I forwarded the message Robin sent describing the Watson assignment to two listservs dedicated to the history of psychology ("Cheiron" and "Society for the History of Psychology" [APA Div 26]). I was intrigued by the swift and almost unanimous reaction. I think the members of those two lists brought up some important points that others considering using the assignment should have a look at. Because there were too many replies for me to forward them all to TIPS, I have posted them to a website which can be found at http://www.yorku.ca/christo/Watson-archive.htm
I post one of the answers below.
Regards,
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M3J 1P3
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164
fax: 416-736-5814
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
=====================================
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 23:49:11 -0400
From: weizmann ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Behaviorism/history assignment]
[...] If you read some of accounts of Watson's life (see especially David Cohen's biography), after Watson was forced out of Hopkins (which happened because Watson's daughter stole some of Watson's love letters to Rayner and forwarded them on to the president of Hopkins), Watson was basically forced out of academic psychology as well. Ostracized by most psychologists, he tried to make some arrangement to continue doing research at Hopkins, but was rejected. He got the job in advertising because Titchener, one of the few psychologists who remained friendly with Watson, wrote a recommendation for him to the head of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. There was no "naturally" about it. Would he have been less "unscrupulous" if he had dug ditches instead? I suspect that at the time he would have much preferred to remain in academia had he been given the chance. Interestingly enough, Watson's most polemical and extreme writings on child rearing, for which probably best known by the general public, appeared after, not before, he left academia. I think Lewis Lipsett and Richard Littman [two earlier replies] are correct. Watson was a complex person, and it's a little facile simply to dismiss him as unscrupulous.
Fredric Weizmann
===================================Robin Abrahams wrote:
TIPSters--
I gave the following assignment as an extra-credit option in my intro
psych course. It's turned out so well that I think I may use it as a
regular assignment next semester.
"As we know from class, the behavioral psychologist Watson was forced
out of academia in 1920 when it was discovered he was having an affair
with one of his graduate students. (Rosemary Raynor, his co-author on
the "Little Albert" paper.) Being brilliant, unscrupulous, and out of a
job, he naturally turned to advertising as a second career. Watson had a
great effect in changing the nature of American advertising by applying
psychological principles and appealing to peoples' desires and fears.
Prior to that time, advertising had been much more straightforward and
unemotional. He also used classical conditioning in advertisements,
teaching consumers to associate products (the conditioned stimulus) with
desirable states of mind (friendship, happiness) or being (beauty, sexual
pleasure).
"For this assignment, you should find two ads for similar products. One
should be an ad from 1910 or earlier; the other from 1940 or later.
(You can easily find old ads on the internet.) Turn them in to me along
with a page contrasting the two ads and analyzing how the post-1940 ad
uses principles of association (classical conditioning) and emotional
appeal."
The ads that the students turned in were startlingly different, and got
a nice bit of psychological history across in a very vivid way. Judging
from the students' analyses, they really seemed to understand the
principles of association once they encountered them in this fashion. (Of
course, the only students who ever do extra credit are the ones who don't
need it,so it's a biased sample.)
If any of you are teaching learning, behaviorism, or history & systems,
you may want to give this assignment a try.
Robin
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