Watson
According to Goodwin (2008). Watson was the founder of the American school of behavioral psychology. Being such a pioneer, Watson taught that responses to a stimuli can be predicted! In 1913, Watson wrote a speech, referred to as The Behaviorist Manifesto, which breaks from introspection in experimental psychology and wanted a more objective way of describing behaviors. Behaviorism seemed to provide a and objective look at humans, behavior, and the reasoning behind behavior. Many psychologists were breaking from introspection in experimental psychology and wanted a more objective way of describing behavior. Watson was interested in comparative psychology, which lead to his experimented with mazes and white rats. He wanted to know, which senses were most important for learning, and this was done by systematically removing various senses from the animals. Watson eventually continued working with training animals to respond correctly to a stimulus, while not responding to another. After Watson’s experiment with the “maze” he want to continued his work in studying emotional development, because he thought this can improve the quality of life, based on conditioning of the motor reflex. An opportunity to study infants was Watson’s chance to apply behaviorism. Watson observed infants and introduced different types of stimuli’s to record the responses of the environmental effects it has on the small child. The “Little Albert” study was then developed by Watson after he narrowed down the three basic responses of fear, rage, and love in infants and older children that also respond similarly in a larger base to the same stimuli’s as the infants thus following the conditioning methods introduced by the environment. Watson concentrated on the environmental effects had on animals and humans and the responses they had from the environmental influence (Goodwin, 2008).