ON THE ORIGINS OF BEHAVIORISM*

JOHN C. BURNHAM

The Ohio Stale University

In recent years, historians of psychology, in evaluating the significance of the

advent of behaviorism early in the twentieth century, have tended to raise their
estimate of its importance. Gustav Bergmann, for example, has emphasized the
methodological innovations of John B. Watson, founder of behaviorism, while
Albert E. Goss has called attention to Watsons theory of verbal mediating responses in language and thought. Such writers diverge considerably not only in
the particular emphases that they give behaviorism but in their views of its originswhen it began and what its antecedents were. Earlier writers, particularly, have
called into question the role of Watson and his originality.
There has, indeed, been so much controversy about the prehistory of behaviorism that the issues various writers have raised have to be explored before a
general history can be written. Having once established when the phenomenon of
behaviorism appeared, and who was responsible for its initial form and development,
a more momentous question can be taken up, namely, what historical forces behaviorism embodied.
Much light is thrown on the significance of the coming of behaviorism by applying t o it Thomas S. Kuhns sociological model of scientific innovation.* Discussions of anticipations of Watsons ideas and of theinfluences that gave rise to
behaviorism take on levels of meaning beyond mere antiquarian and partisan inquiries when predecessors and similarities of conception are fitted into Kuhns
scheme. Precursors as such, according to Kuhn, are symptoms of the gestation of
scientific progress. Intellectual influences, he shows, can be detected in the characteristic reactions of the scientific community. In the case of behaviorism, careful
chronology and a traditional historical analysis clear up many questions raised by
past writers. But beyond the usual analysis, understanding of the significance of
behaviorism in the history of psychology-and the behavioral sciences-will be incomplete until the origins of the movement are viewed in a fresh way such as Kuhns
model of innovation provides,
E. G . Boring in his standard history of experimental psychology dates behaviorism from the appearance of Watsons paper, Psychology as the Behaviorist
Views It, which was printed in the Psychological Review in 1913.3 There Watson, a
*An early version of this paper was presented at the annual meetin of the History of Science
Society in San Francisco in December, 1965. Some of the field reaearcf leading to the paper was
carried out while the author was postdoctoral fellow of the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry. Additional research was supported by a grant from The Ohio State University, and typing
waa generously furnished by the Department of History, University of Melbourne, whde the author
was Fulbright lecturer there.
Gustav Bergmann, The Contribution of John B. Watson, Psyehologicd Review, 63 (1956),
265-276; Albert E. Goss, Early Behaviorism and Verbal Mediating Responses, Americun Paychologist, 16 (1961), 285-298.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Sciati$c Revolutions, (Chicago: The University of Chicago

Press, 1962).
8Edwin G. Boring, A History of Experimental Psychology, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, Inc., 1950), especially pp. 641, 643. John B. Watson, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views
It,, Psychological Review, 20 (1913), 1.58-177.

143

144

JOHN C. BURNHAM

professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, and not yet 35, outlined a
psychology substantially different from that conventionally accepted. Rejecting
the psychophysical associationism that dominated the discipline, Watson called
for a psychology that would be a purely objective experimental branch of natural
science, modeled on the physical and biological sciences. The purpose of behavioristic psychology, Watson made clear, was to predict and control behavior. The
animal psychologists were already using the objective observation of animal behavior in a controlled environment. Unless human psychology took heed of the
methods of these comparative psychologists, said Watson, the behaviorists proposed
to extend their work and develop a purely observational experimental human psychology and thus render obsolete introspective psychology with its categories of
mental elements and functions.
Watson was not just criticizing but was offering a constructive program that
he had thought out in considerable detail. While he accepted associative learning
as a pattern observable in all animals, he suggested that it is best to view the socalled higher thought processes as implicit movements rather than to attempt t o
translate them into images and similar types of mental contents. By and large,
Watsons manifesto included all of the later program of behaviorism, although one of
the most important parts of it, his insistence on controlling not only the immediate
environment but the entire development of the experimental animal, has seldom had
the attention that it deserve^.^
Despite the fact that Watson was both explicit and clear in explaining what
he was about, over the years accounts of the beginnings of behaviorism have varied
widely. A number of commentators have disagreed with Borings contention that
this date of 1913, the time of the printed appearance of Watsons manifesto, signaled
the appearance of behaviorism. That paper itself, or some version of it, first made a
marked impression on psychologists when a number of them heard it read in at least
two and possibly more public presentations in the New York area in the fall.and
winter of 1912-1913, primarily as one of a series of lectures at Columbia University.
This lecture presentation was too close to publication-within a few months-to
generate a meaningful distinction between the spoken and printed word. But a
number of commentators have asserted that Watsons views were well known in the
profession much earlier-that he had, for example, expressed them in 1908 in a
seminar at Chicago before he left for Johns Hopkins (Gardner Murphy, undocumented); in a lecture before the psychology department a t Yale sometime in 1908 (Paul
Henry Furfey, 1928); andso on.6 Watson himself traced his ideas back as far as 1904.6
The date of Watsons formulation of behaviorism becomes of considerable
moment because, despite Bergmann and GOSS,most writers about behaviorism have
attempted to show that Watson was not original in his ideas. Critics of Watsonian
behaviorism have indeed tried to discredit it with the ancient argument that it
%id.
Gardner Murphy, Hislorim1 Inlroduction to Modern Psychology, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Company, 1949), p. 260; Paul Hanly Furfey, After Psychoanalysis What? Catholic
World,127 (1928), 681. Watson was at Yale in November, 1908, but there seems to be no contemporary
record of the content of his lecture or lectures; see, e.g., Yale Dady News.
John Broadus Watson, in Carl Murchison, ed., A Hislory of Psychology in Autobiography
(Worcester, M w . : Clark University Press, 1936), 111, 276.

ON THE ORIGINS OF BEHAVIORISM

145

really was not new anyway. E. B. Titchener of Cornell, chief spokesman for the
orthodox experimental psychology of his day, led the attack along this line immediately, in 1913. By the use of striking quotations, Titchener traced Watsons
idea of an observational rather than introspective approach back to Comte and
Cournot, both of whom had published programmatic statements more than half a
century earlier. Real experimental psychologists, Titchener pointed out, had long
ago and for good reason consciously rejected this traditional type of objective approach, and Watson was, therefore, naive in believing that he had discovered a new
and better method of solving the problems of psychology. (Titchener asserted that
behaviorism was simply not relevant to psychology and made any differences
primarily a matter of definition anyway.)s Other critics of behaviorism tried t o
avoid confronting it by asserting-patronizingly-that
it was but another version
of one side in a classical debate in philosophy, usually the materialistic or mind-body
controversies, so that Watsons views required no special attention but could be
dismissed by allusion to standard arguments in philosophy.
Critics of behaviorism missed the point that Watsons originality did not consist of simply his conception of verbal mediating responses, his interest in social
control, and his application of the methods and concepts of animal psychology to
humans. Watson combined these elements into a synthesis, the whole of which ws8
greater than its parts. Andre Tilquin, a systematic student of behaviorism, has
shown that a whole panoply of postulates underlies it, each one with its own set of
antecedents. Understandably, then, commentators could pick out any aspect of
behaviorism, assert its fundamental nature, and tmce its history: materialistic
monism, adaptation, the reflex arc model of nervous functioning, the practicality of
psychology, or organic holism, for i n s t a n ~ e .Because
~
all of these ideas were current
in one form or another in Watsons formative period, compilations of rival founders of behaviorism who might have influenced him are particularly damaging to
any claims of originality for him.
Obviously Watson could have utilized contemporary thinking, perhaps without
being aware of it. But the question of originality brings with it the question of
(precursorslS-whywere some formulations of an idea unrecognized by contemporaries and others fully recognized? Indeed, did the precursors actuaIIy influence
anyone?
Two depreciating commentators on Watsonianism, A. A. Roback and Robert
S. Woodworth, both made long, fascinating lists of men who uttered behavioristic
sentiments in the decade or so before 1913.1 The list of behaviorists before Watson whom Roback and Woodworth and others have assembled includes, among
others: William James, of course (1890 and especially 1904); James McKeen
7E. g., Willard Harrell and Rosa Harrison, The Rise and Fall of Behaviorism, Journul of
Qmerat Psychology, 18 (1938), 367-421.

*E. B. Titchener, On Psychology UI the Behaviorist Views It, )Proceedings of the Amerimn
Philosophicrrl S ~ n e l y 53
, (1914)) 1-17.
BAndr6 Tilquin, Le Behwiotisme, Origine et Dwcloppement de lu Psychola& de Readimr en A m iqw (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrh, 1950)) pp. 29-43.
1OA. A. Roback, Behaviorha and P s y c h o h (Cambridge, M w . : Sci-Art, 1923); R~bert8.
Woodworth, Contemporary S c h t s of Psychobqy (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1931),
pp. 4592.
11William JameB, The Principles of Psychology (2 vols., New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1890); William James, Does Consciousness Exist? The Journal of Philosaphy, Psychom and
Scienfific M&,
1 (1904), 477-491.

146

JOHN C. BURNHAM

Cattell (1904) ;12 the distinguished zoologist, Herbert S. Jennings (1906 and perhaps
earlier) ;l3 Knight Dunlap, Watsons colleague at Hopkins (around 1908) ; Max
Meyer, who in 1911 published a remarkable book, The Fundamental Laws of Human
Behavior;14 and William McDougall, the English physician and psychologist, who
in 1905 spoke of psychology as the science of conduct and later, in 1912, used the
Of this list of alleged precursors only two are of particular
word, behavior,) it~e1f.l~
importance because only in their cases is there evidence beyond similarity of ideas
to indicate that they exerted influence on Watsons thinking.16 These men are
Dunlap and Jennings, with whom Watson was thrown in contact when he went from
Chicago to Johns Hopkins in 1908.
Donald D. Jensen has recently pointed out that Watson while at Chicago, in
1904 and 1907, had reviewed Jenningss work on invertebrate behavior but found it
inadequate from a psychological viewpoint. After moving to Hopkins, Watson not
only came to know Jennings but took a course under him. By 1914, writes Jensen,
Watson had adopted a point of view which differed little in principle from that of
Jennings, if much in style. Jensen concludes that Jacques Loeb, who taught Watson
a t Chicago, and Jennings were the true founders of behaviorism and that Watson
merely took their ideas-especially Jenningss after 1908-and extended them to
higher animals and man.
On the face of it, Jensens discovery of Jennings as the founder of behaviorism
is very persuasive. Two difficulties, however, present themselves. First, the critical
document, Watsons 1907 review of Jenningss book, has to be read in the light of
Watsons other work and private letters. The review was not, as Jensen-most
reasonably-alleges, mentalistic and anti-reductionistic, but relatively quite the
opposite.S Second, Jennings was not by any stretch of the imagination himself a
behaviorist but held quite different views.
125. McKeen Cattell, The Conceptions and Methods of Psychology, in Howard J. Rogers, ed.,
Congress of Arts and Sczence, Universal Exposttion, St. Louis, 1904 (Boston: Houghton M a i n and
Company, 1906), V, 593-604.
1SH. S. Jennings, Behavior of the Lower Organisms (New York: The Columbia University Press,
1906).
1*JIax Meyer, The Fundamental Laws of Human Behavior (Boston: R. G. Badger, 1911).
1William McDougall, Physiological Psychology (London: J. M. Dent, 1905), pp. 1-2; Willam
;\lcDougall, Psychology, The Study of Behavior (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1912). After
C. Lloyd Morgan published his Animal Behaviour (London: E. Arnold, 1900), comparative psychologists not infrequently used the term, animal behavior. Watson, as a comparative psychologist,
of course acknowledged Morgan as one of his intellectual fathefs, but Morgans well known views
had very little in common with what became Watsonian behaworism.
168ince Watson later utilized the concept of conditioned responses, Pavlov has also been counted
as one of the fathers of behaviorism. Although Pavlovs work was well known in America, it was
understood to concern glandular reflexes primarily; it was only later that the idea became known that
the work might have a more general applicability to the commoner associative processes. See, for
example, Robert 11.Yerkes and Sergius Morguls, The Method of Pawlow in Animal Psychology,
Psychological Bulletin, 6 ,(1909), 257-273, in an issue edited by Watson; John B. Watson, The Origin
and GroR-th of Behav,iorlsm, Archiv fuer systemdische Philosophie und Sociologie, 30 (1927), 248-249.
Pavlov himself remained an orthodox neuromechanist and reductionist; see Y. P. Frolov, Pavluu
and His School, The Theory of Condilioned Rejlexes, trans. C. P. Dutt (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trubner & Co., 1937), especially pp. 13-14.
17Donald 1).Jensen, Foreword to the 1962 Edition, in H. S. Jennings, Behavior of the Lower
Organisms (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), pp. ix-xvi.
18J. B. Katson, review of Jennings, in Psychological Bulletin. 4 (1907), 288-291. See, for example,
John B. Katson to Robert M. Yerkes, Nov. 2, 1905, Dec. 12, 1906, Robert M. Yerkes Papers, Yale
Medical Library, S e w Haven, Conn.

ON THE ORIGINS OF BEHAVIORISM

147

Jennings was an extreme reductionist and never surrendered his allegiance to

neuromechanism. As late as 1909 he himself drew a sharp distinction between the
experimental study of complex behavior, on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
the explanation of behavior-necessarily simple behavior-by physico-chemical
reduction of nervous impulses. A frequent error of commentators like Jensen has
been to equate behaviorism with neuromechanism, which it emphatically is not.
Jenningss loyalty, as he himself made clear, was to neuromechanism. Still imbued
with nineteenth century attitudes, Jennings rejected the essentials of behaviorism
because in the hands of such men as Hans Driesch, the vitalist, they had in the past
led to non-materialistic lines of thought.I9
Watsons relationship to his old teacher, Loeb, illustrates well how he stood in
regard to this line of thinking. Loeb was, like Jennings, a reductionist, and his life
work was an attempt to make reductionism viable.20 Again, Watsons ideas have
often been attributed to Loeb, but their chief similarity lay in their rhetoric. Early
in January, 1914, for example, Watson wrote to Loeb apologizing for his forthcoming
book, Behavior. Very gently Watson pointed out how his views differed from Loebs.
Although they both believed that behavior can be analyzed into reflex action, Watson wrote, I feel that your scheme is a little too simple as it now stands . . . . I do
not see any other way of getting at the phenomena of behavior except to consider
them as simple reflexes. I am sure our one point of difference would be the extent
to which analysis has gone.21 The truth, had Watson spelled it out with less tact
(as he did privately in letters and in a review of Loeb in 1907), is that Watson
despaired of waiting for a nervous system model of behavior that could be demonstrated physiologically.22 Watson believed that it is possible to investigate complex
units of behavior without waiting for the discovery of their physical and chemical
equivalents and explanations.
The differences between Jenningss and Loebs views and those of Watson are
not the only objection to Jensens attempt to credit Jennings for behaviorism: there
are alternative explanations for the development of Watsons ideas. That is, granted
that Watson came under Jenningss influence after 1908 a t Hopkins, were there not
other men with whom Watson associated at t,hat time who were as influential on
him, perhaps even more influential, than Jennings? Watson himself mentioned also
not only his old friend, James Mark Baldwin, but A. 0. Lovejoy, the philosopher;
Dunlap; and the psychiatrist, Adolf M e ~ e r On
. ~ the
~ face of it, for example, Meyer,
-~

%See H. S.Jennings, Diverse Ideals and Divergent Conclusions in the Study of Behavior in
Lower Organisms, American Journal of Psycholo y, 21 (1910), 349-370. See also the interesting letter
avowing his belief in consciousness but adding tfiat the man that denies it all the way through is
tolerably safe from overthrow, H. S. Jennings to Robert M. Yerkes, Nov. 19, 1904, Yerkes Papers.
John B. Watson, Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (Philadel hia: J. B. Lippincott
Company, 1919), p. vii, commented directly on this confusion: Those so-caged objectivists, so far as
wncerns their human psychology, - and this is true of Bechterew as well, - are perfectly orthodox
parallelists. Watson was far more at home in philosophy than he let on or than his critics would
admit.
WSee Donald Fleming, Introduction, in Jacques Loeb, The Mechanistic Conception of Lift
(Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. vii-xli.
*1John B. Watson to Jacques Loeb, Jan. 2, 1914, Jacques Loeb Papers, Library of Congress,
Washington, D. C.
**Forexample, John B. Watson to Robert M. Yerkes, Oct. 29, 1909, Yerkes Papers. J. B. Watson,
review of Jacques Loeb, in Psychological Bulletin, 4 (1907), 291-293.
ZSWatson, in A History of Psychology in Autobwgraphy, p. 276. hfeyer actually did not arrive in
Baltimore until some time after Watson.

148

JOHN C. BURNHAM

director of the Phipps Clinic, should have the title of grandfather of behaviorism.
Not only was Meyer later host to Watsons laboratory, located in the Clinic, but
he was far more prestigious-and probably impressivethan Jennings. Moreover,
Meyer, who possessed an original mind, had for years been advocating the study of
human behavior without imposing on it presumed internal categories and artificial
intellectualistic classifications. His approach to psychiatry was strictly biologicalthe same approach that won Watson fame in experimental psychology.
In the case of Dunlap we are relieved somewhat from using similarity of ideas
to infer his influence on Watson. Unfortunately, however, we have to rely instead
upon unsupported retrospective reports, which are not satisfying, either. Writing
in his autobiography many years later, Dunlap claimed credit for behaviorism.
Behaviorism was, he said, Watsons extreme version of his own ideas, which had
greatly influenced Watson, who had, up until then, been orthodox in his use of
mental elements. Dunlap said flatly that it was he who directed Watsons attention
to the study of behavior aa such. It is true that the two men not only worked together professionally but were personally compatible. Dunlaps assertion carries
particular weight because Watson, in his own short autobiography, blandly endorsed Dunlaps claim to credit. The only difficulty is, as Dunlap himself admitted,
not one shred of evidence exists that at the time he held psychological opinions that
could have given rise to beha~iorism.~~
The fact is, that Watsons gentlemanly acknowledgment is not consistent with
his own account of behaviorism. In his autobiography Watson expressed his distaste for using human subjects in experiments and his pleasure in using animals who,
aa he used to remark, were never late for experimental sessions. With animals,
wrote Watson, I was at home. I felt that, in studying them, I was keeping close to
biology with my feet on the ground. More and more the thought presented itself:
Cant I find out by watching their behavior everything that the other students are
finding out by using Os? [mtrospective Observers, as opposed to Subjects]. . . . I
broached this to my colleagues, as early as 1904, but received little enc~uragement.~~
In this statement and elsewhere, Watson apparently established two facts concerning behaviorism: that he had had the idea as early as 1904 and that it grew primarily
out of animal psychology or, at least, experimentation with animals. Given the
inaccuracies and omissions of this autobiographical sketch, both of Watsons contentions require careful verification. One may also wish to question later on whether
Watson was the best judge of what constituted the basic elements of behaviorism.
Fortunately, there is considerable evidence with which to establish a chronology
of Watsons thinking along behavioristic lines. The date that he mentions, 1904,
is, as he pointed out, the time when he heard Cattell give the St. Louis address
which made him one of the precursors of behaviorism.26If anyone is to be characterUKnight Dunlap, in Carl Murchison, ed., A History of Psychology in AuJobiography (Worcester,

Mass.: Clark University &em, 19321, I1 44-46; Watson, in A History of Psychology in A utobb
p a hy, p 277. See, for example, Knight bunlap, Dr.Yerkes View of Psychical Causation, Psycho%gZcalBuZletin, 8 (1911), 400-403; even Dunlaps The Case Against Introspection, psychologid Reuieza, 19 (1912), 404-413, was irrelevant to behaviorism, and Dunlaps Muscular Activity
and Thought Procesxs, Scientific Amatean Supplemenl, 78 (1914), 322-323, which appeared after
Watsons paper, had an emphasis completely foreign to Watsons way of thinking.
swatson, in A of l
Psychologg
~
in Autobiography,
~
p. 276.
Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behavimist, p. vii.
~~Watson,

ON THE ORIGINS OF BEHAVIORISM

149

ized as the grandfather of Watsons behaviorism, the best case can probably be
made for Cattell.27 The similarity of Cattells statement at St. Louis to Watsons,
almost a decade later, is striking. Cattell not only rejected introspection as the
major source of psychological knowledge but spoke in the same terms that Watson
later used of control as the goal of psychology: Control of the physical world,
Cattell asserted, is secondary to the control of ourselves and of our fellow men.
This concept of control had been present in Watsons work at least as early as
1906; it is directly involved in the new animal psychology. At that time he wrote
of the difficulties in dealing with the reactions of experimental animals and declared
his desire to be in a position to devote more continuous time to them and to watch
and to control their early development. . . . The effect of continued tuition upon the
behavior of the individual of a given species is a general problem which must be
solved before we are upon firm ground in our interpretations of specific
The idea that fascinated Watson wm the possibility of controlling and observing the
total environment of experimental animals from the beginning, that is, from birth.
By 1907, in reviewing the work of Jennings and Loeb, Watson emphasized the total
reaction of the organism as opposed to the emphasis of Jennings and Loeb on
physiological processes.ag
By 1908 Watson had formulated many of the basic ideas and attitudes that
constituted behaviorism. As early m October, 1907, he noted in a letter that he was
trying to use the phrase afferent control in animals instead of consciousness.
His correspondence during the winter of 1907-1908 reveals that he had been drawing
further conclusions about psychology, and at the end of 1908 he presented a paper
embodying them at the Southern Society of Philosophy and Psychology entitled,
A Point of View in Comparative Psychology.3o The long abstract of the paper
indicates that its content would justify the claims of Murphy and Furfey that Watson had formulated behaviorism sometime earlier that same year. Watson asserted
in this paper that ascribing any mental content to experimental animals was valueless for both theory and actual investigation. With the increasing ability of the
psychologist to control and record experimental conditions, said Watson, introspection was becoming less necessary for the psychologist.31
Years later Watson characterized behaviorism explicitly as an extension of
animal psychology attitudes and techniques to the realm of human psychology:
Behaviorism, as I tried to develop it in my lectures a t Columbia in 1912 and in
my earliest writings, was an attempt to do one thing-to apply to the experimental
study of man the same kind of procedure and the same language of description that
many research men had found useful for so many years in the study of animals
W3&.tell,The Conceptions and Methods.
flohn B. Watson, The Need of an Experimental Station for the Study of Certain Problems in
Animal Behavior, Psyehobgicul Bulletm, 3 (1906), 151.
SoWafson, review of Jennings; Watson, review of Loeb.
Wee John B. Watson to Robert M. Yerkes Oct. 2, 1907, Dec. 12, 1907, Jan. 3, 1908, Yerkee
Papers. John B. Watson, A Point of View in domparative Psychology, abstract in psycho^
Bullelm, 6 (1909), 57-58.
Zbid. Since Wateon had been at Johne Hopkins only a few weeks when this paper was pmnted,
it is at most problematical that either Dunlap or Jennings had any infiuence on it, eepecdy aince
there is evidence that this paper or a e i m h one waa resented elsewhere earlier (aee above). As Lete
aa Se tember 29, for example, Wateon and Jennings gad met only once (John B. Wataon to Robert
M. Arkes, Sept. 29, 1908, Yerkea Papers).

150

JOHN C. BURNHAM

lower than man.32 This was Watsons basic contribution. Many strongly objective
animal workers refused to follow behaviorism because they did not believe that
man should be studied-or controlled-like an animal. But in Watsons 1908 paper
it was clear that he already had in mind applying the objective observation of the
new comparative psychology to human psychology.
The question has to be raised, therefore, why the behaviorist manifesto came in
1913 rather than in 1908. At least two reasons are obvious. First-if his popular
article published in Harpers in 1910, The New Science of Animal Behavior, is
an accurate reflection of the development of his thinking at that t i m e W a t s o n
had not yet solved the problem of the higher thought processes.33 By 1913, he had
developed at least the outline of a stimulus-response model of implicit speech
mechanisms in associative memory. It is this contribution of Watson that Goss
emphasizes as one of the basic elements of behaviorism-so basic that the movement could not have existed without it.
But even if some sort of behaviorism had been possible without a theory of
thinking, a second type of evidence shows that behaviorism of any kind was not
possible until around 1913: the actions of the psychological community. Watsons
pronouncements over the course of several years had engendered no particular
response from his colleagues. Then his lectures in the winter of 1912-1913 elicited
a violent reaction. As Kuhn suggests, the real significance of scientific innovation
lies in its effect upon the innovators audience, his peers. Behaviorism as such, in
fact, was created in 1912-1913 by psychology as a self-conscious discipline, not by
Watson.
Watson himself of course noted the furor he aroused that winter. He commented
innocently to his friend, Harvard psychologist Robert M. Yerkes, that although his
material was not on a popular level, his audiences at his Columbia lectures were
very large indeed.34 Clearly, he was making a sensation.
Within a few months after the lectures, F. L. Wells, a psychologist at McLean
Hospital and the most acute and objective observer of his own profession in those
years, spelled out exactly what Watsons manifesto meant: It is, he wrote, an
unusually concrete statement of a central idea that has always claimed certain
adherents among us, at least as an idea. Therefore the way in which so many have
received it seems to be due not so much to either its source or content as to a changed
attitude in those who read its
Seldom do we possess such explicit evidence
that an intellectual statement crystallized thinking. Watson himself later depicted the events as a crystallization of the behavioristic trend in psy~hology.~~
The evidence shows that, in the end, Boring is correct in dating behaviorism from
the presentation and publication of Watsons paper in 1912-1913, not earlier.
The application of Kuhns model of the process of scientific innovation shows
that the sudden crystallizing of behaviorism as a movement in 1913 represents a
azJohn B. Watson, Behaviorism (2nd ed., 1930, reprinted, Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 195S?), p. v.
asJohn B. Watson, The New Science of Animal Behavior, Harpers Monthly Magazine, 120
(1910), 346-353.
34John B.Watson to Robert M.Yerkes, Mar. 12, 1913, Yerkes Papers.
35F. L. Wells, Dynamic Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, 10 (1913), 434.
36Watson,The Origin and Growth, p. 248.

ON THE ORIGINS OF BEHAVIORISM

151

real moment of ~hange.3~Thus i t may be true that Watsons ideas grew out of
animal psychology, for the most part, and that Cattell inspired him. But the evolution of Watsons thinking, on the one hand, is not necessarily relevant to the origins
of behaviorism, on the other hand.
The psychologists who reacted to Watsons manifesto were not all comparative
psychologists but included men, like Wells, of every possible background in the
discipline. Presumably they tended to be the younger men in the profession, and
their number is traditionally credited for Watsons election as president of the
American Psychological Association in 1915. Kuhns model raises the question not
of the origins of Watsons ideas but of the general condition of psychological thinking
that made behaviorism possible and, presumably, inevitable. To date no one has
satisfactorily explored the anomalies-such as the idea of imageless thought-or the
false starts in theoretical breakthrough-presumably represented by the much
heralded precursors of behaviorism-that represent Kuhns crisis stage-the one
immediately preceding a scientific r e v o l u t i ~ n . ~ ~
In such a context, it is necessary to restate Watsons role in behaviorism. Rather
than founder, Watson is better viewed as the charismatic leader of behaviorism.
This role he played well. He was intelligent and handsome, and his charm is legendary. Despite his youth, he had for some years been part of the ruling inner circle of
the American psychological profession. Although it was not immediately evident,
he had all his life sought publicity, even sensational publicity, and gloried in it. It
was Titchener who at once realized the part that Watson was playing: that of the
reformer, in a hurry for change.39 As in the case of other scientific developments in
America during the Progressive Era, the origins of behaviorism lie no doubt not only
in the science and in the profession but in society at large, where the idea of control,
for example, so central in Watsonian behaviorism, was already having momentous
effects in other reform endeavors.40
37Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
The psychological profession was manifesting an unmistakable sensitivity to a behavioral
approach. A very restrained and eclectic textbook of W. B. Pillsbury of Michigan in 1911, for example, was already causing Titchener concern over the current trend (E. B. Titchener to Robert 34.
Yerkes, July 13, 1911, Yerkes Papers). Watson recorded his reaction to Pillsburys book in Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, pp. 165-166.
SgTitchener, On Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, pp. 1415. Titchener had the advantage of a t least being acquainted with Watson; see Cedric A. Larson and John J. Sullivan, Watsons Relation to Titchener, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1 (1965), 338354.
Osee J. C. Burnham, Psychiatry, Psychology and the Progressive Movement, Americun
Quarterly, 12 (1960), 457-46.5. For a complementary discussion of the relationship of behaviorism to
American culture, see David Bakan, Behaviorism and American Urbanization, Juumal of the
History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2 (1966), 5 2 8 , especially pp. 12-13, where social control receives a
most interesting treatment. Another approach to the relationship between behaviorism and American
culture is to be found in Lucille Terese B!rnbaum, Behaviorism: John Broadus Watson and American
Social Thought, 1913-1933 (doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1965).