Child & Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles LET REVIEWER
Lesson 23: John Watson's Behaviorism Theory
.png "Lesson 23: John Watson's Behaviorism Theory")
Professional Education (PROFED) Reviewer
Behaviorism is a theory that focuses on how behavior is learned and shaped by the environment. It believes that learning happens through conditioning, which means connecting actions with their results or responses. In simple terms, behaviorism teaches that people can be trained to respond in certain ways depending on what they experience or are exposed to. This theory greatly influenced psychology during the 20th century and helped explain how habits and behaviors are formed.
John Watson (1878–1958)
John B. Watson lived from 1878 to 1958 and is known as the Father of Behaviorism. He changed the way we think about psychology by introducing a new approach. Instead of studying what happens inside people's minds, Watson wanted psychologists to study what people actually do and how they act. He believed that behavior is not controlled by thoughts or feelings, but by the environment and experiences around a person. This new way of thinking fundamentally changed how psychologists understood and studied human behavior.
In 1913, Watson published an important paper called "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." This paper is often called the "behaviorist manifesto" because it officially launched behaviorism as a school of thought in psychology. This publication marked a major change from earlier psychological approaches that focused on consciousness and introspection, which means looking into your own mind.
Before Watson, psychology was dominated by schools of thought such as structuralism and functionalism. These approaches emphasized the examination of one's own mental and emotional processes. Watson argued that this approach was too subjective and unscientific. He declared that psychology should only concern itself with behaviors that can be seen and measured. Watson believed that consciousness and internal mental states cannot be studied objectively, so we should not study them at all.
Watson's behaviorism was built on several fundamental principles that we need to understand.
1. Environment Over Inheritance
Watson was very confident in the power of conditioning and environmental influence. He famously claimed that if he were given a dozen healthy infants, he could train each one to become anything. They could become a doctor, a lawyer, an artist, or even a thief, depending only on how they were raised and conditioned. This statement, often called the "Give me a dozen infants" quote, shows his deep belief in environmental determinism. This means that the capacity for learning, not nature or genes, is what shapes a person's character, abilities, and future.
Think about it this way. Watson believed that what you learn from your surroundings and experiences is more important than what you are born with. If you grow up in an environment where people value reading, you are more likely to enjoy reading. If you grow up in an environment where people value sports, you are more likely to enjoy sports. Your environment shapes who you become.
2. Stimulus and Response
Watson adopted and adapted the work of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian scientist who studied how animals learn. Pavlov discovered something called classical conditioning. Watson argued that every behavior can be understood as a relationship between a stimulus and a response. A stimulus is something that happens in the environment that causes a reaction. A response is what a person does in reaction to that stimulus. For example, if you see a red light while driving, that is the stimulus. Hitting the brakes is your response.
3. Behavior is Learned
Watson believed that all behaviors are acquired through interactions with the environment. Genetics has very little influence compared to learning and conditioning. Complex emotional responses, skills, and even personality traits are shaped through environmental experiences and how we learn to associate things with other things. If you have learned to be polite from your family, that is not because you were born polite. It is because your family taught you through repeated experiences what politeness means and how to do it.
The Little Albert Experiment
Watson's most famous experiment is called the Little Albert experiment. He conducted this study in 1920 with his graduate student Rosalie Rayner. This experiment showed something very important. It showed that fears could be conditioned in humans. This is how it worked.
Little Albert was an 11-month-old infant. At first, he was not afraid of a white rat. Watson and Rayner then did something interesting. Every time Albert reached for the rat, they made a loud, frightening noise. This loud noise scared Albert very much. After they repeated this many times, something happened. Albert began to cry and show fear at the sight of the rat alone. He did this even when there was no noise. He was reacting to just seeing the rat.
This fear also spread to other things. Albert became afraid of other white and furry objects, such as a rabbit, a dog, and even a fur coat. This experiment demonstrated that emotional reactions could be conditioned through repeated experiences and associations. It provided strong evidence for the behaviorist idea that environment shapes behavior, including our emotions.
Watson's Classification of Basic Human Emotions
Watson observed infants carefully and identified three basic emotions that are present in babies from birth. He called these unconditioned emotions because they are not learned. These three emotions are:
- Fear - the emotional response to threat or danger. For example, a loud noise naturally scares an infant.
- Rage - the emotional response to frustration or when a child cannot do what they want. For example, when you take away a toy, a baby becomes angry.
- Love - the emotional response to comfort and affection. For example, when someone hugs a baby gently, the baby feels loved and comfortable.
Watson believed that all other emotional reactions and complex emotions could be formed through the process of conditioning. This means pairing neutral things with these basic emotional responses. For example, a child might develop a fear of dentists after a painful dental experience. The child pairs the dentist's office with pain and discomfort. Now whenever they think about going to the dentist, they feel afraid.
Behaviorism Theory Quiz: click here
“If you truly understand, comment your reflection in at least 3-5 sentences or more about this lesson.”
.png&description=John Watson's Behaviorism Theory | Free LET Reviewer and Drill){kind=link}