do you agree with behaviorists like Watson?

Question

"GIVE ME A DOZEN HEALTHY INFANTS, WELL FORMED, AND MY OWN SPECIFIED WORLD TO BRING TO THEM UP IN AND I WILL GUARANTEE TO TAKE ANY ONE AT RANDOM AND TRAIN HIM TO BECOME ANY TYPE OF SPECIALIST I MIGHT SELECT DOCTOR, LAWYER,ARTIST,MERCHANT CHIEF AND YES EVEN A BEGGAR AND THIEF, REGARDLESS OF HIS TALENTS, TENDENCIES, ABILITIES VOCATIONS AND RACE OF HIS ANCESTORS". according to Watson, there were no instincts and no inherited capacities.

Answer 1

.....Watson is not the be-all and end-all of psychology. But I tend to agree with his point, which relates to the power of nurture and learning. What he's saying is that the child is born with the computer, but not the programs and not the data - which make all the difference.

After all, knowledge, skill, experience, values, motives, resources and character are not inherited. All these are acquired...and have the profoundest impact on what a person can accomplish in life.

Answer 2

Well, here I feel that there is another famous case that could bear meaning. There is a fellow known in the scientific community as M (as his real name is kept private) who some have now made it their life's work to study as he is a unique individual. I had the pleasure of studying under professors that had met M so they could speak first hand for the veracity of his circumstances.

M was a severe epileptic. His seizures were so strong that they could not be halted by use of medication alone and doctors feared for his life. As a last step, they attempted a risky surgery that completely severed the right and left portions of his brain and removed his hippocampus. For those of you who are not aware, the hippocampus is the organ in our brains that allows us to encode information into our long term memories.

M's operation was a success in the fact it helped prevent any more life threatening seizures, but he now had no way of encoding new information into his long term memory. His memory of any given event would cease within seconds of when he stopped thinking about it.

Through shaping, a behaviorist practice, doctors were able to teach M entirely new trades, such as the assembly of mechanical devices. M would have no idea he had learned how to assemble the device, and each time the device's parts were placed in front of him he would swear he had never seen them before, but he would be able to assemble the device from a "memory" he never even knew he had.

So to answer your question, I don't think Watson was too far off the mark. As to weather or not his argument is practical or ethical I will not get into here, but the simple fact is that behaviorism seems to work on all organisms regardless if they like the idea or not, or even if they are aware of it.

Answer 3

Watson actually made his biggest contribution - and most money - in the advertising agency. B. F. Skinner was a more radical behaviorist than Watson.

There is much evidence in the world of unhappy people who work as doctors and lawyers and whatnot who wish they did something else. Some of them have. Many people who were doctors expressed themselves as writer's, Arthur Conan Doyle being one. These anecdotes show that, yes, you can train smart people to be what you want, but you can't make them like and stick to it. You also have to born with the talent to succeed at anything. These factors point to the importance of genetics. People are not born in a laboratory, either. They are born into a social milieu that exerts its influence as well. Watson was out to make a name and money for himself and went out on a limb, and the limb broke, but he got off first.

Answer 4

No I don't. Watson, himself, regretted the book on child-rearing he wrote in his early years--he realized that he was not qualified to write what he did. I also didn't like the way he experimented on animals--nor did the animal activists of that time. Watson's whole 'blank slate' philosophy goes against genes, DNA, inherited qualities, etc.

That's not to mention is affair with Rosalee--a big scandal in those days.

Answer 5

No, I don't.

OTH, only a fool would ignore the many times when behaviorism is correct about why people do things and, therefore, how to get them to stop.

Behaviorism won't explain why some people get PTSD and some don't, but it does explain how you get it and gives some guidance on how to get rid of it.