Behaviorism. The school of experimental
psychology known as behaviorism was first articulated by John B. Watson (1878–1958) in a 1913 article in
Psychological Review entitled “
Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It”. Rejecting the notion of consciousness, Watson viewed all behavior as conditioned by external experience that could be observed, measured, and controlled. As espoused by its founder, however, behaviorism had more to do with defining psychology's purpose and function than with any specific methodology beyond a seemingly rigorous empiricism. Watson belonged to the first generation of American‐trained psychologists—a cohort determined to make psychology no longer a stepchild of
philosophy but an empirical science.
Watson's formulation of behaviorism characterized psychology as a science whose primary objective was to predict and control human behavior. Accordingly, he promoted behaviorism as a management tool, a pedagogical method, an
advertising technique, and a
child‐rearing method. (Watson's own child‐rearing manual,
Psychological Care of Infant and Child [1928], enjoyed considerable influence.) In this sense, Watson's behaviorism, which characterized
Homo sapiens as “organic machines,” belonged on the spectrum of
Progressive Era social thought along with
scientific management and technocracy linked to the work of Thorstein
Veblen.
Behaviorists promised to unlock the mechanism that governed human action. Their notion of a malleable human nature inspired the new professional managerial classes that saw the intractability of the “human factor” as the last obstacle to a rationally managed society. The 1920s witnessed the transformation of large foundations from charitable trusts to professionally managed enterprises. As foundation support became more problem‐oriented, it increasingly focused on scientific research related to social conduct and behavior. Within this context, human behavior became the focus of a new synthesis in an increasingly integrated research community. The “social and behavioral sciences” became invariably linked.
Behaviorism, emphasizing the primacy of environment over instincts, held special appeal for reformers. Watson, however, never contended that all human beings were equal, only that they were the same. By denying the existence of consciousness, behaviorism desanctified both the outer world of nature and the realm of inner experience, reducing both to manipulable objects. If behaviorism represented the freedom to remake the individual, it also raised the specter of conditioning human behavior into predetermined channels. Behaviorism, wrote the social philosopher Horace Kallen, made human beings “as equal as Fords.”
As a popularizer of self‐help psychology, Watson made behaviorism a household word in the 1920s. Behaviorism's claims to demystify psychology and to simplify the complexities of modern life appealed strongly to middle‐class Americans. By the 1930s, it had become the dominant paradigm in American experimental psychology. Although few psychologists accepted the more radical aspects of Watson's extreme materialism, behaviorism's objective methodology powerfully influenced the direction of American psychology. Influenced by Watson's popular writings, B.F. Skinner, of Harvard University, became the preeminent behaviorist of the post–
World War II generation. Skinner's major achievement, the development of operant conditioning, was based on the notion of designing an environment so controlled that the subject conditioned itself to behave in ways predetermined by the experimenter. Though his experimental subjects were pigeons, Skinner promoted a vision of human social engineering and scientific management in his utopian novel
Walden Two (1948).
Behaviorism helped legitimize experimental psychology among the natural sciences and provided scientific underpinning to the belief in American exceptionalism that characterized American
social science in the twentieth century. Behaviorism's ascendancy reflected a preoccupation with order and efficiency among the shapers of modernist America.
See also
Professionalization;
Twenties, The.
Bibliography
John M. O'Donnell , The Origins of Behaviorism: American Psychology, 1870–1920, 1985.
Kerry W. Buckley , Mechanical Man: John Broadus Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviorism, 1989.
Daniel W. Bjork , B.F. Skinner: A Life, 1993.
Kerry W. Buckley
