John B. Watson (Biografia En Ingles)

John B. Watson was born in January 9, 1878 (died in September 25, 1958, aged 80) and grew up in South Carolina. While he later described himself as poor, he entered Furman University at the age of16. After graduating five years later with a master´s degree, he began studying psychology at the University of Chicago. Watson earned his PhD in psychology in 1903.

Watson began teaching psychologyat the John Hopkins University in 1908. In 1913, he gave a seminal lecture at Columbia University titled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”, which essentially detailed the behaviorist position.According to Watson, psychology should be the science of observable behavior. “Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goalis the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, or is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves tointerpretation in term of consciousness,” he explained (1913).

One of the most famous and controversial study he made, along with her graduate assistant named Rosalie Rayner, was the “LittleAlbert” experiment; which was made by provoking a child to fear a small white rat. They accomplished this by repeatedly pairing the rat with loud noises. They also demonstrated that this fear was to anywhite furred object. This type of experiments are not made any more because of the ethical structure of the society, and partially because the child´s fear was never conditioned.
Developing the studyof behaviorism was Watson´s biggest contribution to psychology. He received many awards and got many achievements, some of them because of his studies in behavior (“Little Albert”), such as the APA´saward for contributions for psychology; he served as the President of the American Psychological Association (APA); he published “Psychological Care of Infant and Child”; also published “Psychology...