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PSY-101 WEEK 1 DISCUSSION 1 PSY-101 WEEK 1 DISCUSSION John Broadus Watson was an American Psychologist who established behaviorism as an alternate view of psychology and change through behavior modifications. He was born on January 9, 1878, in Travelers Rest, South Carolina and died September 25, 1958, in Woodbury Connecticut at eighty-years-old (PBS 1998). As a pioneering psychologist who played an important role in developing behaviorism, Watson believed that psychology should include observable behavior. Expanding on Ivan Pavlov’s dog study, Watson became a known Psychologist through his research on conditioning. Watson became a renowned father figure of behaviorism through his “Little Albert experiment” expertly explained in Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It (Watson 1994, p. 2), in which he demonstrated that a child could be conditioned to fear a previously neutral stimulus. Using his research and submitted study report in January 1920, he was also able to reveal that this fear could be generalized in other examples. The main area of his work focuses on responses to certain actions or sounds and whether these responses can be predicted or controlled (Watson 1994). The most important data collected from his research is that stimuli to brain receptors and the effects on behavior are the same in an animal and a human. Watson observed that if one looked at the result of a natural science ideology, the behavior and resulting changes are simply a means to an end. The easiest explanation of this observation is that behavior is a response to a necessity, consciously or unconsciously filling the need. He also was able to deduce that typical psychological application relies on the study of emotions, but that unknown factors can alter these emotions or purposefully manipulated. Therefore, Watson was able to validate that the studying of behavior, while rudimentary, gives a much clearer and unadulterated form of psycho-analysis. An example of Watson’s behaviorism theory is evident in a game of poker. When playing poker, the object is to have a better hand than the other players or make them believe the hand is better than theirs, causing a fold (surrender). After someone has played hundreds of thousands of hands of live poker, they learn (tells) by reading the player and analyzing an actions relatability to a certain result. Example, player one who will call Jay has a good hand against player two who we will name Pat. The two layers observe each other for the smallest piece of information. Progressing through the hand Jay’s hand keeps improving with each new card, and Pat’s hand, while good may or may not beat Jay’s cards. Pat watches Jay as the cards come into play, where subconsciously Jay glances down at his chips for a splitsecond. Playing so many hands of poker, Pat has observed this minute reaction as a sign of his opponent having a great hand. Jay’s and almost every card player’s glance down happen as the eyes and brain try to communicate to plan what to do next. The look down at the chips represents the beginning of this communication/decision, is done subconsciously when you have a great hand. Pat uses his observation from past occurrences to fold his cards thus saving himself money.