Behaviorism - John Watson

Even though psychological perspectives evolve as psychology matures, there are some perspectives that remain relevant even today. Behaviorism is, simply speaking, the analysis of a person’s response to his environment. John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and Edward C. Tolman would include their own varying details to accompany that definition. Most researchers in behaviorism concur that psychology should be considered as the study of behavior, not the study of the mental processes, and that behavior is caused by stimuli that abide in the external environment, not from the internal mind (Goodwin, 2008). From Watson’s first findings, which pushed behaviorism forward, Skinner proposed his own theory of behaviorism called radical behaviorism. Tolman believed that the important concepts of psychology could be deduced from the behavior displayed by rats traveling through mazes that he created (Goodwin, 2008). Even though they were thought of as behaviorists, their concepts and theories contrasted on a wide Even though psychological perspectives evolve as psychology matures, there are some perspectives that remain relevant even today. Behaviorism is, simply speaking, the analysis of a person’s response to his environment. John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, and Edward C. Tolman would include their own varying details to accompany that definition. Most researchers in behaviorism concur that psychology should be considered as the study of behavior, not the study of the mental processes, and that behavior is caused by stimuli that abide in the external environment, not from the internal mind (Goodwin, 2008). From Watson’s first findings, which pushed behaviorism forward, Skinner proposed his own theory of behaviorism called radical behaviorism. Tolman believed that the important concepts of psychology could be deduced from the behavior displayed by rats traveling through mazes that he created (Goodwin, 2008). Even though they were thought of as behaviorists, their concepts and