FROM WATSON’S 1913 MANIFESTO TO COMPLEX HUMAN BEHAVIOR

Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2020

is a significant figure in the history of psychology. Although some scholars contest the thesis that he was the creator of the behaviorist movement, he was undoubtedly a great popularizer of behaviorism, and many of the psychologists who proposed new varieties of behaviorism admit that they were directly influenced by him. Most psychologists, and probably all behavior analysts, read and heard about Watson at some point in their apprenticeship. Nevertheless, Watson's works are usually misunderstood, mainly because most of his publications are unknown to the majority of psychologists and historians of psychology. The publication of a more complete and precise bibliography may help to solve this problem. This article presents an updated bibliography of John B. Watson's published works; it contains 209 entries, including 50 new ones compared with the last, and at that point the most developed, bibliography available. The bibliography we present here is offered to assist researchers, historians, and other scholars in taking a broader view of Watson's behaviorism and its impact on academic and lay audiences. Keywords John B. Watson. bibliography. classical behaviorism John B. Watson (1878-1958) was one of the best-known psychologists of the early 20 th century and one of the most influential psychologists of his generation (Buckley, 1989). During the 1990s, he was ranked among the 10 most notable psychologists by historians of psychology and chairpersons of psychology departments in American universities (Korn, Davis, & Davis, 1991). In the 2000s, he was ranked 17 th among the 99 most eminent psychologists of the 20 th century (

This paper discusses the introduction of behaviorism as a major contribution to the world of psychology by comparing and contrasting the contributions and perspectives of three of psychology’s “premiere figures” - Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, and B. F. Skinner

The Behavior Analyst, 1996

Revista Colombiana De Psicologia, 2013

Behaviorism has argued that behavior is the Psyche and the subject matter of psychology. Although, some scientists had done empirical work with objective methods before 1913, the year in which John B. Watson published his manifesto, he was the first one to attempt a systematization of behavior as the Psyche, that is, as psychology's subject matter. In this text, I outline Watson's notion of behavior to compare it with two other forms of behaviorism: Skinner's radical behaviorism and molar behaviorism. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate how the concept of behavior has been and is changing.

The Psychological Record, 2011

Early forms of psychology assumed that mental life was the appropriate subject matter for psychology, and introspection was an appropriate method to engage that subject matter. In 1913, John B. Watson proposed an alternative: classical S–R behaviorism. According to Watson, behavior was a subject matter in its own right, to be studied by the observational methods common to all sciences. Unfortunately, by around 1930, Watson’s behaviorism had proved inadequate. Many researchers and theorists then adopted a view in which various organismic entities were inferred to mediate the relation between S and R: mediational S–O–R neobehaviorism. This general view has remained influential, although the details of the various versions have differed over the years. The behavior analysis of B. F. Skinner took an entirely different approach. Particularly important was the study of verbal behavior. Although behaviorism is often conventionally defined as an approach that seeks to explain behavior without directly appealing to mental or cognitive processes, this definition needs considerable clarification, especially as it pertains to Skinner’s behavior analysis and his view of behaviorism as a philosophy of science.

In this text, we will reflect on psychology as a scientific discipline focused on mind and behavior, which initially diverged from philosophy and medicine and has made a long process of recognition as an autonomous science. Since the 19th century, Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener, William James, and John Dewey, to the famous Thorndike as the leading pioneers. Thorndike discovered a premise so influential in psychology and applicable to so many human behaviors: a stimulus tends to produce a specific response over time if a given organism is rewarded for that response. Introducing Psychology as a science at the service of humanity in the 21st century is one of the goals of this text. It will reflect on the importance of constructivist paradigms and narratives and the perception of psychotherapeutic reality as a multiverse perspective.

The Behavior Analyst

Evolutionary theory, comparative psychology, British empiricism, the reflexwe learn in graduate school that all of these had something to do with the origins ofexperimental psychology in general and behaviorism in particular. Somehow Watson got tired of introspection and of inferring mental events in animals and so founded behaviorism with his manifesto of 1913. But is this so, and how did it happen? This book tells the story. It covers a relatively brief period of about 60 or 70 years from the impact ofDarwin's Origin ofthe Species in the 1860's to the establishment of behaviorism in the 1920's, just before Skinner came on the scene. The tale is told with thoroughness, care, good humor, and-best of all-with understanding, because the author is no outsider, no professional philosopher or historian, who might tell it with scorn and the misapprehension that behaviorism is dead, but an experimenter who did his graduate work at Harvard during the 1960's when, under Herrnstein, and with Skinner still present, quantitative studies of behavior and the development of modern behaviorism were in full swing. To anyone interested in behaviorism, pro or con, this book should be required reading. I found it entertaining and provocative from beginning to end. It was many years in the making. I know, be

2005

The central idea in behaviorism can be stated simply: A science of behavior is possible. Behaviorists have diverse views about what this proposition means, and particularly about what science is and what behavior is, but every behaviorist agrees that there can be a science of behavior. Many behaviorists add that the science of behavior should be psychology. This causes contention because many psychologists reject the idea that psychology is a science at all, and others who regard it as a science consider its subject matter something other than behavior. Most behaviorists have come to call the science of behavior behavior analysis. The debate continues as to whether behavior analysis is a part of psychology, the same as psychology, or independent of psychology, but professional organizations, such as the Association for Behavior Analysis, and journals, such as The Behavior Analyst, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, give the field an identity. Since behaviorism is a set of ideas about this science called behavior analysis, not the science itself, properly speaking behaviorism is not science, but philosophy of science. As philosophy about behavior, however, it touches topics near and dear to us: why we do what we do, and what we should and should not do. Behaviorism offers an alternative view that often runs counter to traditional thinking about action, because traditional views have been unscientific. We shall see in later chapters that it sometimes takes us in directions radically different from conventional thinking. This chapter covers some of the history of behaviorism and one of its most immediate implications, determinism. Keyterms Anthropomorphism Behavior analysis Caloric Comparative psychology Continuity of species Determinism Folk psychology Introspect Just-noticeable difference Libertarian free will Methodological behaviorism Objective psychology Phlogiston Psyche Radical behaviorism Reaction time Standard narrative Vis viva

1999

W. O'Donohue and R.F. Kitchener, Introduction: The Behaviorisms. E.K. Morris and J.T. Todd, Watsonian Behaviorism. L.J. Hays and D.W. Fredericks, Interbehaviorism and Interbehavioral Psychology. N.K. Innis, Edward C. Tolman's Purposive Behaviorism. M.E. Rashotte and A. Amsel, Clark L. Hull's Behaviorism. J. Ringen, Radical Behaviorism: B.F. Skinner's Philosophy of Science. S.W. Bijou, Empirical Behaviorism. H. Rachlin, Teleological Behaviorism. J.E.R. Staddon, Theoretical Behaviorism. W. Timberlake, Biological Behaviorism. E.V. Gifford and S.C. Hayes, Functional Contextualism: A Pragmatic Philosophy for Behavioral Science. D. Bloor, Wittgenstein's Behaviorism. U.T. Place, Ryle's Behaviorism. R.F. Kitchener, Logical Behaviorism. R.E. Gibson, Quine's Behaviorism. Subject Index.

American Psychologist, 1992

A substantial portion ofB. F. Skinner's scholarship was devoted to developing methods and terms for a scientific study of behavior. Three concepts central to scientific accounts-cause, explanation, and theory-are examined to illustrate the distinction between mechanistic and relational frameworks and radical behaviorism's relationship to those frameworks. Informed by a scientific tradition that explicitly rejects mechanistic interpretations, radical behaviorism provides a distinctive stance in contemporary psychology. The present analysis suggests that radical behaviorism makes closer contact with the "new world view" advocated by physicists and philosophers of science than does much of contemporary psychology.