American psychologist
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External Websites
- Verywell Mind - Biography of Psychologist John B. Watson
- National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Searching in Ruins for Truth: The Life and Works of John B. Watson-A Review of Modern Perspectives on John B. Watson and Classical Behaviorism
- GoodTherapy - John Watson (1878-1958)
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External Websites
- Verywell Mind - Biography of Psychologist John B. Watson
- National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Searching in Ruins for Truth: The Life and Works of John B. Watson-A Review of Modern Perspectives on John B. Watson and Classical Behaviorism
- GoodTherapy - John Watson (1878-1958)
Also known as: John Broadus Watson
Written and fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Last Updated: •Article History
- In full:
- John Broadus Watson
- Born:
- January 9, 1878, Travelers Rest, near Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.
- Died:
- September 25, 1958, New York, New York (aged 80)
- Notable Works:
- “Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology”
- “Behaviorism”
- “Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist”
- Subjects Of Study:
- conditioning
- infancy
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Top Questions
What was John B. Watson’s childhood like?
What was John B. Watson’s childhood like?
John B. Watson grew up in a poor farming family. His father drank heavily, was prone to violence, and was frequently absent; he finally left the family when John was 13 years old. By his own account, John was an unruly child and a poor student.
Where was John B. Watson educated?
Where was John B. Watson educated?
As a young child, John B. Watson was educated in a one-room schoolhouse and at a modest private academy in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. He entered Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, when he was 16 and received a master’s degree in 1899. He earned a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Chicago in 1903.
What did John B. Watson write?
What did John B. Watson write?
John B. Watson wrote, among other works, Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1914); Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919), considered the definitive statement of his psychology; Behaviorism (1925), a book for the general reader; and Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928).
Why is John B. Watson famous?
Why is John B. Watson famous?
John B. Watson is famous for having founded classical behaviourism, an approach to psychology that treated behaviour (both animal and human) as the conditioned response of an organism to environmental stimuli and inner biological processes and that rejected as unscientific all supposed psychological phenomena that were not objectively measurable or observable.
John B. Watson (born January 9, 1878, Travelers Rest, near Greenville, South Carolina, U.S.—died September 25, 1958, New York, New York) was an American psychologist who codified and publicized behaviourism, an approach to psychology that, in his view, was restricted to the objective, experimental study of the relations between environmental events and human behaviour. Watsonian behaviourism became the dominant psychology in the United States during the 1920s and ’30s.
Watson received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago (1903), where he then taught. In 1908 he became professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University and immediately established a laboratory for research in comparative, or animal, psychology. He articulated his first statements on behaviourist psychology in the epoch-making article “Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It” (1913), claiming that psychology is the science of human behaviour, which, like animal behaviour, should be studied under exacting laboratory conditions.
His first major work, Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, was published in 1914. In it he argued forcefully for the use of animal subjects in psychological study and described instinct as a series of reflexes activated by heredity. He also promoted conditioned responses as the ideal experimental tool. In 1918 Watson ventured into the relatively unexplored field of infant study. In one of his classic experiments—and one of the most controversial in the history of psychology—he conditioned fear of white rats and other furry objects in “Little Albert,” an orphaned 11-month-old boy.
The definitive statement of Watson’s position appears in another major work, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919), in which he sought to extend the principles and methods of comparative psychology to the study of human beings and staunchly advocated the use of conditioning in research. His association with academic psychology ended abruptly. In 1920, in the wake of sensational publicity surrounding his divorce from his first wife, Watson resigned from Johns Hopkins. He entered the advertising business in 1921.
Watson’s book Behaviorism (1925), for the general reader, is credited with interesting many in entering professional psychology. Following Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928) and his revision (1930) of Behaviorism, Watson devoted himself exclusively to business until his retirement in 1946.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.