The Science of Psychology 9While some might think that Sigmund Freud was the first person to deal with peo-
ple suffering from various mental disorders, the truth is that mental illness has a fairly
long (and not very pretty) history. For more on the history of mental illness, see the
to Learning Objective 14.1.
Freudian psychoanalysis, the theory and therapy based on Freud’s ideas, has been
the basis of much modern psychotherapy (a process in which a trained psychological pro-
fessional helps a person gain insight into and change his or her behavior), but another
major and competing viewpoint has actually been more influential in the field of psy-
chology as a whole.
PAVLOV, WATSON, AND THE DAWN OF BEHAVIORISM Ivan Pavlov, like Freud, was
not a psychologist. He was a Russian physiologist who showed that a ref lex (an invol-
untary reaction) could be caused to occur in response to a formerly unrelated stim-
ulus. While working with dogs, Pavlov observed that the salivation reflex (which is
normally produced by actually having food in one’s mouth) could be caused to occur
in response to a totally new stimulus, in this case, the sound of a ticking metronome.
At the onset of his experiment, Pavlov would turn on the metronome and give the
dogs food, and they would salivate. After several repetitions, the dogs would salivate
to the sound of the metronome before the food was presented—a learned (or “condi-
tioned”) reflexive response (Klein & Mowrer, 1989). This process was called condition-
ing. to Learning Objective 5.2.
By the early 1900s, psychologist John B. Watson had tired of the arguing among
the structuralists; he challenged the functionalist viewpoint, as well as psychoanalysis,
with his own “science of behavior,” or behaviorism (Watson, 1924). Watson wanted to
bring psychology back to a focus on scientific inquiry, and he felt that the only way to do
that was to ignore the whole consciousness issue and focus only on observable behavior—
something that could be directly seen and measured. He had read of Pavlov’s work and
thought that conditioning could form the basis of his new perspective of behaviorism.
Wa t s o n w a s c e r t a i n l y a w a re o f F re u d ’ s w o r k a n d h i s v i e w s o n u n c o n s c i o u s re p re s-
sion. Freud believed that all behavior stems from unconscious motivation, whereas
Wa t s o n b e l i e v e d t h a t a l l b e h a v i o r i s l e a r n e d. F re u d h a d s t a t e d t h a t a phobia, an irratio-
nal fear, is really a symptom of an underlying, repressed conflict and cannot be “cured”
without years of psychoanalysis to uncover and understand the repressed material.
Wa t s o n b e l i e v e d t h a t p h o b i a s a re l e a r n e d t h ro u g h t h e p ro c e s s o f c o n d i t i o n-
ing and set out to prove it. Along with his colleague Rosalie Rayner, he took a baby,
known as “Little Albert,” and taught him to fear a white rat by making a loud, scary
noise every time the infant saw the rat until finally just seeing the rat caused the infant
to cry and become fearful (Watson & Rayner, 1920). Even though “Little Albert” was
not afraid of the rat at the start, the experiment worked very well—in fact, he later
appeared to be afraid of other fuzzy things including a rabbit, a dog, and a sealskin coat.
to Learning Objective 5.3.
This sounds really bizarre—what does scaring a baby have to do
with the science of psychology?Wa t s o n w a n t e d t o p ro v e t h a t a l l b e h a v i o r w a s a re s u l t o f a s t i m u l u s – re s p o n s e re l a t i o n-
ship such as that described by Pavlov. Because Freud and his ideas about unconscious moti-
vation were becoming a dominant force, Watson felt the need to show the world that a much
simpler explanation could be found. Although scaring a baby sounds a little cruel, he felt that
the advancement of the science of behavior was worth the baby’s relatively brief discomfort.
A graduate student of Watson’s named Mary Cover Jones later decided to repeat
Wa t s o n a n d R a y n e r ’ s s t u d y b u t a d d e d t r a i n i n g t h a t w o u l d “ c a n c e l o u t ” t h e p h o b i c re a c-
tion of the baby to the white rat. She duplicated the “Little Albert” study with another
American psychologist John Watson is known
as the father of behaviorism. Behaviorism
focuses only on observable behavior.Mary Cover Jones, one of the early pioneers
of behavior therapy, earned her master’s
degree under the supervision of John
Watson. Her long and distinguished career
also included the publication in 1952 of the
first educational television course in child
development (Rutherford, 2000).behaviorism
the science of behavior that focuses on
observable behavior only.psychoanalysis
an insight therapy based on the theory
of Freud, emphasizing the revealing of
unconscious conflicts; Freud’s term for
both the theory of personality and the
therapy based on it.