Psychology › Learning & behavior
Behaviorism
1913–1960s· School or movement
Historical, now abandonedImportant in its time, no longer accepted.
A school that said psychology should study only observable behavior and how the environment shapes it, setting the inner mind aside.
See it on the Psychology map →What it says
John B. Watson's 1913 manifesto declared that psychology should drop introspection and consciousness and aim to predict and control behavior, like any natural science. Building on Pavlov's and Thorndike's experiments, behaviorists studied rats, pigeons and people in controlled settings. Clark Hull's and B. F. Skinner's versions dominated American psychology into the 1950s. Behaviorism's hold faded in the 1960s as the cognitive revolution, Chomsky's attack on Skinner's theory of language, and research on insight and imitation showed the mind could not be left out.
Why it matters
As a full theory it is abandoned, but its laws of learning and its demand for measurable evidence live on in therapy, animal training, education, apps and incentive design.
The evidence
Status: historical. Watson's 1913 paper and Skinner's books document the movement. Its learning laws are well replicated; its claim that thoughts and feelings need no explaining has been abandoned.
Open questions
Historians debate how dominant behaviorism really was, and whether the 'cognitive revolution' was a sharp break or a gradual shift.
Inside this (2)
Connections (9)
▸Humanistic psychology (Maslow, Rogers) rebelled against BehaviorismWell replicated
The connection
Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers called their movement the 'third force', set against both behaviorism and psychoanalysis. They argued that treating people as bundles of conditioned responses, like lab rats, left out choice, meaning and personal growth, and they put the person's own experience back at the center of psychology and therapy.
Who showed it and when
United States, 1950s–1960s: Maslow's 1954 Motivation and Personality, the 1964 Old Saybrook conference, and Rogers's public debates with Skinner in 1956 and 1962.
The evidence
Their own writings define humanism in opposition to behaviorism, and transcripts of the Rogers–Skinner debates survive and are still taught.
Open questions
Whether humanism or the cognitive revolution did more to end behaviorism's dominance; most historians credit cognition, since humanism offered fewer testable methods.
▸Scientific psychology (Wundt's Leipzig lab, 1879) was redefined by BehaviorismWell replicated
The connection
Wundt's lab science studied conscious experience through trained introspection: careful self-reports of sensations. Watson's 1913 manifesto kept the lab and the experiments but threw out introspection as unreliable, redefining psychology as the science of observable behavior. For about 40 years, especially in America, scientific psychology meant measuring what organisms do, not what they report.
Who showed it and when
Watson's 1913 paper, written at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore; behaviorism then dominated US universities from the 1920s to the 1950s, while European psychology stayed more varied.
The evidence
Watson's paper names introspection as the problem, and historians tracing journals and textbooks of the 1920s–1950s document the shift from consciousness to behavior.
Open questions
How far Watson rejected Wundt himself rather than Titchener's narrower structuralism; historians say textbook accounts blur the two.
▸John B. Watson founded BehaviorismWell replicated
The connection
Watson's 1913 paper 'Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It' gave the movement its name and program: drop consciousness and introspection, study only what can be observed, and aim to predict and control behavior. As APA president from 1915 he promoted conditioning as the method, and his 1925 book Behaviorism popularized the approach.
Who showed it and when
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; first delivered as a lecture at Columbia University in New York in 1913 and published in Psychological Review that year.
The evidence
The 1913 paper is among the most cited in psychology's history and is universally treated as behaviorism's founding statement.
Open questions
Whether Watson originated behaviorism or named a trend: animal researchers were already moving that way, and historians find his manifesto's early reception was modest.
▸Classical conditioning (Pavlov's dogs) became the foundation of BehaviorismWell replicated
The connection
Pavlov showed learning could be measured objectively, in drops of saliva, without asking anyone what they felt. Behaviorists adopted that as their model: complex behavior was built from learned links between stimuli and responses. Pavlov himself was a physiologist wary of psychology, but his method became behaviorism's core technique.
Who showed it and when
Pavlov's St. Petersburg lab, 1890s–1930s; English translations, especially Conditioned Reflexes (1927), spread his methods through American labs.
The evidence
Behaviorist textbooks and journals of the 1920s–1950s are built around conditioning; Watson, Clark Hull and others cite Pavlov as the basis of their systems.
Open questions
Whether behaviorism stretched Pavlov too far: he studied reflexes in dogs, while behaviorists claimed the same laws explained language and personality, which most now reject.
▸Operant conditioning extended BehaviorismWell replicated
The connection
Early behaviorism leaned on Pavlov's reflexes, which explain responses triggered by signals but not new voluntary actions. Skinner's operant conditioning added learning from consequences: actions that pay off are repeated. That let behaviorism explain how animals and people acquire new behaviors, and his 'radical behaviorism' became the school's best-known form in the 1950s and 1960s.
Who showed it and when
Harvard University and Midwestern universities, 1930s–1950s; Skinner's The Behavior of Organisms (1938) and Science and Human Behavior (1953), which applied it to society.
The evidence
Skinner's books and the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, founded in 1958, show operant work becoming behaviorism's main research program.
Open questions
Whether operant and classical conditioning are truly separate processes or two faces of one learning system is still debated by learning researchers.
▸Observational learning (Bandura, Bobo doll) broke the limits of BehaviorismWell replicated
The connection
Strict behaviorism held that learning requires the learner's own behavior to be reinforced. Bandura showed children learn new actions just by watching, with no reward of their own, and can store them until a reason to act appears. Learning and performing became separate, and thoughts like expectations and self-efficacy re-entered the explanation.
Who showed it and when
Stanford University: the Bobo doll studies, 1961–1965; Bandura's 1977 Social Learning Theory, broadened into social cognitive theory in 1986.
The evidence
In the 1965 study, children who saw the model punished copied less, yet reproduced the acts when offered rewards, showing they had learned without reinforcement.
Open questions
Whether Bandura broke from behaviorism or extended it; some behaviorists argue imitation is itself a habit reinforced in early childhood.
▸Behaviorism was displaced by The cognitive revolutionWell replicated
The connection
Behaviorism treated the mind as a black box and studied only stimuli and responses. By the 1950s it struggled to explain language, planning and memory. Psychologists borrowed computer and information-theory ideas to model inner processes; by the 1970s cognitive psychology dominated, while behaviorist learning laws lived on in therapy and training.
Who showed it and when
American and British universities, mid-1950s to 1970s, including Harvard, MIT, Carnegie and Cambridge; key figures George Miller, Noam Chomsky, Herbert Simon and Ulric Neisser.
The evidence
Shifts in journal topics, textbooks and hiring from the 1960s onward, documented by participants such as Miller in later accounts.
Open questions
Some historians say behaviorism was absorbed rather than defeated: its rigorous measurement and lab control remain central to cognitive science.
▸Harlow's monkeys: comfort over food contradicted the feeding account of BehaviorismWell replicated
The connection
Behaviorists, and many psychoanalysts too, held that babies love their mothers because mothers feed them: affection was a learned by-product of reward. Harlow's infant monkeys clung to a soft cloth figure that gave no milk and visited the wire one mainly to drink. Comfort itself was a basic need, not just a conditioned reward.
Who showed it and when
University of Wisconsin–Madison primate lab; announced in Harlow's 1958 American Psychological Association presidential address, 'The Nature of Love'.
The evidence
Harlow logged hours spent on each surrogate, up to about 18 a day on the cloth one. John Watson's 1928 child-care book, warning against cuddling, shows the view Harlow overturned.
Open questions
Whether learning theory was refuted or just revised; later learning theorists folded 'contact comfort' in as a reward of its own.
▸Behaviorism rejected the introspection of Structuralism: breaking the mind into elements (Titchener)Well replicated
The connection
John B. Watson's 1913 manifesto declared that introspection could never be science: trained observers disagreed and no one could check them. Psychology should study only observable behavior. Since structuralism depended entirely on trained introspection, the attack cut away its method, and the school faded after Titchener's death in 1927.
Who showed it and when
Watson, of Johns Hopkins, delivered 'Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It' at Columbia in February 1913; it appeared in Psychological Review that year.
The evidence
Watson's text attacks introspection and Titchener's program directly; the unresolved 'imageless thought' dispute gave his argument force.
Open questions
Did behaviorism kill structuralism, or was it already collapsing? And introspection never fully died: surveys and self-reports remain core tools.