1878年,南卡罗来纳州格林维尔出生,约翰·布罗斯沃森最终成为美国心理学中最受欢迎的一种,尽管学术职业相对较短,但很少的意义。他的流行是由于一个想法,最完全在他的1913篇论文中表达,“作为行为主义者的心理学意见”。
在本文中,Watson认为,心理学的适当主题是公开,可观察的行为,而心理和情绪现象,不能直接和客观地观察到,应该形成新科学的一部分。事实上,他建议心理学家对意识的关注可能会阻止心理学真正成为科学。相反,行为主义者应该只关心刺激反应联系。沃森认为,人类行为完全可预测,因为对个人的刺激史和反应的历史上有时了解。他宣称,他宣称,他可以全面收取十几个健康的婴儿,他可以提供生产任何类型的人所需医生,律师,甚至犯罪所必需的学习经历。
他最着名的实验是他的示范,即通过古典调理可以产生情绪经历(也称为受访者调理,见Pavlov,Ivan)。这次演示涉及一个婴儿(在心理文学中永远熟知的艾伯特),巨大的噪音和白老鼠。阿尔伯特享受与实验室大鼠一起玩,看着它并以明显的快乐触摸它,这使得沃森成为恐惧源的理想对象。进行了一系列试验,因为艾伯特达到了大鼠,他身后的大型金属棒用锤子击中,产生了巨大的噪音,这令他惊讶和吓坏了他。很快,他开始在大鼠的视线上表现出恐惧的反应,证明情绪状态可以作为条件的反应制作。
Watson’s career at Johns Hopkins University, where he edited the Psychological Review and founded the Journal of Experimental Psychology, lasted only from 1908 to 1920. The reason for this was an ill-advised affair with his graduate assistant on the Little Albert study, which resulted in a highly publicized, scandalous divorce (after which he married the graduate student), followed by an administration request for his resignation. Watson went on to great success in the advertising world, where he has been credited with, among other things, inventing the concept of the “coffee break” in a series of magazine ads. He also continued to write books and articles for popular magazines, but he never taught or published in academic journals again. Behaviorism went on to become a dominant perspective in American psychology through much of the twentieth century, largely due to the efforts of B. F. Skinner, who refined and expanded on Watson’s ideas to such a degree that his name is now far more widely associated with behaviorism than Watson’s.
参考:
- 巴克利,K. W.机械人:John B. Watson和行为主义的开始。纽约:1989年桂福;
- Watson,J.B。“作为行为主义者看到的心理学。”心理评论,20(1913):158-177。