Watsonian behaviorism is
sometimes referred to as classical behaviorism, which emphasized four major views. They
are : Objectivism, Stimulus Response, Associationism, Peripheralism, and Environmentalism.
Later he put forward his new form of behaviorism as neo-behaviourisms and showed how each
of these four core beliefs fared over time.
Objectivism
Some of the psychologists believed that Watson’s most important contribution was his endorsement of an objective approach to psychology. He insisted that psychologists study publicly observable behavior instead of privately observable consciousness. By providing this, he gave a media through which psychology could attain the status of a natural science.
Stimulus – Response Associationism
Watson presumed that the goal of a natural-science psychology would be helped by adapting concept of sensory-motor reflex to psychological events. He had proposed that psychological phenomena could be described on the basis of three components, which are : Stimulus, response, and the association between them. |
Peripheralism
Watson has given the best
explanation of Peripheralism in relation to its antonym, centralism. Centralism enlightens
that root causes of behavior are to be found in the central nervous system, the brain and
spinal cord. Peripheralism pleaded that peripheral events, external to the central nervous
system, play a major role in behavior.
Environmentalism
Watson’s environmentalism is captured in his famous boast : "Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed, and my own specified world to bring them up, and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist, I might select doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant chief……" Essentially Watson thus took the extreme environmentalism position merely to contrast it with the extreme position of heredity school that human behavior is genetically preset and therefore not possible to modify. This shows that Watson was an interactionist with regard to the nature-nurture controversy. He was interested in social planning through psychological knowledge and education.
