Essays on Intro to Psychology: behaviorism

J.B. Watson’s theory can be displayed in brief. Being clear with its fundamentals, we are ready to talk about the meaning of analyzed quote, published in scholars the most work.

So, what do we have and how can Watson’s words be interpreted to his views on psychology? Initial disposition involves the existence of twelve infants without or minimum life experiences a priori. At second, the scholar suggests to give different conditions by making them lawyers, doctors, artists . At third, he does not consider an individual features of infants, such as noted talent, vocations, tendencies, abilities etc. These are the three main points to make some conclusions. Let’s address each of them one by one. The reference towards “12 well-formed infants” was used to interpret behaviorism’s idea that initially, organisms have no difference in behaviors (previously analyzed objectivism). At second, the scholar proposes different environments to each of 12 infants. In this way, he tried to bring the idea that our conditional experiences is formed under the influence of different stimulus of environment and deep empiric investigation of them will help to influence psychological development. This thought is useful to confirm Watson’s belief in practical meaning of his study – psychological disorders are best to be treated by environmental modifying.

The last one is still about behaviorism’s objectivism – organisms have no differences in their responses to stimulus. Frankly, the quote about 12 infants should be treated like the brief scheme of Watson’s behaviorism: organisms have no initial behavioral differences– environments have various stimulus – organisms’ response to same stimulus equally. It worth been mentioned that famous scholar particularly proved his theory. The support was found with experiment in 1920, which is commonly known as “Little Albert”. The participant of this investigation was 9 months year old boy. The results were next. Being aimed to generate strong negative response in baby, the scholar gave little boy a white furry rat. It did not raise any negative in baby. Then, J.B. Watson combined this white rat with loud music. The last one was unconditionally responded by fear and baby’s cry consequently. After several procedures, appearance of white rat, even without music, made Albert cry. In this way, the conditioned response was developed in baby. This experiment became one of the most significant event in psychological world of that time, and was used by J.B. Watson to prove that even emotions can be learnt through someone’s environment modifying and affecting.

To sum up, it is important to understand that Watson’s quote about 12 “infants” shouldn’t be understood in direct way. In fact, the second part of it shows pretty ironic author’s mood about his words: “I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing so for many thousands of years” (1930, p. 104). In this regard, the message of J.B. Watson is in general meaning of his theory, that is displayed in understandable and brief way. It worth being mentioned that ideas of great scholar, even at this times, were often titled as pretty doubtful and proves to them as thin-skinned. Eventually, most of his thought were strongly and reasonably enough opposed by other scientist. However, this fact does not leave us the right to state that J.B. Watson is one of the brightest individualities in psychology history, who brought the fresh and new look to the field and established one of the most popular psychology school, which is still remembered and widely recognized as the product of original investigational thought.