findings of the Russian physiologist Pavlov, incorporating them into his most significant book, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist.
• 1920: published a revolutionary study of the learning of emotional reactions with his student Rosalie Rayner. At that time, he clearly was poised to be the dominant American psychologist of the 20th century. (damn..)
• 1924: write a book, Behaviorism. But his career as a theorist and experimenter had ended, due to his marriage problem.

Q: What is "The Little Albert" Study?

A: In 1920 Watson and an assistant, Rosalie Rayner, published one of the most famous research studies of the past century. Watson attempted to condition a severe emotional response in Little Albert, a nine-month-old child. Watson determined that white, furry objects, such as a rat, a rabbit, and cotton, did not produce any negative reaction in the baby. But by pairing together a neutral stimulus (white, furry animals and objects) with an unconditioned stimulus (a very loud noise) that elicited an unconditioned response (fear), Watson was able to create a new stimulus-response link: When Albert saw white, furry objects, this conditioned stimulus produced a conditioned response of fear. This study is generally presented as a seminal work that provided evidence that even complex behaviors, such as emotions, could be learned through manipulation of one's environment. As such, it became a standard-bearer for behaviorist approaches to learning and is still widely cited in the early twenty-first century.

The real video of Little Albert experiment:

And finally finished another lesson. I'm sleepy rn so bye~

KEY TERMS:

Behaviorism, Little Albert, Neutral Stimulus (NS), Classical Conditioning, Unconditional Stimulus (UCS), Unconditional Response (UCR), Conditional Stimulus (CS), Conditional Response (CR)

REFERENCES:

Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2015). Personality: Theory and research twelfth edition. John Wiley & Sons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson

https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2543/Watson-John-B-1878-1958.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI