Content area
Full Text
Before he invented behaviorism, John B. Watson considered learning one of the most important topics in psychology. Watson conducted excellent empirical research on animal learning. He developed behaviorism in part to promote research and elevate the status of learning in psychology. Watson was much less successful in the adequacy and originality of the mechanisms he proposed to explain learning. By assimilating the method of classical conditioning and adopting Pavlov's theory of stimulus substitution, Watson linked behaviorism with a new method that could compete with both Titchener's method of introspection and Freud's methods of psychoanalysis. Watson's interest in explaining psychopathology led to the discovery of conditioned emotional responses and a behavioristic explanation for the learning of phobic behavior. Watson established learning as a central topic for basic research and application in American psychology.
Learning in animals is probably the most important topic in the whole study of behavior (Watson, 1914, p. 45).
No experimenter has yet set his experimental problems in such a way as to construct from his data a guiding theory of habit formation (Watson, 1925, p. 25).
In 1930, when he revised Behaviorism for the last time, Watson expressed satisfaction that behaviorism was strongly entrenched as a point of view in American psychology. He took the occasion to repeat a major theme of his career, the contrast between the old psychology of James's and Titchener's introspection and what he called the new psychology of behaviorism. From his point of view, Watson had achieved great success in his primary goal of changing the subject matter of psychology from consciousness to behavior. After telling his readers that consciousness was the subject matter of the old psychology, Watson repeated the main point of his manifesto on behaviorism (Watson, 1913a), that "behaviorism, on the contrary, holds that the subject matter of human psychology is the behavior of the human being" (1930, p. 2).
What historical factors led Watson to propose a change in the subject matter of psychology from consciousness to behavior? Although many factors, both in American culture at large and in American psychology, contributed to the origins of behaviorism (Burnham, 1968; Mills, 1998; O'Donnell, 1985), the challenge of explaining learning was central to the origins and subsequent development of John B. Watson's behaviorism. By 1930...