Topic > Behaviorism - 943

There are many interesting branches of psychology, but behaviorism captured many aspiring psychologists and young minds in the 1920s and 1930s, and has been the dominant orientation since the mid-1930s. Behaviorism was the radical revision of the psychological research method. At the time, consciousness was not accepted and behaviorism required a ban on introspection. Behaviorism is a branch of psychology that began with “Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It” by John B. Watson. Although considered innate, research on this topic will show that behavior is learned more from environmental factors through modeling and observation. The founder, Watson, created classical conditioning, and later B.F. Skinner contributed operant conditioning. Watson's trial was his most famous experiment, the “Little Albert Experiment”. Behaviorism had a rocky start. Although it was created in 1913, it only came into force in the 1920s/30s. At age 35, John B. Watson wrote a piece titled "Psychology as the Behaviorist Sees It" in 1913 for a meeting at the New York branch of the American Psychology Association at Columbia University. He had attended John Hopkins University and was considered by many to be a "man of animal behavior." One of the most quoted parts of his speech, known to many people who have studied psychology and have not, is "Psychology, as the behaviorist sees it, is a purely objective experimental branch of the natural sciences." In Watson's speech, the main point was that the method of psychological research should be revised. Introspection should be eliminated and replaced with interpretive behaviors while the organism is conscious. There was also a new “Learning Theory”. He stated that behaviors are learned from environmental stimuli and conditioning and that behaviors should never be studied from internal states such as cognitions, emotions and moods, since they are