J. B. Watson's Behavioristic Theory

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J.B. Watson was very influential in the psychological field of behaviorism and stated the following in the early 20th century "Give me a dozen healthy infants 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 a beggarman and thief"

B.F. Skinner Skinner would most likely agree with Watson 's quote and could carry it out through his use of Operant conditioning. Skinner is considered the father of operant conditioning, but he somewhat built his work off of Thorndike 's law of effect. Thorndike studied mice escaping a box using trial and error. He noticed that the effect of each behavior would determine if it 's repeated in the future. Skinner added the reinforcement principle which holds that behaviors that are rewarded are more likely to be repeated in the future and behaviors that are punished are not likely to be repeated. Skinner would train his infants using this reinforcement principle to condition them into the specialist requested. For …show more content…

Freud 's psychodynamic theory emphasizes that "personality is shaped by unconscious psychic conflicts" and that "behavior may be influenced by forces outside conscious awareness." Since these forces are "outside conscious awareness" it would be difficult for Watson to know exactly which type of stimulants/forces to apply to achieve the outcome he desires. There are also many limitations to this theory because he based it on concepts that can 't be experimentally testable. If Watson knew the exact connection between these forces and how they affect the individual, then according to Freud, he could subconsciously (mostly during childhood) direct the individual to become the specialist

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