John McPherson
Mrs. Bates
Psychology
9/18/14 Psychology was and is still an important field of scientific study, for better understanding how things work. By studying psychology one is able to better understand the mind and body and how they work. John B. Watson was a very influential psychologist who specialized in behavioral studies. He was fascinated with how certain events can change how someone behaves and how their entire life could be influenced by some events. Mr. Watson was born in 1878 on January the 9th. (About) He had a fairly rough childhood while living in North Carolina, however, his life did start to turn around once he reached the age of 16. (About) He ended up attending Fruman University when he was 16 and …show more content…
A study in psychology called Introspection is a study where researchers use themselves as the subjects of study instead of using someone else and then observing them. Watson didn’t want to be a part of
McPherson 2 this since he thought that the natural sciences would be a good field of study for him that involved observational studies. This brought him to his famous research in later years.
Mr. Watson was fond of the human body and wanted to learn more about it and how it reacted to certain scenarios and possible changing a reaction with practice. One called the “Little Albert Study” was an experiment done on a boy to see how his reactions would change if at all. The way this worked was by putting Albert in a room and releasing a rat to be in the room also. However the rat was only released when someone hit a pipe making a loud noise. The purpose of this was for an association to occur between seeing the rat and the loud noise. Well the experiment was a success. After some time of this process repeating, the young boy became terrified of the rat since he believed the noise would soon be following the sight of the rat.( John B. Watson (1878–1958)