Table Of ContentP S Y C H O L O GY
FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A BEHAVIORIST
P S Y C H O L O GY
F R OM T HE S T A N D P O I NT
OF A BEHAVIORIST
BY
J O HN B. W A T S ON
FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY;
EDITOR, JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY; LECTURER,
PSYCHOLOGY NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
SECOND EDITION
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, V. S. A.
TO
J. McKEEN CATTELL AND ADOLF MEYER
P R E F A CE TO S E C O ND E D I T I ON
PRINCIPAL CHANGES IN TEXT
The present volume introduces many changes in text
and many additions. The first nine pages are entirely
new. The section on Vision, from pages 86 to 128, are
entirely new and prepared by a specialist in vision,
Professor H. M. Johnson, of the Ohio State University.
Considerable new material (pages 208 to 212) is given
in the chapter on Glands. The author's Johns Hopkins
experiments in the conditioned emotional reaction will
be found on pages 233 to 236. The gist of the whole
paper on thinking as expressed at the meeting of the
International Congress of Philosophy and Psychology
will be found on pages 346 to 356.
Since 1919, when this book was first published, behaviorism
has been passing through an emotional and logical evaluation.
Whether it is to become a dominant system of psychology or to
remain merely a methodological approach is still not decided.
The strong reaction for and against behaviorism points to the
fact that psychological students are restless. Nor will they lie
down and sleep, nor turn to the doings of other things until
their trial and error wanderings bring an adjusting formulation.
Most of the younger psychologists realize that some such
formulation as behaviorism is the only road leading to science.
Functional psychology cannot help. It died of its own half-
heartedness before behaviorism was born. Freudianism cannot
help. Where it is more than a technique it is an emotional de
fense of a hero. It can never'serve as a support for a scientific
formulation. Hence behaviorism must be looked upon as the
rough scientific clay which all must shape or else rest content
with the deistic idol already fashioned; and worshipped by
structural psychology.
The form of behaviorism the present author has stood for is
now suffering a most serious set-back at the hands of those who
are structuralists at heart, yet who profess to be behaviorists-
viii PREFACE
and since behaviorism has become " respectable " many who
know little of its tenets claim to believe in it. Such half-way
behaviorism and such half-way behaviorists must necessarily
do harm to the movement because, unless its tenets are kept dis
tinct, its terms will become cluttered-up, meaningless and ob
scure. This is what has happened to functional psychology. If
behaviorism is ever to stand for anything (even a distinct
method), it must make a clean break with the whole concept of
consciousness. Such a clean break is possible because the meta
physical premises of behaviorism are different from those of
structural psychology.
Behaviorism is founded upon natural science; structural
psychology is based upon a crude dualism, the roots of which
extend far back into theological mysticism. Prof. K. S.
Lashley's brilliant formulation (Psychological Review, July,
1923) of behavioristic contentions shows that any student loathe
to give up " consciousness " with all of its past complications
should find happier sailing on some other craft.
Since the origin of behaviorism is now under discussion, the
preface to the 1924 edition may fitly carry a word about the
author's connection with the behavioristic approach. His
researches in animal psychology, stimulated first by Lloyd
Morgan's work and then, more powerfully, by Thorndike led him
to his first conversational formulation in 1903. This formula
tion was not encouraged. He was told that it would work for
animals, but not for human beings. The author's first public
expression was in the form of a lecture before the Psychology
Department of Yale University in 1908. The sentiment there
likewise was against it. It was called psychology at a descrip
tive level; and the conviction was expressed that psychology
could never be satisfied with anything short of '' explanation ''!
How a parallelistie psychology could be explanatory was not
brought out!
The author then let his formulation rest until called upon to
give a course of public lectures at Columbia in the fall of 1912.
The paper published in the Psychological Review in March,
PREFACE ix
1913—'' Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist ''—
gave a part of the first of these lectures. As a result of these
lectures the author was challenged to cope with image and affec
tion. This he attempted to do before the Psychological Semi
nary of Columbia University in April, 1913. The paper—
" Images and Affection in Behavior "—summarizes the result
of this attempt.
The next systematic attempt at a non-Qontroversial formu
lation is to be seen in the 1919 edition of this book.
The chapter on thinking became the subject of dis
cussion at the British International Congress of Phil
osophy and Psychology held at Cambridge in 1920. The
author's paper—" Is Thinking Merely the Action of
Language Mechanism"—published in the October, 1920,
number of the British Journal of Psychology, attempted to
give clearer expression to his views on thinking than was done
in the 1919 book. The only attempt the author has made to
sketch a genetic experimental program which would justify be
haviorism as a method, is published in The Scientific Monthly,
December, 1921 (in collaboration with Rosalie Rayner Watson)
—" Studies in Infant Psychology."
Although Professor Knight Dunlap cannot be accused of
favoring a systematic behaviorism, nevertheless his treatment of
the " image " (destructive as it is of the "centrally aroused
sensation ") was a primary factor in the formulation of the
author's paper " Image and Affection in Behavior ".
The author wishes to express his deep obligation to the firm
of J. B. Lippincott Company for long-continued patience in
meeting his wishes as to reprintings, textual changes and the like.
Malba, Long Island, New York,
January 1, 1924
