John Watson Research Paper

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Behaviorism is an aspect of psychology that starts much before John Watson and other behaviorists. Whether physiologists Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov knew it, they provided substantial advances in what is called Behaviorism in the psychology field. However, Watson is the one man that made behaviorism popular in the field of psychology. Behaviorism is seen as the study of human behavior. The goal of it is to predict human actions through responses and to see what controls human beings. John Watson shows prime examples of behaviorism throughout his illustrious career, and that can be seen on http://principlesoflearning.wordpress.com/dissertation/chapter-3-literature-review-2/the-behavioral-perspective/behaviorism-john-b-watson-1913/. On this…show more content…
As Albert was with the rat, he played with it and showed no concern or fear of the animal. Subsequently, when Albert would touch the rat, Watson began to hit a hammer to a steel bar to make a noise to scare and eventually make Albert cry. This process was repeated several times and later on, without the presence of the sound, Albert became disturbed at the appearance of the rat, along with white objects and animals. This consisted of a white rabbit, and also the presence of a white coat. Because of this response it showed how the baby could be taught fear, as Watson predicted. Not to mention it backed the research of Pavlov, and showed stimulus generalization, in which he conditioned dogs to salivate to sound of a bell and further moved to other sounds that stimulated the bell. The importance however, is that Watson proved that this idea of stimulus generalization and classical conditioning could happen with humans. Not only that, he also took on the position as the acknowledged founder of behaviorism in the field of psychology. Positive Outcomes The Little Albert experiment done by John B Watson exuded many great accomplishments in the field of psychology. Because of the research done on Albert, Watson was able to show that stimulus generalization was also prevalent in humans, not just dogs. (Pavlov Experiment) Another pronounced consequence of this experiment was the new spectrums to be studied in the field of psychology. Although the basis of behaviorism came from Pavlov, Watson put behaviorism on the map in regard to psychology. With Watson’s research, behaviorism became paramount in the study of the human mind.

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