Behaviorism -- A Survey of 20th Century Psychology

Author: John Broadus Watson, translated by Li Wei
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-06-01
Features: The author despises tradition, breaks the old to establish the new, opposes structuralist psychology and functionalist psychology, and founded behaviorist psychology. Behaviorism is the best summary of behaviorism. It should be noted that the author's behaviorist movement went to extremes, denied consciousness, ignored the internal processes of the organism, and narrowed the scope of psychology due to its emphasis on scientificization; one-sidedly emphasized environmental education while neglecting human subjective initiative, etc. Naturally, these will attract criticism and opposition from many people. However, his behaviorist movement still made contributions to the development of psychology, mainly including: (1) establishing behavior as the traditional characteristic of psychology—subjectivity, while adhering to the objective principle shared by general science; (2) developing objective observation methods, etc., making psychology more refined in terms of methodology. The author's behaviorist psychological theory system was popular in the 1920s and profoundly influenced the course of psychology.