John b watson essays

John b watson essays John B. Watson was born in 1878 near Greenville, South Carolina. He died in 1958. Watson was born into the poverty of South Carolina. At the age of sixteen, Watson entered Furman University. There he studied the basic introduction to psychology. He then graduated with an M.A. degree. He spent a year as principle in a small private school, then he was excepted into the University of Chicago in 1900. At the University of Chicago he studied "Functionalism". He worked in experimental psychology and he spent some Sundays in the laboratory watching the behavior of rats and monkeys. His theory was that animal behavior is controlled, this is also known as "behaviorism". "Watson belived that careful, structured parenting could prevent most psychological problems". (Psychology and You, 10). Watson says that "we are what we learn to be". (Psychology and You, 10). "Frustrated" by the methods that most parents used to rise their children, he wrote a book on child rearing. "The goal of his book was to teach parents how to apply scientific learning in bringing up their children". (Watson,1928). He also says that we are afraid of things because we have had a bad expierience with it. I disagree with Watsons theory of "behaviorism" because if everything he said was true then everyone should get along. Also because what he is saying is that we are being controlled by someone else. We do not and can not have our own opinion. We start to develope our own style and taste at an early age. We also start to become more independent. If everything that Watson believed about his theory of "only the strong surrvive" was true, than if you could not cook or do your own laundry, you would be considered weak and therefor you would not surrvive. Some behaviors we have are learned but not all. For example if you keep repeating a word infront of a baby, eventually the baby will ...