Talk:John B. Watson

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): LisaBlakeleySnyder. This article has a bias. The tone is defensive of Watson and makes some dubious claims such as that he freely acknowledged the effects of nature as well as nurture. This may have been true early in his career, but Watson later became an environmental determinist and rejected any heritable effects on behavior. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.15.167.246 (talk) 01:32, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:18, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
The quote really makes it sound like Watson would side with "nurture" rather than "nature." Is "nature" really correct?

Views on childrearing
QUOTE: "The importance of learning in humans, Watson believed, was an evolutionary adaptation due to natural selection. For this reason, Watson stated that parents must train their children to instill good habits."

I don't believe J.B. Watson ever indicated that parents must instill good habits for this reason. No reference is given. I don't believe it would be possible to find a relevant a quote from J.B. Watson's writings. However, I've seen plenty of quotes which indicate that he considered inherited characteristics to be of little importance.

This paragraph appears to be a case of rewriting the history of psychology to introduce a misleading appearance of harmony between past and present orthodoxies.

Additional point:

Watson dismissed his beliefs concerning instincts. While he did research on instincts in his early career, by the 1920s he had dismissed all that in favour of a nurture perspective. While he had no clear evidence for his perspective, he none the less believed in it fully, and even applied such an attitude - at least to some degree - towards his children. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.134.159 (talk) 01:08, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Sentence on Masturbation totally wrong..
Every source that I have read stated that Watson believed completely the opposite of what that sentence stated. He even went so far as to denounce tree climbing as an activity because it might lead to masturbation. I am going to delete this unless someone posts a source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.177.21.245 (talk) 19:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

File:John Watson behaviorist.jpg Nominated for Deletion
Article says both that Watson regretted writing about child-rearing and that it was his most "prized" interest. Can we reconcile those two viewpoints?98.199.76.177 (talk) 14:05, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

New Contribution
I have spent the last two months researching the life of John Broadus Watson for a course I am currently enrolled in at my university. Having read a biography a several articles, I have learned interesting information that is not currently present on Watson's page. I plan to contribute this information to the site under the "Early Life" section and the section about the "Little Albert" experiment. Marissa Cagle (talk) 06:02, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

What is "wand learning"?
The term Wand Learning is mentioned in the paragraph titled "Dissertation on animal behavior". at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Broadus_Watson#Dissertation_on_animal_behavior I can't find any info on "wand learning", in WikiPedia or other online sources. 50.130.27.5 (talk) 17:55, 6 June 2014 (UTC)


 * It was vandalism. I have reverted. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:49, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

"Fighting with African Americans?"?
"having been arrested twice during high school (first for fighting with African Americans, then for discharging firearms within city limits" - race of the person he fought for isn't inherently relevant unless for the racists it makes such fighting more understandable, or for the anti-racist it makes such fighting deplorable, but we have no such information, so why do we describe the race of the people he fought with? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.80.153.80 (talk) 02:09, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the phrase "fighting with African Americans" was not needed, so I went and deleted it. I did leave the the part mentioning that he was arrested for fighting in high school because I feel like that is information that is beneficial to the understanding of his early life and struggles that he had. LisaBlakeleySnyder (talk) 17:31, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Pebeco
Quote: "The ad featured a seductively dressed woman, and coaxed women to smoke, as long as they used Pebeco toothpaste. The toothpaste was not a means to benefit health or hygiene, but as a way to heighten the sexual attraction of the consumer.[9] They were not only buying toothpaste, they were purchasing sex appeal."

I think this is a gross misrepresentation. I have seen a number of Pebeco ads from the era, none of them "coaxed women to smoke" or sold them "sex appeal". A number of them try to explain away the comparatively high price, or suggest that it'll let you keep "the mouth of youth", or that it minimises the effects of smoking. Maikel (talk) 18:37, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Ubu is a very nice person who has been very supportive and helpful in helping me through the difficult times and challenges that have been faced like these for the last
I am going out for lunch now so if you’re around you could come over here for dinner if not I’ll see you tomorrow morning I don’t want anything from you guys but I’m just going out for dinner buy 2601:406:4303:A000:1D6:49EC:81F2:17E2 (talk) 16:27, 16 April 2024 (UTC)