In 1913, John B. Watson proposed a change in psychology’s subject matter and methods. He wanted it to study behavior through observation and experiment, without making reports of consciousness the test of whether its findings counted as psychology. His article, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, appeared in Psychological Review (original text).
This was a proposal about what a science should investigate. Reading the proposal alongside a contemporary reply shows that the disagreement was more specific than a battle between science and superstition.
An animal researcher’s question
Watson lived from 1878 to 1958. He studied at Furman and then at the University of Chicago, where his doctorate was accepted in 1903. His Chicago studies included psychology under James Rowland Angell and philosophy under John Dewey (Christopher Green’s historical introduction).
Animal research mattered to his argument. In the 1913 article, he objected to the demand that observations of animals justify themselves by explaining human consciousness. He wanted such observations to count as evidence in their own right.
For example, recording how an animal responds under specified conditions is one task. Inferring what its experience feels like is another. Watson wanted the first task to remain scientifically worthwhile even when the second could not be settled.
The target was introspection
Introspection means examining and reporting one’s own experience. Watson criticized its role in the psychology of his time. He argued that disagreement could be blamed on an observer’s training instead of prompting changes to the apparatus or experimental conditions.
He named both structural and functional psychology as targets. One analyzed conscious experience into elements; the other emphasized the functions of conscious processes. Those are descriptions of the positions as Watson presented them, not an impartial verdict on all their practitioners.
His proposed alternative emphasized stimulus and response, along with habits and inherited behavior. A stimulus was something capable of exciting activity in a receptor; a response was the organism’s activity. His starting point included both inherited and acquired patterns. The article therefore should not be compressed into the claim that everything is learned.
A program, not a completed explanation
Watson described prediction and control of behavior as the program’s goals. That is a statement of ambition, not evidence that he had achieved complete prediction or control.
The article also proposed explanations of thinking involving movements associated with speech. Watson called this a hypothesis and acknowledged practical difficulties in testing it. Rejecting introspection did not mean he had already supplied a demonstrated explanation for every kind of thought.
[Documented as Watson’s proposal] The historical record establishes what he argued. It does not make every proposed mechanism an established finding.
A contemporary disagrees
In 1914, Edward Bradford Titchener published a detailed reply. He challenged Watson’s account of the history and methods of psychology, pointing out that opposition to introspection had earlier precedents. He also argued that Watson confused an observer’s report with a theory used to interpret it (reply, especially footnote 26).
Titchener did not simply say that the mind belonged outside nature. He considered how a science of behavior and a science of experience could be related. Their disagreement concerned the scope of psychology and the interpretation of evidence, as well as methods.
Keeping collaborators in the record
The 1920 paper Conditioned Emotional Reactions was written by Watson and Rosalie Rayner. It described their study of an infant identified as Albert B. (Watson and Rayner, 1920). Calling it only “Watson’s experiment” erases the coauthor named on the publication.
The authors themselves raised the question of whether their proposed experiment was justified. That makes ethical judgment part of reading the original record, not an unrelated concern added afterward. This page does not reproduce the procedure or make claims about the child’s later life.
Titles and reputations
Watson’s Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology appeared in 1914. His Psychological Care of Infant and Child, produced with Rosalie Watson’s assistance, appeared in 1928. The 1930 book listed in his bibliography is the second edition of Behaviorism (Bruno Angelo Strapasson’s bibliography).
A much later ranking also needs careful description. In the revised table from Haggbloom and colleagues’ 2002 study, Watson is 17th in overall eminence (author-hosted table). A ranking is a constructed measure, not a verdict on the truth of someone’s ideas.
How we know
What survives: Published arguments, contemporary replies and jointly authored research reports.
Whose voices are missing: The infant in the 1920 report could not write a competing account of the research.
What is uncertain: A program’s influence and the evidence for its particular explanations are separate questions.
Then vs. now
Watson’s writing invites a question that remains useful when reading any research: exactly what was observed, and what additional interpretation has been attached to it?