John B. Watson LOGAN NOE No, Not This John Watson This John Watson - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

John B. Watson

LOGAN NOE

No, Not This John Watson

This John Watson

Trivia Time

 Born in 1878

 In Greenville, South Carolina

 Siblings

 2 Older brothers and 1 older sister

 Edward (very religious)  Thomas (died at 20)  Mary (not that important)

Parents

 Father Pickens Watson

 Handy man  Charming and handsome  Liked his liquor  Liked women  Not what you would call a

church going man

 Mother Emma Roe

 Insufferably religious  Strong  Intelligent  Faithful  Her family believed she

married beneath her

Influence of the Church

 Watson’s nurse (how he learned to fear the

dark)

 Greenville’s guide on being a good Christian

(or how to spy on your neighbors)

 Edward the faithful (more like an unloving

brother)

 House of God (literally, Watson’s house held

frequent church meetings)

 Pickens the “Deacon” (at least in name)

Growing up in Greenville

 Grew up in poverty

 (It is not who you are, but who your forefathers were)

 Close relationship with his father

 Learned how to work with his hands  Would skip school to learn from and hang out with his father

 Challenging home life

 Mother vs. Father (cage match of the century)

 Abandonment issues

 The foundation for everything

Early Life

(after his father left)

 Violent school behavior  Violent outside of school  Considered by most to be lazy  Value manual skills (teachings of the father)  Struggled with his father leaving (excuse for his behavior)  Diamond in the rough (highly intelligent)  Close relationship with his mother

Education

 Attended Furman University in Greenville

 Much to the entire town’s surprise  Worked many odd jobs to pay for college (remember folks, he is poor)  Took many random classes (sound familiar)  Really enjoyed philosophy

 Mentor was Gordon Moore (new father figure)  More introduced him to psychology  Psych. was mostly introspection at the time (intuition and consciousness)

 Failed his last year of school and had to return the next year (felt great anxiety

and did not want to lose Moore)

 Handed his final paper in backwards.

 Also he loved sex

The “Real World”

 Graduated with his bachelors  Worked as a teacher

 Private school  Low wage  Had no home (seriously he lived at his student’s houses)

 Saved up for graduate school  Felt he could not leave because of his mother  The big decision (kind of)

Chicago

 James Angell (the new father figure)  Learned more about introspection but hated it

 Lacked self confidence to voice his opinion

 Animal behavior (mostly rats)

 He wanted psychology to be an objective science like animal psych.

was

 Liked to make devices to test the rats (thanks to good old dad)  Graduated and was offered Angell’s job (Angell worked too much)

 Graduated in 1903, incase you wanted to know

 Wanted to continue working with animal behavior

The Wife

 Mary Ikes

 One of Watson’s students in his lab (a reoccurring theme)  Mary’s brothers did not like Watson

 Sent her away to forget about our handsome fellow  Watson followed her and married her (though he did not really have the

means or money to do so)  Watson was tired of being alone

 He loved that Mary loved him

Days at John Hopkins

 Started teaching in 1908  Psychology controlled by philosophy (well in the same department

as philosophy at least)

 Head of the department was Mark Baldwin (another father figure)

 Canned after he was caught in a brothel  Made Watson editor of the Psychology Review before he left

 Made some new friends (Titchener and Yerkes)  1909 Watson convinced the head of John Hopkins to separate

psychology into its own department

 Wrote Buchner a letter (he was the head honcho)

Rise to Fame

 Objective Psychology (mic drop)

Rise to Fame

 Ok for real

 Continued his work with rats  Wanted to share his belief about an objective psychology

 Lacked self confidence

 Lectures at Columbia University February 1913

 Went against the flow of traditional psychology (introspection)

A Man of Confidence

 Watson’s views attracted many wallets…erm…Students to John

Hopkins.

 Goodnow becomes the new president of John Hopkins

 He is important later

 Watson conducts a lot of different studies using his new objective

approach (too many to talk about so we will gloss over them)

 Begins to gain more influence and starts his work with children

 Started another lab at Phipps Institute

 Major Watson (Military man)  Little Albert  How to Drink During Prohibition, The How to guide

The Affair

 Mary falls ill (and Watson loses interest)

 Watson in the “prime” of his life

 Rosalie Rayner (soulmate kind of stuff right here)

 Beautiful, lively, 19 years old (Watson was 41….41)

 She was a student during one of his drinking

experiments (where have we seen this before)

 The letters  Mary fights to hold on

The Divorce

 Watson tries to get Mary to leave the country quietly

 Mary does not leave the country (go figure)

 Goodnow finds out about the affair  Watson gets canned (asked to resign)  Moves to New York and stays with an old friend  The divorce  The man basically loses everything, his wife, the kids, and the career

 On the bright side he got to keep Rosalie

Works in Advertising

 J. Walter Thompson

 Advertising  Started from the very bottom (door to door

sales man)

 Worked his way up (110%)

 Worked as a cashier in order to understand the

customer

 Fear, Anger, Love  Made boat loads of money

 ($70,000 a year) Decent money by todays

standards

Money can’t buy Happyness

 Still wanted to do research

 Wrote to Titchener that he would give up all of his advertising money to

return to academia

 Advertising was not challenging enough  Contributed very little to psychology during this time  After advertising he finished out his days in the land of suburbia

Riddle Me This Batman

 A series of thought provoking questions

Questions

 As in, do you have any?