John Broadus Watson

John Broadus Watson (1878–1958) is widely acknowledged to be the founder of behaviorism—an objective, natural science approach to psychology and one of the most important developments in the history of psychology. Yet, beyond a paragraph or two in textbooks, Watson is barely visible in modern psychology. What does appear is often more caricature than history—fragments of academic folklore introduced, only to be dismissed as components of an allegedly ill-conceived diversion on a journey to some supposedly superior viewpoint. A legitimate examination of Watson's work shows him to be a sophisticated scientist who fused functionalist psychology, pragmatism (America's homegrown philosophy), Russian studies of the reflex, and experimental physiology into a philosophy of psychology still flourishing almost a century later. Watson's lifespan developmental approach to all behavior rejected a simplistic nature-nurture dichotomy, emphasized combining laboratory analyses with observational studies of organisms in their natural environments, dismissed Ernst Haeckel's discredited recapitulation theory (despite its foundational role in most other developmental psychologies), and strongly advocated the application of scientific findings to social problems. Watson insisted that psychology could become truly successful only by replacing its religious and philosophical preconceptions with the methods of science. He was among the first to argue for the cognitive precocity of newborn infants, question the quality of empirical evidence for prevailing racist and sexist assumptions about inheritance of intelligence, argue for accurate and frank sex education to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, reject the prejudice of inevitable cognitive decline with aging, and state that abnormal behavior might be the result of an abnormal behavioral history rather than being a manifestation of a disordered mind. Watson's view of emotional development still provides the conceptual basis of the dominant therapies for anxiety disorders.

An excellent student despite a chaotic childhood, Watson graduated in 1899 from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. From Furman, he went to the University of Chicago to study philosophy with John Dewey. Attracted instead by psychology and biology, Watson's 1903 dissertation, Animal Education: An Experimental Study on the Psychical Development of the White Rat, correlated with the growth of the rat's nervous system, was a lifespan developmental analysis of the relationship between learning ability and brain myelinization in rats. Infant rats exhibited considerable learning ability despite incomplete brain development. Extrapolating, Watson argued that infant humans, like infant rats, possessed considerable unrecognized early learning ability. This prebehaviorist work clearly showed the combined influences of the functionalist psychologist James Angell, experimental physiologist Henry Donaldson, embryologist Jacques Loeb, and pragmatist philosopher John Dewey.

Eclectic in his choice of research topics throughout his career, Watson was best known in these early years for studies of the role of sensory abilities in learning. His most important work in retrospect was an extensive, multiyear ethological study of the instinctual and learned behavior of seabirds. Watson showed an impressive talent and insight as an ethologist years before the discipline had a name. Through this work, he adopted a view on the relative importance of nature and nurture similar to Sigmund Freud's: An understanding of adult behavior requires the knowledge of innate capabilities combined with an appreciation of the immense power of early experience.

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