John B. Watson
John B. Watson was the creator of behaviorism, He proposed to replace the "science of the mind" with the "science of human behavior."
Psychology had studied the mind and consciousness by introspection. Watson claimed that subjective internal states of
mind and
consciousness are unobservable, unmeasurable, and even nonexistent. Psychology should only study the measurable, objective, external behaviors of man and animals.
The work of Watson and later
B. F. Skinner, who added the idea of
reinforcement to Watson's conditioning techniques, led to "mind" and "consciousness" becoming unspeakable concepts in many psychology departments. A survey of today’s four leading textbooks on psychology has only one that defines psychology as “the science of mind.” Another has for its main index entry, “mind, theory of, see theory of mind. A third has “mind, see brain.” And the last has no entry at all under “mind.”
Works
"Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it" Psychological Review 20: 158–177. (1913)
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