Behaviorism

John Broadus Watson was an American psychologist. He contributed immensely in the advancement of the field of psychology. In fact he is popularly remembered for his establishment of psychological school of behaviorism. Watson placed psychology in a new level through his work named as Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it, given to Columbian University in 1913 (Watson, 1970). Basing on his behaviorism theory, he conducted various researches on animal behavior, advertising, child rearing and most importantly “Little Albert” experiment (Watson, 1970).

Before his intervention in the field of psychology, there existed a lot of disagreement concerning the views of nature of consciousness and its studying method; in order to deal with what her referred to as the problem caused by inappropriate subject matter and use of archaic methods, he dropped out introspection and consciousness and instead  proposed the idea of behaviorism. Watson behaviorism theory relied implicitly on response and conditioned reaction to learn the behavior of any subject and therefore helping to predict and control such behaviors (Watson, 1970). His theory was supported by a number of researches and experiments particularly the “Little Albert” experiment. Watson work on Behaviorism has contributed greatly in advancement of psychology through understanding animal and human behavior ( Morris and Maisto, 2008). His work is significant in real life application thence helping to solve emerging problems related to psychology with ease, for instance, it is applied to improve human health and well-being where psychological disorders such as stress are involved; chronic stress is associated with high risk of coronary heart disease. Also, it is applied in education, whereby rewards are given to students to motive learning and guiding and counseling them ( Morris and Maisto, 2008).

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