J. B. Watson's Theory Case Study

In this essay I will be discussing J.B. Watson’s theory. This involves looking at Watson’s view of psychology being the “control and prediction of behavior” (Crain, 1992, p.157). Watson then being a behaviourist will further be explored to see how this impacts his focus in his studies. It also involves looking at the three innate emotions that Watson said that he could condition into people. This will then lead to exploring how Watson uses the emotion of fear to then condition Little Albert to being fearful of certain objects. Finally I will then be looking at the ethicality behind the Little Albert experiment and whether or not it is humane to condition humans in this way.
Watson believed that psychology should place its focus onto a catalyst or as Watson calls it a stimulus in order to provoke a specific response to that stimulus and that we should also pay careful attention to how habits are formed (Crain, 1992). This process is not an easy process as we are dealing with individuals who are unique. Watson was the founder of behaviourism and believed in the study of observable behavior as e believed that it is impossible to put a label onto a behavior that is not unconcealed (Schunk, 2012). Watson took his theory of behaviourism and applied it to child development. Watson being a behaviourist was …show more content…
Pavlov used a dog and paired an unconditioned stimulus such as food together with a neutral stimulus such as a light or a bell to cause that neutral stimulus to then become a conditioned stimulus and cause a conditioned response to take place, being salivation (Schunk,2012). Watson believed that as beneficial as Pavlov’s classical conditioning model was, it could be extended upon as Pavlov only looked at conditioning from a very one sided perspective and Watson wanted to include “diverse forms of learning and personality characteristics” (Schunk, 2012,