Behaviorism
The position that psychology should be built as a natural science whose aim is to predict and control observable behavior. John Watson set it out in 1913 in Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.
Watson opened his paper by declaring psychology a purely objective, experimental branch of natural science whose goal is the prediction and control of behavior. Introspection, he wrote, forms no essential part of its methods[1].
In its place he proposed to put humans and animals on the same plane and build psychology in terms of stimulus and response and the forming of habits. Having a subject adjust an apparatus until two lights look the same, or say whether a stimulus is there, he accepted as a language method, an abbreviated way of studying behavior. A report was to be treated not as a window onto the mind but as one more piece of behavior[1].
He admitted that complex processes such as imagination, judgment and reasoning could not yet be studied by behavior methods, and suggested setting them aside for a time. He also expected thinking to turn out to be faint movements of the muscles of the larynx[1].
Related terms
- IntrospectionObserving and reporting what is going on in one's own mind. It was one of the methods of early psychology, but researchers differed widely on how far it could be trusted.
- Imageless thoughtThe claim that thoughts as such, made of neither words nor images, are present in consciousness. Psychologists at Würzburg in Germany put it forward in the early 1900s, and it set off a long dispute.