John Broadus Watson was an influential American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. He took an objective and scientific approach to studying animal and human behavior through conditioning and observable responses. Watson earned his PhD from the University of Chicago where he studied under John Dewey and developed his behaviorist approach. He went on to teach at Johns Hopkins University and made breakthroughs in the study of emotion and conditioning. However, he left Johns Hopkins due to a public affair with one of his students. Watson married his student and they remained together until her death, with Watson continuing to establish and promote the field of behaviorism.

1. John watson

2.  John Broadus Watson
(1878-01-09)January 9, 1878
Travelers Rest, South Carolina
DiedSeptember 25, 1958(1958-09-25) (aged 80)New
York City, New York
NationalityAmericanFieldsPsychologyDoctoral
advisorJ. R. AngellOther academic advisorsJohn
Dewey, H. H. Donaldson, Jacques Loeb

4. EARLY EDUCATION
Watson was born in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, to Pickens Butler and Emma K. (Roe) Watson. His mother,
Emma Watson, a very religious woman who adhered to prohibitions against drinking, smoking, and dancing, named
Watson after a prominent Baptist minister in hopes that it would help him receive the call to preach the Gospel. In
bringing him up, she subjected Watson to harsh religious training that later led him to develop a lifelong antipathy
toward all forms of religion and to become an atheist. His alcoholic father left the family to live with two Indian women
when Watson was 13 years old (a transgression which Watson never forgave). In an attempt to escape poverty, Watson’s
mother sold their farm and brought Watson to Greenville, South Carolina, to provide him a better opportunity for
success.[ Moving from an isolated, rural location to the large village of Greenville proved to be important for Watson by
providing him the opportunity to experience a variety of different types of people, which he used to cultivate his theories on
psychology. Watson understood that college was important to his success as an individual: "I know now that I can never
amount to anything in the educational world unless I have better preparation at a real university."
Despite his poor academic performance and having been arrested twice during high school (first for fighting with
African Americans, then for discharging firearms within city limits), Watson was able to use his mother's connections
to gain admission to Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Watson considered himself to be a poor student.
Others called him a quiet kid, lazy and insubordinate. He struggled to make that transition from a rural to urban area,
expressed through his weak social skills. A precocious student, he entered college at the age of 16 and left with a master's
degree aged 21. Watson made his way through college with significant effort, succeeding in classes that other students
simply failed. He held a few jobs on campus to pay for his college expenses. He continued to see himself as "unsocial" and
made few friends. After graduating, he spent a year at "Batesburg Institute", the name he gave to a one-room school in
Greenville. He was principal, janitor, and handyman for the entire school.
After petitioning the President of the University of Chicago, Watson entered the university. His successful petition to
the president of the University of Chicago was central to his ascent in the psychology world. He began studying
philosophy under John Dewey on the recommendation of Furman professor, Gordon Moore. The combined influence of
Dewey, James Rowland Angell, Henry Herbert Donaldson and Jacques Loeb led Watson to develop a highly descriptive,
objective approach to the analysis of behavior that he would later call "behaviorism."
In Watson’s college experience, he met professors and colleagues that would assist him on his journey to becoming a
well-known psychologist. These peers played an important role in his success in developing psychology into a credible
field of study and his understanding of behaviorism. To Watson, behaviorism was a declaration of faith. It was based on
the idea that a methodology could transform psychology into a science. He wanted to make psychology more
scientifically acceptable. Later, Watson became interested in the work of Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), and eventually
included a highly simplified version of Pavlov's principles in his popular works.

5. Study of emotion
Watson was interested in the conditioning of emotions. Of course
behaviorism putting an emphasis on people's external behaviors, emotions
were considered as mere physical responses. Watson thought that, at birth,
there are three unlearned emotional reactions: Fear, rage and love. Fear:
According to Watson, there are only two stimuli evoking fear that are
unconditioned: A sudden noise and the loss of support (physical support).
But because older children are afraid of many things (Different animals,
strange people etc...) it must be that those fear provoking stimuli are
learned. Watson stated that fear can be observed by the following reaction
with infants: Crying, breathing rapidly, closing their eyes or jumping
suddenly.Rage: Rage is an innate response to the body movement of the
child being constrained. If a very young child is held in a way that she
cannot move at all then she will begin to scream and stiffen her body. Later
this reaction is applied to different situations. Children get angry when they
are forced to take a bath or clean their room. These situations provoke rage
because they are associated with physical restraint.Love: Watson said that
love was an automatic response from infants when they were stroked lightly,
tickled or patted. The infant then responds with smiles and laughs and other
affectionate responses. According to Watson, infants do not love specific
people but they are conditioned to do so. Because the mother's face is
progressively associated with the patting and stroking it becomes the
conditioned stimulus eliciting the affection towards her. Affectionate feelings
for other people later generate the same response because they are
somehow associated with the moth

6. QUOTES

7. Dissertation on animal behavior
Watson earned his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago in 1903. In his
dissertation, "Animal Education: An Experimental Study on the Psychical
Development of the White Rat, Correlated with the Growth of its Nervous
System",he described the relationship between brain myelinization and learning
ability in rats at different ages. Watson showed that the degree of myelination was
largely related to wand learning. He discovered that the kinesthetic sense
controlled the behavior of rats running in mazes. In 1908, Watson was offered and
accepted a faculty position at Johns Hopkins University and was immediately
promoted to chair of the psychology department.
Affair and marriage
In October 1920 Johns Hopkins University asked Watson to leave his faculty
position because of publicity surrounding the affair he was having with his graduate
student-assistant Rosalie Rayner. Watson's affair had become front-page news,
during divorce proceedings, in the Baltimore newspapers. Mary Ickes Watson, his
wife, had feigned illness during a dinner party involving the Rayner and Ickes
families so that she could have unfettered access to Rayner's bedroom. She
discovered love letters Watson had written to Rayner. She had hoped that by
Watson knowing of this discovery, he would leave Rayner.
After the divorce was finalized, Watson and Rayner married in 1921. They
remained together until her death in 1935.

8. References
• Classics in the History of Psychology": "Watson obtained his Ph.D. under the
supervision of Angell 1903."
• Watson, J. B. (1913). "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it.". Psychological
Review 20: 158–177.
• Kintsch, Walter; Cacioppo, John T. (1994). "Introduction to the 100th Anniversary
Issue of the Psychological Review". Psychological Review 101 (2): 195–199.
• Haggbloom, Steven J.; Warnick, Jason E.; Jones, Vinessa K.; Yarbrough, Gary L.;
Russell, Tenea M.; Borecky, Chris M.; McGahhey, Reagan; et al. (2002). "The 100
most eminent psychologists of the 20th century". Review of General Psychology 6
(2): 139–152. CS1 maint: Explicit use of et al.
• "Profile data: John Broadus Watson". Marquis Who's Who. Retrieved August 7,
2012.
• Buckley, Kerry W. Mechanical Man: John Broadus Watson and the Beginnings of
Behaviorism. Guilford Press, 1989.
• Gregory A. Kimble, Michael Wertheimer, Charlotte White. Portraits of Pioneers in
Psychology. Psychology Press, 2013, p. 175. "Watson's outspoken atheism repelled
many in Greensville."
Michael Martin. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Cambridge University
Press