Watson, John B

Watson, John B(roadus)

(born Jan. 9, 1878, Travelers Rest, near Greenville, S.C., U.S.—died Sept. 25, 1958, New York, N.Y.) U.S. psychologist. Trained at the University of Chicago, Watson taught psychology at Johns Hopkins University (1908–20). He is remembered for codifying and publicizing behaviourism. In his epoch-making article, “Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It” (1913), he asserted that psychology should restrict itself to the objective, experimental study of the relations between environmental events and human behaviour. In Behavior (1914) he argued for the use of animal subjects in studying reflexes and conditioned responses, and in Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919) he extended the principles and methods he employed in animal experiments. In 1920 he left academia to enter the advertising business.