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Medicine and Disease - What Is Behaviorism?
What is behaviorism?
Behaviorism is a school of psychology that explains observable human behavior as a response to stimuli in the environment. After Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1840–1936) demonstrated that reflexes could be conditioned to respond in a certain way, American psychologist John Broadus Watson (1878–1958) continued to study the effect of stimuli on behavior. While many researchers of the time saw psychology as the subjective (rational) study of people's emotions, Watson declared that such experiences could not be studied because a person could not observe them objectively (impartially). He therefore developed laboratory experiments that would produce scientifically measurable results. Watson believed that all behavior, including emotions and habits, is made up of chemical reactions and muscular movements that can be noticed and measured. As a result of Watson's theories, research on humans from infancy to...
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