John Broadus Watson - the father of behaviorism

The perspective of behaviorism - 1. Behaviorism - John B. Watson

John B. Watson was born on January 9, 1878, in Travelers Rest, near Greenville, South Carolina, and died on September 25, 1958, in New York. He was an American psychologist who codified and publicized behaviorism, a psychological approach that, in his view, had to be strictly limited to the objective, experimental study of the relationship between environmental events and human behavior.

Watsonian behaviorism, as his vision came to be known, became the dominant school of thought in American psychology during the 1920s and 1930s. Watson’s insistence on observable, measurable data and his rejection of introspection or mentalistic explanations marked a radical shift in the discipline, which had previously been heavily influenced by introspective methods (as seen in the work of Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener).

Watson earned his PhD in psychology from the University of Chicago in 1903, where he later began teaching. In 1908, he was appointed professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, where he quickly established a comparative psychology laboratory, focused on studying animal behavior—a foundational element of his scientific approach.

Watson defined behaviorism as a science that focuses on observable behavior only. The behavioral perspective rejects the study of the mind and mental processes, emphasizing instead the external behaviors that can be objectively recorded and measured. It is precisely this position that led to Watson being widely recognized as the father of behaviorism.

According to Watson, understanding behavior requires an in-depth study of the environment in which that behavior occurs. In his famous formulation, he claimed that all behavior is learned and that if we can control the environment, then we can modify behavior—even predict and change it. This deterministic view posits the individual as a product of environmental conditioning, not of innate traits or internal cognitive processes.

One of Watson’s best-known contributions is the “Little Albert” experiment, where he demonstrated how a child could be conditioned to fear a previously neutral stimulus (a white rat) by associating it with a loud, frightening noise. This experiment aimed to show that emotional responses, such as fear, could be learned, not just biologically inherited. Another notable element of his legacy is the “Dozen Healthy Infants” quote, in which Watson boldly claimed:

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”

This statement epitomizes his environmentalist stance: that behavior is almost entirely shaped by conditioning, not inheritance.

However, despite the theoretical power and elegance of Watson’s approach, it fell short in practical application, as even Watson himself experienced. His career was cut short in academia due to personal scandal, and he later moved into advertising, applying his theories of behavior to consumer habits—a move that demonstrated the real-world applicability of behaviorism but also exposed its limitations in explaining the complexities of human motivation and inner life.

Nonetheless, Watson remains one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. His ideas have sparked ongoing debates about the role of nature vs. nurture, and about how much of human behavior is truly controllable through environmental manipulation.

Watson was especially interested in stimulus-response (S-R) patterns, a concept he borrowed and expanded from Ivan Pavlov’s work on conditioned reflexes. Pavlov's classical conditioning experiments on dogs laid the groundwork, but Watson took this further by applying it directly to human behavior. He showed interest in how organisms, like rats navigating a maze, respond to stimuli and how their responses can be systematically predicted or shaped.

Between 1908 and 1912, Watson began presenting his ideas at psychological meetings, and by 1912, he started using the term “behaviorist” to describe his position. In 1913, he published the seminal article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” which is often referred to as the Behaviorist Manifesto. In this text, he wrote:

“Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.”

This publication marked a major departure from introspective psychology and helped lay the foundation for modern behaviorism as it later developed through figures like B.F. Skinner, who introduced operant conditioning and deepened the scientific rigour of the approach.

Despite the many criticisms of behaviorism—particularly its neglect of cognitive processes, emotions, and subjectivity—Watson's insistence on empirical, testable science reshaped psychology. His focus on measurable outcomes remains a cornerstone of many applied psychological fields, from behavioral therapy to marketing and education.

In summary, John B. Watson not only launched behaviorism into academic discourse but redefined psychology’s purpose and methodology. His legacy continues to echo, both in its achievements and its controversies, as psychology still grapples with the balance between mind and behavior, subjective and objective, inner world and observable action.