Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It: Watson Explained

John B. Watson’s 1913 article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” is one of the most influential documents in the history of psychology. Often called the behaviorist manifesto, the paper argued that psychology should become an objective experimental science centered on observable behavior rather than relying primarily on introspection and private reports of conscious experience.

Watson was not merely asking psychologists to pay a little more attention to behavior. He was proposing a major change in what psychology should study, how it should gather evidence, and what a successful psychological science should try to accomplish. In his view, psychology should investigate relationships between environmental conditions and measurable responses, use experimental methods, and seek reliable prediction of behavior.

The article first appeared in Psychological Review, volume 20, in 1913. Its opening declaration became famous because it summarizes Watson’s program with unusual directness: psychology, as the behaviorist viewed it, should be an objective branch of natural science whose theoretical goal was the prediction and control of behavior.

This guide explains Watson’s argument in its historical context, identifies the major claims in the 1913 paper, distinguishes Watson’s behaviorism from later forms of behaviorism, and considers both the lasting influence and the limitations of his program.

Who Was John B. Watson?

John Broadus Watson (1878–1958) was an American psychologist who became one of the central figures in the development of behaviorism. The American Psychological Association describes behaviorism as an approach to psychology formulated by Watson in 1913 that emphasized objective and observable facts rather than subjective processes such as feelings, motives, and consciousness.

Watson worked during a period when psychology was still defining its identity as a scientific discipline. Experimental laboratories had already been established, but psychologists disagreed about the appropriate subject matter and methods of the field.

Watson believed that psychology would struggle to become a reliable natural science if its central evidence depended on introspection—people reporting the contents of their own conscious experience. He wanted psychologists to work with events that could be observed, measured, manipulated, and compared across subjects.

The Correct Title and Publication Date

The older version of this MyArticles page incorrectly stated that Watson’s paper was originally titled “Behaviorism as a Behaviorist Views It.” The historical article is titled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”.

It was published in Psychological Review in 1913, volume 20, pages 158–177. The full historical text is preserved by York University’s Classics in the History of Psychology project.

The paper became known later as the “behaviorist manifesto” because it announced a clear program for redefining psychology.

What Psychology Looked Like Before Watson’s Manifesto

To understand why Watson’s article mattered, it helps to understand what he was reacting against.

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century psychology contained several competing traditions. Some researchers studied sensation, perception, imagery, attention, and conscious experience through forms of introspection. Functional psychologists were interested in how mental processes helped organisms adapt. Comparative psychologists studied animals. Physiologists investigated sensory and nervous-system processes.

Watson believed that these approaches lacked a unified scientific foundation. In particular, he objected to defining psychology through consciousness because conscious experience was private and difficult to verify independently.

His criticism was methodological as much as philosophical. If two trained observers described their private experiences differently, Watson saw no straightforward external measurement that could settle the disagreement.

Watson’s Central Claim: Psychology Should Study Observable Behavior

The main proposal in the 1913 article is straightforward: psychology should study behavior that can be observed and measured.

For Watson, the behavior of humans and other animals could be investigated through controlled experiments in much the same spirit as other natural sciences. Researchers could manipulate environmental conditions, measure responses, compare subjects, and identify regular relationships.

This did not mean that Watson denied that people had experiences. His methodological point was that private conscious states should not form the essential evidence on which scientific psychology depends.

Why Watson Rejected Introspection as Psychology’s Core Method

Introspection involves examining and reporting one’s own conscious experience. Earlier experimental psychologists had developed trained introspective methods for studying sensations and mental processes.

Watson objected because introspective reports were not independently observable in the same way as behavior. A scientist could measure how long it took a participant to respond, how often a response occurred, whether learning changed after reinforcement, or how an animal navigated a maze. The scientist could not directly observe another person’s private conscious state.

Watson therefore wanted psychology to rely on evidence that different investigators could record and evaluate.

Modern psychology no longer accepts Watson’s strongest rejection of mental processes, but his concern about measurement remains fundamental. Contemporary psychologists study memory, perception, emotion, attention, and cognition using behavioral tasks, brain imaging, physiological measures, validated questionnaires, computational models, and other methods designed to produce testable evidence.

Our article on perception in psychology illustrates how a mental process that Watson might have regarded skeptically can now be studied through controlled experiments and measurable performance.

Prediction and Control of Behavior

Watson described the theoretical goal of behaviorist psychology as the prediction and control of behavior.

The phrase can sound troubling to modern readers because “control” can imply manipulation of people. In Watson’s scientific program, however, the basic idea was that psychology should discover reliable relationships between environmental conditions and behavior.

If researchers understand the conditions under which a behavior occurs, they may be able to predict when it will occur and alter those conditions to change the probability of the behavior.

This logic became highly influential in learning research and later applied fields. Behavioral principles have been used in education, therapy, organizational settings, animal training, habit formation, and behavior-change programs.

Stimulus and Response

Behaviorist explanations are often summarized through the relationship between stimuli and responses.

A stimulus is an event or change in the environment. A response is an observable action or measurable reaction by the organism.

Watson’s early behaviorism encouraged psychologists to search for systematic relationships between the two. Later behaviorists developed much more sophisticated models, especially around conditioning and reinforcement.

The simple stimulus-response label can therefore be useful as an introduction, but it should not be treated as a complete description of every form of behaviorism.

Humans and Animals in Watson’s Psychology

Another major claim in Watson’s article was that psychology should not create a fundamental scientific divide between human and animal behavior.

Watson argued that the behavior of humans and other animals could be studied within a common scientific framework. This position gave comparative and animal research an independent scientific value rather than treating animal studies merely as indirect evidence about human consciousness.

The older MyArticles version misread this point by suggesting that Watson mainly complained that psychologists studied animals instead of humans. In fact, Watson strongly supported animal research. His argument was that animal behavior should be studied directly as behavior, without needing to translate every observation into hypothetical conscious experiences.

Watson’s Criticism of Consciousness as Psychology’s Defining Subject

Watson believed that defining psychology as the science of consciousness created conceptual problems that could not be resolved experimentally.

Terms such as sensation, imagery, feeling, and conscious state were central to much psychology at the time. Watson thought the field had spent too much effort debating the contents of consciousness instead of building an objective science of behavior.

He therefore proposed that consciousness should not be necessary for defining psychological data.

This was a radical step. Psychology had long been associated with the mind. Watson was asking the discipline to redefine itself around observable organism–environment relations.

Watson’s Critique of Existing Textbooks

In the 1913 article, Watson discusses psychologists who seemed to adopt the language of behavior while retaining traditional consciousness-centered psychology.

He specifically comments on Walter Bowers Pillsbury’s definition of psychology as the “science of behavior.” Watson initially welcomed the language but complained that the resulting treatment soon returned to familiar topics such as sensation, perception, and imagery.

Watson’s criticism reveals how complete a transformation he wanted. Merely changing the definition of psychology while preserving the older conceptual structure was not enough for him.

Was Watson the First Person to Study Behavior?

No. Scientists had studied behavior before 1913, and several intellectual traditions helped prepare the way for behaviorism.

Research on animal learning, comparative psychology, physiology, reflexes, functionalism, and conditioning had already made behavior scientifically important. Christopher Green’s historical introduction to Watson’s paper notes that core behaviorist ideas had predecessors long before Watson.

Watson’s importance lies less in inventing the observation of behavior and more in demanding that observable behavior become the foundation of psychology as a discipline.

The Influence of Ivan Pavlov

Behaviorism is often discussed alongside the work of Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, whose experiments on conditioned reflexes demonstrated that organisms can learn associations between stimuli.

Classical conditioning offered behaviorists a powerful model because learning could be studied without relying on introspective reports. Researchers could control stimuli and measure observable responses.

Watson and his collaborators later applied conditioning ideas to emotional responses in humans.

The “Little Albert” Study

One of Watson’s best-known experiments was the 1920 “Little Albert” study conducted with Rosalie Rayner. They attempted to demonstrate that an infant’s fear response could be conditioned by pairing a previously neutral stimulus with a frightening noise.

The experiment became historically important as an example of behavioral learning, but it is also discussed today because of serious methodological and ethical concerns.

Modern human-subjects research requires informed consent processes, institutional review, minimization of harm, and special protections for vulnerable participants. The study therefore should not be presented as a model of acceptable contemporary research ethics.

Behaviorism After Watson

Watson launched a movement, but behaviorism did not remain identical to his 1913 formulation.

Neobehaviorism

Researchers such as Clark Hull and Edward Tolman developed more elaborate learning theories. Some introduced theoretical constructs that were not directly observable but were connected to measurable behavior through experimental predictions.

B. F. Skinner and Radical Behaviorism

B. F. Skinner later became perhaps the most famous behaviorist. His work focused strongly on operant conditioning: how consequences such as reinforcement affect future behavior.

Skinner’s radical behaviorism differed from Watson’s methodological behaviorism. Skinner did not simply deny private events; he attempted to place thoughts and feelings within a behavioral framework rather than treating them as independent inner causes.

Applied Behavior Analysis

Behavioral principles also contributed to applied behavior analysis, in which observable behavior and environmental contingencies are measured systematically to help change socially significant behavior.

Modern applied behavioral practice is considerably more developed than Watson’s early manifesto and operates under contemporary ethical and professional standards.

How Behaviorism Changed Experimental Psychology

Behaviorism helped make rigorous measurement, operational definitions, controlled experimentation, and observable performance central to psychological science.

The movement encouraged researchers to specify exactly what counted as a response, how learning would be measured, and what environmental conditions were being manipulated.

Many experimental practices used today are not “behaviorist” in the historical sense, yet they share this insistence on measurable evidence.

What Behaviorism Contributed to Learning Theory

Behaviorist research generated detailed understanding of conditioning, reinforcement, extinction, discrimination, generalization, schedules of reinforcement, and other learning processes.

These findings influenced:

education and classroom management;
behavior therapy;
animal learning and training;
habit research;
organizational behavior;
rehabilitation programs;
experimental analysis of behavior.

Contemporary psychology usually integrates behavioral principles with cognitive, biological, social, and developmental explanations rather than using one framework for every question.

Our broader article on psychology in everyday life shows how modern explanations combine learning, cognition, emotion, habits, stress, and social context.

The Main Limitation: Mental Processes Matter

Watson’s strongest methodological restriction eventually became one of behaviorism’s greatest limitations.

Human behavior cannot always be explained adequately without investigating memory, attention, language, expectations, representation, problem-solving, decision-making, and other cognitive processes.

During the mid-twentieth century, cognitive psychology expanded rapidly. Researchers demonstrated that mental processes could be studied scientifically by designing experiments in which observable performance provides evidence about otherwise unobservable mechanisms.

For example, memory cannot be watched directly. But researchers can manipulate study conditions and measure recall, recognition, reaction time, error patterns, or brain activity.

That methodological development allowed psychology to study the mind without returning to the unrestricted introspection Watson criticized.

For a related example, see MyArticles’ article on memory and recalling.

The Cognitive Revolution Did Not Erase Behaviorism

It is tempting to tell the history of psychology as if behaviorism disappeared when cognitive psychology emerged. The reality is more complicated.

Cognitive science challenged the claim that psychology should restrict itself to overt behavior, but behavioral research remained influential. Learning theory, behavioral therapy, experimental analysis of behavior, reinforcement research, and applied behavior analysis continued to develop.

Modern psychology is pluralistic. Researchers choose methods according to the problem being studied and may combine behavioral, cognitive, neural, social, developmental, and computational evidence.

Behaviorism and Nature vs. Nurture

Watson became famous for emphasizing environmental influence and learning. Popular summaries sometimes portray behaviorism as claiming that biology does not matter at all.

That is too simple as a description of modern science. Genes, brain development, hormones, temperament, evolutionary history, learning, culture, and environment interact in shaping behavior.

Watson’s historical importance lies in pushing psychology to take environmental learning seriously, not in providing the final answer to the nature-versus-nurture question.

Prediction Does Not Mean Perfect Determinism

Another misconception is that behaviorism implies that every human action can be predicted perfectly if the environment is known.

Real behavior is affected by enormous numbers of variables, including prior learning, current environment, biology, social context, motivation, and chance. Even highly regular behavioral principles are usually probabilistic rather than perfectly deterministic in practical settings.

Scientific prediction means identifying relationships that improve prediction, not claiming total control over every individual action.

Why Watson’s Article Still Matters

“Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” remains valuable because it asks a question that every science must answer: What evidence should count?

Watson’s answer was too restrictive for the psychology that later developed, but his demand for objective measurement helped reshape the discipline.

The paper also provides an important historical lesson. Scientific fields change not only when new facts are discovered but also when researchers challenge the basic assumptions governing what should be studied and how it should be measured.

How to Analyze Watson’s 1913 Argument

Students reading the original article can organize their analysis around five questions:

What problem does Watson identify? He believes psychology’s dependence on consciousness and introspection prevents it from becoming a unified objective science.
What subject matter does he propose? Observable behavior of humans and other animals.
What methods does he prefer? Experimental observation and measurable behavioral methods.
What goal does he give psychology? Prediction and control of behavior.
What does later psychology accept or reject? It retains objective measurement and behavioral research but also studies cognition and other mental processes scientifically.

Common Misreadings of “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”

Watson did not argue that animal research was useless. He regarded animal behavior as legitimate psychological subject matter.
He was not simply asking psychologists to add behavior to existing psychology. He wanted a major redefinition of the field.
The historical article was not titled “Behaviorism as a Behaviorist Views It.” The correct title is “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It.”
Behaviorism did not end with Watson. Later behaviorists developed substantially different theories.
Modern psychology is not simply a return to introspection. Cognitive processes are studied using objective experimental methods.

Conclusion

John B. Watson’s 1913 “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It” was a manifesto for changing psychology from a discipline centered on consciousness and introspective reports into an objective experimental science of behavior.

Watson argued that observable behavior should provide psychology’s essential data, that human and animal behavior could be investigated within the same scientific framework, and that the field should seek reliable prediction and control of behavior.

Later psychologists rejected his strongest attempt to exclude mental processes from scientific explanation. Memory, attention, language, emotion, perception, and cognition became central areas of research. Yet the methods used to study them reflect an important part of Watson’s legacy: theories should generate observations that can be measured, tested, replicated, and challenged.

For that reason, the article remains important not because modern psychology accepts every Watsonian claim, but because it helped transform the standards by which psychological claims are evaluated.