John B. WatsonReviews

9/6/22

This book was an....experience, as you may have noted from the quotes in the progress updates.

I want to preface this with the fact that this book from the 1920s does NOT represent behavior analysis in any way.

Watson did some groundbreaking work in respondent/reflex conditioning. Some of it is particularly horrifying and unethical, and would never be conducted in modern science. However, from a historical standpoint, both for the science of behavior as well as the general mores of the time period, it was interesting.

Watson had a lot of interesting ideas, to say the least. He gets so close to good advice in many places - always consult with your child's physician if you suspect something is wrong, don't attempt to use punishment with your child if you are angry or if the rationale is from a justice/retribution angle, don't make the things children need to learn (i.e., toilet training) a harsh or unpleasant experience, we need to better teach people on how to raise children. But so much of what he said was overly generalized, cruel, or unsubstantiated. We know so much more know about learning and for everything he said that was accurate, there was a LOT of inaccurate, just plain wrong information. That's the appeal of science, really - One person, however loud or prominent, doesn't make fact. Aggregated, checked information over time makes a fact, and that fact can always be updated or thrown out when better information comes along.

As this was a library book, and a popular one, I could real the notes people wrote in it. There was the usual, gratuitous, pointless highlighting, of course. One person with a blocky handwriting style would cross out entire sections they disagreed with and would write NO! NO! in the margins, as if they were shouting at Watson himself. Another, bafflingly, would highlight quotes and write in delicate cursive "This is practical Freudianism." in the margin. I chuckled - a classical behaviorism philosophy and Freudianism could not be more at odds. But seeing how the text was interpreted and how people reacted in this time-capsule fashion was as edifying as the book.

Do I agree with Watson? Well, no. I think his advice overall is quite terrible, despite his good intentions and despite the wealth of information he discovered on reflexes. the book added context that I think is important if I ever read Behave. Its cool to see how far we've come.