Comparison of Behaviorism and the Humanistic Approach

Behaviorism has been a major school of thought in psychology since 1913, when John B. Watson published an influential article. Watson argued that psychology should abandon its earlier focus on mind and mental processes and focus exclusively on overt behavior. He contended that psychology could not study mental processes in a scientific manner because they are private and not accessible to outside observation. In completely rejecting mental processes as a suitable subject for scientific study, Watson took an extreme position that is no longer dominant among modern behaviorists. Thus, most behaviorists view an individual’s personality as a collection of response tendencies that are tied to various stimulus situations. A specific situation

Behaviorism from Watson’s perspective: behavior can be study, taught, and reformed. Watson said “psychology as a behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science, (by) prediction and control”(McLeod, 2013). The main viewpoint of positivism

This essay aims to compare and contrast Behaviourist and Humanistic psychology by considering the differing theories these perspectives use about human thought, experiencing and behaviour.

John B. Watson was a psychologist who paved the road for developing behaviorism. Watson believed that psychology should be based on scientific observable behavior. He is well known for his research on the conditioning process, as well as the Little Albert experiment, in which he conditioned a child to fear a previously neutral stimulus. Watson’s behavioral theory focused on people’s external and outward behaviors. He believed how a person reacts to something physical provides an insight into their internal actions. “He spent most of his psychology career applying this theory to the study of child development and early learning” (Plucker, 2003).

John B. Watson, the main founder of Behaviorism, was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and attended Fruman University and the University of Chicago (Weidman, 2005) where he studied in the department of philosophy with Henry Herbert Donaldson and James Rowland Angell. He became a professor in 1908 at John Hopkins University where he taught psychology. During his time as a professor, Watson completed a few experiments that would support his claims about behaviorism, such as The Little Albert experiment where he “emphasized the importance of learning and environmental influences in human development” (Plucker, 2002). In 1920, the same year Little Albert was conducted, he resigned his position as a professor after a personal scandal (Plucker,

In the 1920s, American psychologist John Watson coined a novel movement of psychology known as behaviorism (Gluck, Mercado, Myers, 2011). “Inspired by the works of prominent psychologists Ivan Pavlov and Edward Thorndike, behaviorism is a discipline of psychology that places its focus on observable behaviors rather than internal consciousness”. Stemming off Pavlov’s earlier research, Watson’s experiment “Little Albert” could be considered one of his greatest psychological advancements in behavioral psychology (Green, 2009). While his controversial experiments did result in moral tensions regarding his research methods, he is still celebrated as an accomplished researcher in the field of psychology (Digdon, Powell, Harris, 2014). Considered by many the founder of behaviorism, John Watson’s works led to further psychological discoveries allowing his legacy to live on today.

Behaviorism and humanism are two theories of learning. Both theories are very important, and have many good qualities, which makes it difficult to say that one is better than the other. When it comes to learning, behaviorism does not consider mental processes, rather it looks at our response to stimuli in our environment. Whereas, humanism sees learning as personal, and is dependent on each individual self. Even though the two theories seem completely opposite of each other, there are some similarities between them pertaining to learning.

John B. Watson was a great American psychologist whose theories, publications, and experiments had an enduring influence on psychology. Possibly his biggest contributions to psychology were his theory of behaviorism and his experiment on Little Albert. Though Watson’s experiments were extremely unethical and behaviorism doesn’t account for biological psychology, Watson was an extremely remarkable psychologist because of his principal of behaviorism and his findings on classical conditioning.

It explains how the early forms of psychology encouraged mental life as the proper subject matter of psychology, and introspection was the proper method to engage that subject matter. In 1913, John B. Watson suggested an alternative classical S-R Behaviorism. Watson believed behavior had a subject matter of it own right and it should be studied through observational methods that are found more familiar to all sciences. Although Watson's ideas were proven to be inadequate his general views have remained influential even if some of the various versions have differed over the years. B. F. Skinner saw a completely different approach that included verbal behavior and saw behaviorism as a philosophy of

John B. Watson made many contributions to the study of psychology. Especially with his behaviorism school of thought which later became an entire branch of psychology. Watson defined behaviorism as “a natural science approach to psychology that focuses on the study of environmental influences on observable behavior.” (Powell, Symbaluk & Honey, 2008. p. 14). Watson strongly believed this study should be limited to behavior that can be observed since it is the only one hat can be predicted and controlled objectively without any fictitious constrains as those associated with conscious experiences and beliefs. Watson dismisses the usability of the consciousness concept in psychology. Behaviorism scholars are opposed to the idea that a person’s behavior can be studied using thought or even beliefs. These according to them, are fabricated constructs that mislead the human’s understanding of behavior.

Behaviorism has been credited with providing clear predictions that can be scientifically tested and yield explanations that can be supported by evidence. For instance, in the application of Applied Behavioral Analysis in improving clients’ behaviors, the functions of individuals problematic behaviors can be evaluated and modified using behavior change principles including reinforcement. Similarly, behaviorism emphasizes the objective measurement of behaviors through providing clear and conceptual definitions, and its therapy is applicable to real life situations as in the case of anxiety. Conversely, studies incorporated into behaviorism allow for appropriate comparisons between animals and humans as in the Case of Watson’s, Thorndike’s and Pavlov’s studies respectively.

Many ideas were shared between Watson, Tolman, and Skinner who all played a role in the forming of behaviorism. They did, however, differ on some of their beliefs as well as their methods of study. At this time, methods of studying psychology as well as psychology in general were in the developing stages. Watson was largely credited with the foundation of behaviorism, however, he was by no means the only one to make contributions. There has been some debate as to whether Watson’s contributions were enough to make him the “founder of behaviorism.” It is important to examine contributions from several of the early

Watson: Well we just really learned a lot there. That was a great detailed explanation of pragmatism and functionalism. Coming back from all of that, I am now going to explain behaviorism from a behaviorist view. My idea of behaviorism was based upon the work of Pavlov. Behaviorism is basically what we learning from the association of things through different types of conditioning. In my opinion, behaviorism is objective and studies behavior without the use of mind and mental process. It can be observed through assessments. When I started at Watson, I wanted to separate psychology from philosophy and focus more on psychology and biology. I was more focused on working with my own work rather than the work of others. People didn’t understand how my work was related to psychology because it wasn’t directly related to the conscious. However, I knew what I was doing and believed that my work would bring forth a new beginning. To start working towards this new beginning I had to first redefine

The humanistic approach to psychology is an organization of different thoughts in which the interests of humans and their values and/or beliefs are of main importance (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). The term humanistic relays the notion that all human beings have the potential for growth and that no one is purposely bad or unworthy (Carver & Scheier, 2012). In contrast to psychoanalytical psychologists, humanistic psychologists tend to focus on the strengths of human behavior and not the aspects that make an individual’s

Humanistic psychologists start from the conclusion that every person has their own unique way of understanding the world and that the things they do only make sense in this way. Consequently, the kinds of questions they ask about people differ from those asked by psychologists from other approaches. Whereas other approaches take an objective view of people, in essence asking about them, ‘what is this person like’ humanistic psychologists’ priority is understanding people’s subjectivity, asking ‘what is it like to be this person’ As a result, they reject the objective scientific method as a way of studying people. Humanistic psychologists explicitly endorse the idea that