08 MarEpisode 126 | Bonus: Annie reads aloud John B. Watson’s 1913 essay “Psychology As The Behaviorist Views it”

Professor John B. Watson's 1913 essay argues that psychology should be studied from a behavioral perspective, echoes some of the same conversations that are had today between dog trainers who are approach dog training as a science and those who approach dog training by making assumptions about dogs' internal feelings and motivations.

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Transcript:

[Intro]

Annie:

Happy Monday morning humans. I am going to take advantage of this quiet moment in my home.  Quiet because my daughter’s wonderful babysitter has brought her to the playground.  To share with you an essay I just looked up that I actually have not read in several years, but I remember it left quite an impression on me when I did read it.

It's from Psychological Review from 1913 by John B. Watson. I looked this up because I am working on some of the lectures that are going with our online professional course, which, I'm just finishing up these lectures. And I did a lecture on the history of dog training, and the history of dog training and both in universities and in pop culture, I guess is the best way to describe what the lecture is.

And I mentioned Skinner and said something about how Skinner was influenced by the work of Ivan Pavlov and John B. Watson. Both of whom were mostly working in the very early 1900s. And I kind of just started looking up stuff about John B. Watson. Again, I got on kind of a Watson kick a few years ago. I read part of his biography, which I'd actually like to look at again. I think Watson has probably due his own episode at some point, and is widely considered the OG daddy of the field of behavioral science as I understand it.

Briefly put, he was a psychology professor, I think at Johns Hopkins.  His most famous experiment was most likely the baby Albert experiment, where he showed you could condition a child to be scared of all things fuzzy, like rabbits and that kind of thing, by pairing similar fuzzy furry things with a loud scary noise.  It's pretty cruel and weird considering his research subject was a non-verbal 18 month old boy named little Albert.  But still interesting as it certainly relates to so much dog training where we see dogs become conditioned to fear seemingly random things.

And he ended up leaving academics, I think because of some sort of affair he had with a student.  And he ended up at the famous ad agency, J Walter Thompson, where he used what he had studied and learned about human behavior in order to manipulate humans into buying things. He is credited with having popularized the idea of a coffee break, giving people a built-in reason in their day to stop and go drink and buy coffee. So if you are a big coffee drinker, as I am, you might just have John B. Watson to thank for your very stained teeth.

Interesting to note that Freud's cousin Bernays, who also knew a thing or two about the workings of behavior, is considered to be the founder of modern public relations. John B. Watson, famous for saying:

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll 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 beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, pensions, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.”

This is from his 1930 book Behaviorism.  Anyway, so he certainly was an extremist. I liked that last sentence or this, that last quote though, because to me, he's saying — the way I like to read it is he’s saying, I could use positive reinforcement to influence people and also manage, thanks to a well-managed environment that I would get to control, in order to get people to do these things, rather than using punishment to discourage people who could do great things from doing great things.

Maybe I'm reading into it a little bit, because he also does talk about how you could teach someone to be a beggar man and thief. And he doesn't specifically say he would use positive reinforcement. He could certainly use negative reinforcement.  But still it's saying we can encourage people in certain directions rather than discouraging their talents and assuming they cannot be great.

So I'm going to read you guys this essay here.  You can also just find a link to it in the show notes.  But yeah, I haven't read it in a while and I thought, Hey, if I'm going to reread, it might as well share it with you all:

[Annie reads “Psychology As The Behaviorist Views it“]

I would love to know what you think of this essay. If you see anything here that relates to what you think or what you thought about training, I'll post a link to it in the show notes, but also in our new community app.  You can get there by looking up School for the Dogs community in the app store, or go to schoolforthedogs.com/community, and been posted there as well.