Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist in the 1890s, observed that he could cause a dog to salivate by conditioning the dog to associate a ringing bell with food. Pavlov had demonstrated classical conditioning, which is "a basic form of learning in which a stimulus that usually brings forth a given response is repeatedly paired with a neutral stimulus. Eventually, the neutral stimulus will bring forth the response when presented by itself" (DuBrin, 2000, p. 33).
American Psychologist John B. Watson used Pavlov's work on classical conditioning to pioneer a natural science of psychology called behaviorism in the early 19th century. Watson (1914) asserted that psychology should not focus on subjective and non-measurable mental experiences, like consciousness, but should be a study of objective behavior, like a reflex.
In his initial salvo to the field of psychology, Watson said: "The time seems to have come when psychology must discard all reference to consciousness; when it need no longer delude itself into thinking that it is making mental states the object of observation" (p. 7). To Watson, human behavior is driven by the same stimulus-response connection that causes a leg to kick when the knee is tapped by a hammer. Thus, psychology should be "a science of behavior" that never uses "the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, will, imagery, and the like" (p. 9). In other words, human behavior was no more than stimulus-response connections that Watson could observe, predict, measure, and control.
Goldhaber (2000) called Watson's S > R psychology pure mechanism in that it does the following (pp. 69-70):
- Defines behavior as the functional unit of the natural science of psychology;
- Suggests that all complex behaviors can be reduced to the basic functional behavioral units;
- Argues that complex behavior patterns occur through simple associated processes that define classical and operant conditioning;
- Views humans as passive until acted upon by external forces;
- Claims associative processes govern learning of all species, including humans, and;
- States that development is learning.
Watson eventually lost his standing in the academic community for using human babies to demonstrate his theories (Harris, 1979), but found success as an advertising executive, conditioning people "to buy all sorts of unnecessary but appropriately associated items" (Goldhaber, 2000), and writing popular books about raising children. Watson had redefined psychology from a study of consciousness to a study of behavior, establishing conditioning as a key strategy for studying behavior and behavior change, and making raising children in the 1930s and 1940s a matter of habit training (Goldhaber, 2000).
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