Reading Activity Week #11 (Due Tuesday)

The first section that I found interesting in Chapter 10 was the section about experimental neurosis. This term was an outgrowth of Pavlov’s research on generalization and differentiation. Generalization is the tendency for a response learned to one stimulus to occur after the presentation of a second stimulus similar to the first. Differentiation refers to discrimination, the ability to distinguish between two stimuli. Pavlov learned discovered how a breakdown in differentiation could produce experimental neurosis or pathological disturbances. To demonstrate his findings he first projected a circle onto a screen in front of a dog’s face, and paired the presentation of the circle with food. Eventually, the circle became the normal controlled stimulus for the controlled response of salivation. After instilling this conditioned reflex, Pavlov then trained the dog to make an easy differentiation between the circle and an ellipse. Pavlov then continued to manipulate the ellipse so that it began to look more and more like a circle. At first, the dog could discriminate between the two shapes, but the dog’s ability to continually discriminate became more and more deteriorated. Eventually, the dog began to have a difficult time distinguishing between an easy ellipse and the circle. In Pavlov’s mind, neurotic behavior meant a breakdown in the ability to make normal differentiations. During the long course of his research, Pavlov noticed that although each dog was adversely affected, each dog reacted differently in how they individually displayed their pathology. These variations seemed to reflect the dog’s individualized temperaments. Some dogs were excitable, while others were more withdrawn. Pavlov interpreted these outcomes in terms of excitatory and inhibitory cortical processes. He concluded that some dogs had a relatively higher proportion of excitatory than inhibitory processes, others had the reverse of processes.

The second section that I found interesting was the section about Watson and how he studied emotional development. Watson claimed in his Manifesto that behaviorism could be used to improve the quality of life, based on conditioning, especially the motor reflexes. In 1915, Watson’s research was only limited to animals, therefore when the opportunity to study infants arose, Watson took hold of it. He saw this as his chance to prove that behaviorism could be applied in a way that would convince skeptics, but more importantly, secure his position as a major leader in the application of major psychological principles to improve society. Watson, like much of the comparative psychologists of this time, were feeling constrained in their efforts in finding institutional support for their research in animal behavior. This was because the University administrators were very reluctant to supply budgetary funds to an effort that they saw as ridiculous. Later on, Watson received a gracious invitation from Adolf Meyer, who was a very well-known psychiatrist, to set up a human lab in his clinic at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Luckily for Watson, the lab was adjacent to the medical school’s ward for infants. This supplied Watson with the subjects he needed for his research. The result of his studies was investigating reflexes, basic emotional responses, and conditioned emotional responses. Watson’s work was coauthored with J.J.B Morgan. The duo set out to identify fundamental human emotional responses with the stimuli that produced these responses. They identified three responses: fear, rage, and love. Watson and Morgan then identified these responses in detail as they related to the responses by the babies.

The third section that I found interesting was the section about Watson’s work in advertising. In his younger years, Watson developed a relationship and marriage with a woman named Mary Ickes. Later on, he developed another relationship with a woman named Rosalie Rayner, while still married to Mary. Watson’s love for Rayner led to his highly publicized divorce from Mary Ickes, which featured a publication of all his love letters to Rosalie and discovered by Mary, this then forced his resignation from Johns Hopkins and his marriage to Rosalie. The dismissal from Johns Hopkins proved to be a devastating blow to Watson, furthermore, the publicity would destroy the chance for him to secure another academic position. Instead, he entered the business world with his friend and joined the Walter J. Thompson advertising agency in New York City. After an apprenticeship, Watson secured the position of Vice President in four years. As an advertising executive, Watson had the chance to implement some of his ideas on behaviorism into the business world. He developed advertising campaigns that focused on the three basic emotional responses to push his products that he was advertising. Advertising did not occupy all of his time. Watson also lectured in New York at the School for Social Research, he joined the board of directors at Cattell’s Psychological Corporation, and renewed his work on infants by supervising research financed through a grant from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund. This effort secured Watson’s reputation as behaviorism’s popular voice.

The sections I didn’t really enjoy were the sections that I had already known about and had been introduced to throughout my career as an undergrad in psychology. These sections included Little Albert and Pavlov and his Classical Conditioning study on his dogs. The reason why I didn’t find these interesting was because I already had known so much about them that they did not fancy my interest while reading the chapter. The sections that I think that will be most useful in understanding the history of psychology from this chapter were the sections about Mental Neurosis and Emotional Development. These are important because they give us a more detailed background as to what Watson and Pavlov contributed and not just about the common things that we all know about through even our introductory course. This chapter introduced us to behaviorism. The behaviorists set out to alter the direction of psychology in America and to a large extent they succeeded. Watson was the founder of behaviorism and like Wundt, was distinguished as a founder among historians. I would like to learn more about the topic of systematic desensitization.

The first thing that I found interesting from this chapter was something that I have always found interesting related to behaviorism and that was the ability for humans to generalize and discriminate between stimuli. I believe that generalization in particular is fascinating given the circumstances that one does not know that they are generalizing something but they are able to put it into a similar cateogry and give it a name anyway.
The second thing I found interesting about this chapter was Pavlov's story about how he punished one of his assistants about being late during the Russian Revolution. I believe this proves really that his life was his research and visa versa. I think his dedication was what made him great but also may have hindered him in his social intereactions as seen from the story.
The final thing I found interesting about this chapter was the fact that Watson's Little Albert experiment was not as perfect as many of the history books make it out to be. There were a lot of problems listed with the experiment but the one that I never considered is that Little Albert may not have beeen conditioned to fear rats or white things at all but had instead become afraid of Watson due to the harsh treatment during the experiment. If true, this hypothesis could completely off-set Watson's most famous study.
One thing I didn't enjoy about this chapter was that it seems to imply that Watson and Rayner took credit for Mary Cover Jones' work on systematic desentitization and that is a huge thing in psychology even today that is usually credited towards Watson. That rubbed me the wrong way that Mary Cover Jones, although just a student, didn't recieve as much credit for this concept as Watson did.
I believe that really the analysis of the Little Albert experiment was helpful to my history of psychology understanding. It reminded me that although it's printed in a book you still must make sure that you question everything and don't just assume that because it was printable that they thought of every variable and considered them when doing the experiments that were written about in the book. It gives me a reminder to have a critical eye when looking at anything and everything.
This Chapter takes another branch of psychology that was just getting started during the reported time period. It talks a lot about the classical conditioning and how conditioning really took off as the main way to modify behavior. It also mentions a little bit about how Watson felt about the other introspective branches of psychology that have been discussed in the book in earlier chapters. He does not think highly of his fellow psychologists who tend to focus on those things that cannot be observed. Instead he believes the focus of the field should be on observable behaviors instead of guessing at things we don't know for sure.
I would really like to learn more about how Little Albert came to be as big of a learning experiment as it did, considering the many confounding variables that were present during this experiment. I am interested in finding more about peoples ideas about what may be an alternative cause for Little Alberts reactions in perspective of the different fields of psychology.
I thought about how Watson could have possibly stood to have an advertising job where he sits at a desk most days after he had the experiences he did with observing real live human subjects. I personally would have gone mad.
I also thought about how Pavlov worked under such stressful conditions and I wondered where he got his funding during a time of war and revolution in Russia.

The first thing I found interesting in this chapter was the work Pavlov did with the dogs and the gastric juice he took from them. The dogs would eat normally, but a fistula connected tot he esophagus redirected the food to a collection tube. The dog would eat and swallow, but the food never made it to the stomach, which nonetheless secreted gastric fluids in anticipation of the food’s arrival. Another tube in the stomach collected the juices. Pavlov marketed the vile-tasting fluid as an elixir for those suffering from various digestive ailments, especially those resulting from “an insufficient flow of their own gastric juice. I have so many questions after reading this. Why would someone want this? Did they really drink it? Did it help them? I get very grossed out thinking about this.
The second thing I found interesting in this chapter was the Watson/Carr Maze study. Watson and Carr took rats and systematically one by one eliminated their senses to observe how this affected their ability to find their way through a maze. I understand why they took out the senses to figure out if they would be affected by missing one, but I feel like this is cruel even to rat (not a big fan of rats). Would they still allow this kind of testing today?
The third thing I found interesting wasn’t interesting instead, disturbing to me. When reading about Morgan’s work with infants, I would HOPE that they didn’t actually drop the infants. The book stated that to create fear they would do this and take the babies blanket away just as he or she was about to fall asleep. I believe both of these are awful. Babies should not be allowed to go through these experiments because they are not developed and can not truly express how they feel.
The one thing I found uninteresting to read about was Watson’s Behaviorist Manifesto. It compared and associated psychology with to many things for me to follow. It could be that I’m too tired but I couldn’t follow along with this section.
I would like to learn more about the work of Mary Cover Jones. I think it would be interesting to learn and read about why people fear certain things. To find out about some of my fears and possibly what I could do to eliminate them. Fear is something everyone has and is an interesting topic to think about.
This chapter grew on the previous chapters by explaining how the works of previous psychologists influenced later psychologists. They took ideas from them and in the case of B.F. Skinner, his career choice was directly impacted by Pavlov.
I didn’t have many ideas from this chapter, just many questions that I previously stated. Many questions having to deal with the experiments and why they did certain things. What would have happened if they didn’t experiment the affects of a rats senses? Anything?

During my reading of chapter 10 what I thought was most interesting was the topic on Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Research, this automatically stood out to me because I have always been interested in classical conditioning. Pavlov worked 25 some years on conditioning and he was giving lectures at the Military Medical Academy and then rewrote these for publication. He started off his lectures by acknowledging Sechnow, Darwin, and Thorndike; then went into his physiological –rather than psychological- standpoint. Pavlov believed that restricting the investigation to specific stimuli and measurable psychological responses was the only scientifically defensible strategy to use. The psychological approach on the other hand implied dualism of mental and physical processes that Pavlov was not willing to accept; Pavlov said this approach was unnecessarily speculative. After a detailed lecture on basic reflex action, Pavlov concluded his opening lecture by referring to the accidental discovery of salivary conditioning. In another lecture Pavlov described some technical details of his procedures and the measures taken to control experimental conditions. Having set the base line, Pavlov described the basic procedure for the acquisition of a conditioned response. All in all Pavlov started a lot on the conditioned and unconditioned reflexes and stimulus; this shows that his life was his work and he put all his efforts into his studies. The next topic I found interesting was the topic on Watson and his studies on emotional development. Watson believed that behaviorism could be used to improve the quality of life, based on conditioning, mostly the motor reflexes. He could only study animals for a while then got the chance to start studying infants, with this he believed he would be able to prove that behaviorism could be applied in ways that would convince anyone who was skeptic but also secure his position as a major leader in the application of major psychological principles to improve society. University administrators were very reluctant in giving funds to an effort they didn’t believe in, fortunately later Watson received a contribution from Adolf Meyer, a very well-known psychiatrist, to set up a human lab at his clinic. The results of his studies included investigating reflexes, basic emotional responses, and conditional emotional responses, J.J.B Morgan helped with these investigations. Together they identified fundamental human emotional responses with the stimuli that resulted in identifying three responses. That included fear, rage, and love. I never knew infants could really have much emotion except when they wanted something; you eventually distinguish a hurt cry from a mad cry, etc. I find this interesting because I am around infants a lot. Another topic I found interesting was what Pavlov did with the dogs and the gastric juice he obtained from the. The dogs would eat normally, but a fistula connected to the esophagus that redirected the food to a collection tube. The dog would eat and swallow, but the food actually never went to its’ stomach, but secreted gastric fluids in anticipation of the foods arrival. Pavlov marked the vile-tasting fluid as an elixir for those suffering from various digestive ailments. I didn’t understand this study fully because why do something like this? Did the dogs ever actually get fed, and did the fluid buildup if they kept doing this experiment and never fed them? This chapter goes into mental neurosis and emotional development which I think are very important to understand now because I’m sure this is just a baseline for the continuing chapters. They talk about what Watson and Pavlov have contributed. This chapter also introduced us to behaviorism, which has already been slightly discussed but not in much detail. Something I really want to learn more about is Pavlov and what he all did with the dogs, I found this to stick out because I found it interesting but at the same time I was rather confused on what the exact purpose was.

The first thing that interested me was the material on experimental neurosis. Ivan Pavlov came up with this in his research. He tested this by projecting a circle on a screen in front of a dog’s face, pairing its presentation with food. The circle soon became a conditioned stimulus for the conditioned reflex of salivation. Once the conditioned reflex was created, Pavlov then trained the dog to make an easy differentiation between the circle and an ellipse that had a 4:3 ratio between the axes. He kept changing the shape of the ellipse until it reached a 9:8 ratio, which made it look more and more like a circle as it approached the 9:8 ratio. At first, the dog could tell the difference, but then it quickly deteriorated as it got to the point where the dog couldn’t distinguish an easy 2:1 ellipse from the circle. Pavlov stated this behavior as a breakdown in the ability to make normal differentiations. He did this experiment on many different dogs, and most of them had this result. However, a few of the other dogs had even worse results. I thought this research was very interesting. It’s weird how the dog could tell the difference at first, but when the shapes were changed, something happened in the dog’s mind to make it not be able to tell the difference in the shapes. It’d be cool to look more into this experiment and other ones that are related to it.
The next thing that interested me was the material on Pavlov and the American psychologists. Most American psychologists knew Pavlov because of the Nobel Prize, but his research wasn’t considered significant. Pavlov was first introduced to America by Robert Yerkes and Sergius Morgulis through an article in the Psychological Bulletin in 1909. The only work of Pavlov that American psychologists were interested in was his research on animal behavior, but American psychology was still focused on human conscious at this time. Before 1920, most introductory psychology textbooks didn’t even mention Pavlov. He didn’t begin to have a major impact on American psychology until the 1920s when a lot of his work was translated into English for the first time. He visited the United States twice to give addresses of his work on conditioning. In his second visit, which occurred in 1929, Pavlov gave a great address, which yielded a standing ovation from a large audience at the Ninth International Congress of Psychology at Yale University. At this point, American psychologists understood the importance of Pavlov’s work. I never would have thought that it took so long for Pavlov’s work to be appreciated in the United States. At that point, maybe American psychologists were reluctant to view work done out of the United States as significant. For whatever reason, I think everyone can agree that his work being accepted in the United States was a great thing in the history of psychology.
Another thing that interested me was the information provided on the Watson/Carr maze studies. John B. Watson and Harvey Carr studied rats in mazes. The goal in their study was to determine which senses were needed for a rat to learn a maze. In their first study, they systematically eliminated the ability of the animals to use their senses when trying to solve a version of the Hampton Court maze. Watson removed the eyes from some rats, the middle ears from others, and the olfactory bulbs from the third group. The results were somewhat surprising as the rats finished the maze with ease. They concluded that the only important factors in the formation of learned associations were “the kinesthetic impressions coupled with certain other intra-organic impressions”. The rats were learning to associate sequences of muscle movements with the turns in the maze. They learned to take ten steps, then turn right for another five steps, then turn left, etc. In their next study, they shortened or lengthened the maze. The effects of doing this were very dramatic as rats trained in the full-length maze literally ran into the walls of the shortened maze. Also, rats trained in the shortened maze and then tested in the full-length maze didn’t perform as well. They would try to turn where the turns used to be. I was very interested in studies with animals in the previous chapter, so this study obviously interested me as well. The method of the study was very different as they literally cut senses out of the rats. It’s interesting how fast the rats picked up the maze they first trained on, but then they became very confused in the different maze. It was obvious the rats memorized the first maze they were on. They then used their memory of the other maze to do the new one, but became lost when it wasn’t working out as usual.
The material I found to be the least interesting was the information provided about conditioning and extinction. It was just very confusing. I enjoyed learning about Pavlov, but this section wasn’t for me. I think all of the abbreviations just made it a lot harder to understand. The thing that will be most useful to me in understanding the history of psychology is the material on Ivan Pavlov. He was and remains such an integral part in the field of psychology. He did a lot of great things; most of which weren’t respected in the United States until about the 1920s. This builds on previous chapters by going more in-depth in behaviorism. The previous chapters gave a brief explanation, but this chapter goes into the details and the people behind it. Also, it continues to build on animal testing. The experiments introduced in this chapter included tests on a rat’s senses. Also, new individuals were introduced that used past ideas to create their own. I’d like to learn more about Watson/Carr maze studies. Their method was very questionable as they literally cut senses out of rats, but the results of it were very interesting. I’d like to learn more about it than just the basics of the study. One thing I thought about while reading the chapter was why the American psychologists took so long to accept Ivan Pavlov’s work. Also, I wondered what Watson and Carr were thinking when they came up with an experiment to randomly cut out a rat’s sense and have it go through a maze. I know it’s something I’d never think of, but the results of the study proved to be very interesting.

Chapter 10

One thing that I found interesting in chapter ten was Watson’s study on rats and how they learned their way through mazes by relying on their kinesthetic sense. The whole concept of conditioning or learning is interesting in itself because of the broad scope. I am skeptical to an extent because there are obvious differences between the brain of a mouse and a human, but I do believe we can assume some similarities through the testing of animals. When I think of the process of learning, I automatically think of the word repetition. Another way I think about it is ‘learning’ from our mistakes or experiences. It is cool to think that a rat can ‘learn’ its way through a maze and I think that tells us something about the way humans learn as well. Another thing that I found interesting about John Watson was his Behaviorist Manifesto and how psychology was too subjective and should be replaced with a more objective behavioral psychology that specified the relationship between a stimuli and response. This is interesting to me because it’s hard to imagine psychology being ‘subjective’ and I can agree with the manifesto. There are too many details and unknowns to psychology, it would be too difficult view it as subjective. The last thing that I found interesting in chapter ten was Watson’s study of children’s emotional development. I think it is interesting to think about fear, love, and rage being fundamental emotions coming from specific stimuli and the more elaborate emotions were learned. I can see how that is, but I have never looked at emotion like that before. There are many time in our environment when we cannot help but feel scared or angry, it is just a reaction. On the other hand, we can feel a certain way about something just because of how we have learned to feel about it. The thing in chapter ten that I found the least interesting was Pavlov simply because he is a person that I have been learning about since high school and I am more interesting in reading about new things that I did not know.

Although I found Pavlov the least interesting in the chapter, I do think it is the most important thing to know when it comes to learning the history of psychology. He is one of the most important historical psychologists because of his studies on conditioning and learning. Just as the people mentioned before Pavlov in the previous chapters, he continues to build on the time line that the book provides for the history of psychology.

I would like to learn more about Watson’s study of the emotional development of children because emotions are something I always find interesting. Especially in Kim MacLin’s class, I find feelings, motivations, and emotions fascinating to learn about. This is consistent with the idea I had throughout the chapter about the objectiveness of psychology. Whether the response is conditioned or not, stimuli react to their environments in numerous ways.


1. Founding behaviorism- I have always been interested in b-mod since I took the class with Dr. Maclin a few years ago. The beginning of chapter 10 starts talking about how behavior thinking started with psychologists, with using the animal experiments and required inductive observations. Psychologists wanted to learn more about behavioral thinking because they were interested in objective measures and introspection. Learning that because of the previous psychologists like Thorndike and his animal experiments, lead to another great part of psychology; behaviorism.



2. Watson and animal behavior- I really liked reading about Watson’s desire to pursue experiments on animal psychophysics. Watson studied that animals could be trained or conditioned to perceive a difference between two stimuli. As a behaviorist Watson used his research in discovering naturalistic studies on islands in the summer, and not always doing lab experiments. I thought the island research would be fun because birds and tropical animals and always fun to watch in their natural habitat. Watson discovered mating behaviors as well as ethological views of instinctive behavior for species survival.


3. Little Albert- One of the most famous studies in psychology, and one of the most controversial. Watson experimented in a human lab on a baby on the conditioning of fear, rage, and love. Watson wanted to find out more about the instinctive emotions on children and wanted to condition the reactions of the child. The loud noises used to “condition” the baby to cry is a very ethical question when people study on humans today.




* One thing I did not enjoy about chapter 10 was recapping about Pavlov in every section. I have taken many psychology classes that have studied his behaviorist manifesto intensively, and it was no new information.



*The most useful information was the background on how behaviorism all started. Everyone knows of Pavlov, and Watson and all of these controversial experiments, but it was really interesting to learn because of animal observations and research, lead to objective thinking of our behaviors, and if we can alter/change them.



*This builds on to previous chapters because Thorndike started experimenting on animals and that eventually got American psychologists and others to discover behaviorism and study more in depth with our own species/behaviors.



*I would like to learn more about Watson’s island studies, and if he ever studied weather on behavior of animals/climate situations.



*One idea: If someone discovered something magical in the field of psychology by using/tormenting a human during the research, would it still be glorified? (Due to ethical reasoning)

The information on Pavlov was interesting. Born in a small farming village in Russia, he eventually found his way to University and the study of physiology. His main area of focus was the digestive system but it was unclear how this came to be his main interest. Bad gas maybe? He performed complex surgeries and even collected samples of dog digestive fluid to give to people to consume in order to help the flow of their own gastric juice. Sick. He was incredibly anal about his lab work; going to great ends to make sure every detail was recorded and analyzed. His laboratory set-up was so precise that its foundations were soundproofed. This made sure subjects were reacting to laboratory produced stimulus alone. He was also portrayed as being a stickler for time. One guy was late to the lab because his normal route was dangerous but Pavlov wasn't having any of that. He told the guy he better leave earlier next time around. It was clear that Pavlov was somewhat of a sociopath especially after reading the section on experimental neurosis. He would present an image of a circle to a dog every time it was fed. He would then alter the image so that it looked similar to a circle to the point that the dog could no longer differentiate between the two. This caused some dogs to flip out and in some cases very violently. Driving anything that is living to the point of exasperation or violent insanity just for research seems a little cruel. Imagine if aliens did the same to us in some cage in an alien spaceship.
Watson was also an interesting fellow and shared the same heartless attitude towards his animal subjects. He decided he wanted to study animals by "removing their senses" and having them complete a maze. He literally removed the eyes from some, middle ears from others and olfactory bulbs from still more. Then he would place them in the maze to see how they would fare. Again I thought about if the tables were turned and aliens wanted to study the same things about us. You can argue the whole "animals are not the same as humans" or whatever but even if we were limited to the same capabilities as animals, having our eyes gauged out and then being thrust into a stressful situation like a maze would suck.
Reading about the Little Albert study was interesting and disturbing. Yet again, these guys want to learn more about, what is it this time, emotions? So they acquire some baby to run various tests on. They have him reach his hand to touch a rat and then as soon as his hand makes contact immediately frightening the baby with a loud noise. This was performed on multiple occasions. It was amusing how they put out a statement to make themselves feel better about what they were doing "oh those fears would arise anyway." I'm not saying this study was incredibly unethical but it was definitely unethical to a degree. Let’s just say I would not allow my baby to be tested like that especially if the experiment involves fear. Fear is one of the biggest influences on everyone’s life into adulthood and I wouldn’t want to expose my child to unnecessary fear especially during critical development stages.
Reading about the Manifesto wasn’t particularly enthralling. While it was influential and important to read about it wasn’t as stimulating as reading about the experiments themselves.
This chapter was devoted to behaviorism and a thorough understanding of behaviorism is good for not only understanding psychology but it is helpful in understanding a lot of things in life today such as advertising, Hollywood, video games, smart phones, etc. etc.
The maze research is similar to experiments conducted in earlier chapters and similar to the puzzle boxes. The evolutionary thinking and animal psychology discussed in chapter 5 also contributed to the experiments in this chapter.
I would like to learn more about the code of ethics in research back in the day and the development of this code in today’s research. It would also be cool to learn about how much of an impact behaviorism has had on mainstream society today. I mean it has everything to do with it, but I wonder how much of it is intentional.
A lot of my thoughts during this chapter were about animals and research conducted on animals. We will never know what goes on in the head of an animal no matter how many theories come out. I imagined aliens assuming we couldn’t have the kind of complex thoughts they do so they rip our eyes out and do all these surgeries to study seemingly pointless things. Just because we have the capability and the “authority” to use animals as we please, should we? Obviously we won’t face any immediate repercussions from doing so, but we never know what could happen down the line. Some Hindu religions believe that after death animals will have the same capabilities as humans and will treat those humans who treated them poorly the same way.

After reading chapter 10, one of the first things that caught my attention and that I found interesting was the experiment with little Albert conducted by John Watson. Little Albert was exposed to a white rat a metal bar was struck with a hammer repeatedly so that Albert learned to be afraid of the rat because it was always associated with the noise. I think it is interesting that Watson should concern about damaging a baby but still went ahead with his experiment anyway. Thank goodness that sort of thing wouldn’t be allowed anymore. I think it would be interesting to see whether or not Albert carried the fear of a rat with him the rest of his life or if he was ever able to overcome that anxiety. The second thing from this chapter that I found interesting was Watson’s pretty inappropriate behavior with his graduate students. I never knew anything about his personal life and it is pretty disappointing and a little creepy that he married two of his students. I guess he was just attracted to women that enjoyed psychology like he did. It is strange that he joined and advertising agency, and even more that he was successful at it. The third thing from this chapter that I found to be interesting was learning about some of Pavlov’s work with the “Pavlov pouch”. Honestly, research on animals is always difficult for me to stomach but I’d rather read about it than do it myself. I also enjoyed reading about his conditioning with the dog salivating. Like little Albert, this was something I had already learned several times but I feel like I learn new pieces of information every time I relearn it.

One of the least interesting things I learned in this chapter was learning about the philosophies of empiricism and associationism. I really can’t stand philosophy and I think I just get lost when some of these terms are being described and explained, so I am hoping that it will be discussed further on Thursday in class. I think that the conditioned learning work done by Pavlov and Watson is extremely important in understanding the history of psychology. These are very famous studies and help us understand how humans function and the fact that we can actually be trained or conditioned to a stimulus was a very amazing discovery in its time.

I think that this chapter builds on previous chapters in that Watson had an experiment with rats using mazes to rely on their kinesthetic senses. I feel like in every single chapter at least one person is using rats in a maze to test some theory. I would like to learn a little more about John Watson’s personal life…I know that might be lame but I think it is really crazy that he had all of that going on and still being one of the most famous psychologists in history. When reading this chapter I just kept thinking that I wished babies and animals didn’t always have to be used in experiments. It is really sad to me that Albert was put through this kind of testing. I would assume that he turned out to be fine, and if he feared rats the rest of his life he wouldn’t be that different from the rest of us.

While reading this week’s chapter one of the first things that I found interesting was the Watson and Carr rat maze studies. Watson wanted to see which senses were needed for rats to learn a maze. He did a very unpleasant experiment. He removed the eyes from some of the rats, ears from another group, and olfactory bulbs from a third group of rats. After observing the rats, he found that they were using muscle memory to learn the maze. He called this kinesthetic impression. To test this theory he changed the maze length to see how the rats would react. He found that the rats tried to go to the path in which the maze was shaped originally, which led them to failing while trying to make shorter turns or finding a wall that wasn’t there before. I found this interesting because they were originally looking at what senses were used and found something different all together.

A second thing from the chapter that I found interesting was Waston’s work on the development of emotions. He thought there were three basic emotional responses: fear, love, and rage. He also studied how, for example, fear or a phobia could be conditioned in a baby by pairing a strange loud sound with a neutral stimulus. Then he showed ways to decondition phobias. This seems like one of the earliest uses of behavior therapy which we read about in behavior modification and in abnormal psychology.

The third thing from this chapter that I found interesting was Watson on behaviorism. In 1913 Watson thought it was time to proclaim what he believed psychology should do - which was the study of behavior and consciousness. He stated that -given a response- the stimuli can be predicted and -given the stimulus- the response can be predicted. This made me think of Skinner and his experiments on the analysis of behavior. Watson seemed to have made the path for Skinner. More than anything else he did Watson moved psychology to be about the study of behavior.

The concept from this chapter most useful in understanding the history of psychology is the story about the development of the study of conditioning and the development of behaviorism. Both of these subjects became very important in the history of American psychology. Nearly every course I have taken has touched on one or both of these subjects and has discussed both Watson and Pavlov. It doesn’t seem like you can say you know anything about psychology if you don’t know what these two did. Their methods and ideas are still very influential today.

This chapter relates to previous chapters because it shows how American psychology has been greatly influenced by Europe and other parts of the world. Pavlov is just another one of many examples of how American psychology was influenced by researchers in other countries, in this case Russia.

The topics I would like to learn more about are rat maze studies and more on kinesthetic memory. I would like to find more information on this phenomenon.

One thing I found interesting in this chapter was the Watson/Carr maze studies. The goal was to see which of the rat’s senses were needed in order for the rat to learn the maze. What Watson did was remove the eyes from some rats, the middle ears from others, and the “olfactory bulbs from a third group.” I found it interesting that even without their senses; the rats were able to learn the maze with “ease.” They found out that the rats were “learning to associate sequences of muscle movements with the various turns in the maze.” Basically they learned the number of steps between each turn. It reminds me of a blind person that I know. He knows the number of steps to different locations and objects in his home, so he is able to know where he is and is able to find the things he needs, it is very interesting.
The second topic I found interesting was the Zenith and the Nadir of a career: Little Albert section. Watson found that only a few stimuli would bring out the three instinctive emotions in infants, which are: fear, rage, and love. They tested the baby to see if he showed fear to animals such as a white rabbit, a rabbit, a dog, and a monkey. Albert did not show fear to these like some of the other babies did, but he was afraid of loud noises like the others. When the child would reach out to touch the animal, a loud noise was made. Eventually after all the experiments, just when the child was just shown the animal, he started crying. The baby associated something scary to him with the animal and then in turn would be scared of it alone. I think this is interesting, and really shows how conditioned the emotional responses are, but it is really sad that they experimented on babies who now could have gone through life with those fears because of the experiments.
I also found interesting Pavlov’s method for training his assistants. He would have them replicate studies that had already been done so he could see how well they would do.
The least interesting section in this chapter to me was Pavlov’s classical conditioning research. I thought this was least interesting, just because I have heard and learned so much of this subject in my classes.
One of the topics I thought was most useful in this chapter was where it told how Pavlov’s research over the years was a good example of how experiments never happen in isolation. They are ongoing “systematic” research programs. Outcomes of a study bring on more questions, and it is a chain reaction, one thing leads to another. I think this is important because it explains how experiments come about. It is a process of learning.
This chapter builds on well to chapter 2 and 3 because it talked more about the behaviorists and how the environment shapes behavior.
I would like to learn more about Watson and his life, because I find his experiments interesting. I really thought his maze experiment was interesting, and it spiked my interest to see what other experiments he may have done, and why he did them.
Though I like Watson’s experiments and find them interesting, I thought it was sad that he used babies in his fear study. It makes me wonder if the babies grew up with a fear of rats and rabbits because of this experiment.

One topic that I found interesting in this chapter was Pavlov’s use of replication within his laboratory. Whenever a new worker would enter his lab, Pavlov would assign them to a problem or issue that had already been investigated. This allowed students to learn experimental procedures without the pressure of having to produce new findings while also providing an ongoing program of replication. Once the student had replicated the research successfully they would be given a new problem to investigate. This method highlighted the importance of replication in regards to research, it is a cornerstone to sound scientific research and results that can’t be repeated have no value.

Another interesting topic in this chapter was the Watson/Carr maze studies. The goal of these studies was to determine which senses were needed for a rat to learn a maze. To eliminate the ability of the mice to use their sense, Watson and Carr removed the eyes of some rats, the middle ears from others, and the olfactory bulbs of another group. However, the rats still managed to learn the maze despite the loss of their senses. By process of elimination, it was concluded that they only important factor in the formation of learned associations was the kinesthetic sense. The kinesthetic sense was believed to allow animals to learn a sequence of muscle movements with the various turns in the maze. Therefore, muscle memory allowed rats to stay familiar with the maze, regardless of their senses being altered.

Watson’s transition to advertising was also interesting to read about. It shows how research done in psychology can be relevant in other areas. For instance, as an advertising executive, Watson developed a number of advertising campaigns in regards to his research involving three basic emotions: fear, rage, and love. To sell a product to a consumer Watson suggested one must “tell him something that will tie him up with fear, something that will stir up a mild rage that will call out an affectionate or love response, or strike a deep psychological or habit need”. Watson also used testimonials by well-known personalities or experts to sell products. For example, for an ad concerning baby powder Watson designed a message to scare young parents into buying the product by claiming their baby was at risk to infection without it and used doctors to support the claim.

One topic that I found less interesting was Pavlov. I realize he is one of the most important figures in psychology, however, I have learned about him in numerous courses. Therefore, while reading all the sections regarding him I couldn’t help but think “what else is there to know?” With that said, I don’t want to downplay the impact Pavlov has had in psychology and the contributions he has made.
I think the most useful information to help better understand the history of psychology is the work of Pavlov and Watson. These are two of the biggest names in psychology, therefore, in order to truly understand the history or psychology you must know about them and the impact they had in the field of psychology. You can’t learn the history of psychology without leaning about these two figures.

This chapter builds off previous chapters by introducing yet another new area of psychology: behaviorism. An important influence to behaviorism was the rapid acceptance of evolutionary thinking by scientists and the resulting growth of animal psychology (chapter 5). This chapter also continues the common theme of how new ideas in the field of psychology were made popular in America.

I would like to learn more about how the general public felt about animal research during this time. I know the use of animals in research has been a controversial issue for a long time and I think it would be interesting to know what people thought of Pavlov’s use of dogs or Watson’s use rats in their studies. While reading this chapter I remember questioning the ethics of some of the research done on animals during this time and thinking “there is no way they would be able to do that now.”

Obviously reading about Pavlov is always interesting to me. It has been taught to me and i have read about it for many years now. They talk about the commonly known experiment done by Pavlov and how he found out in a dog study that people can be trained to do things. For an example that is not in the book, there is the shower example. When someone is in the shower and someone else flushes the toilet, it gets the water hotter. The thing he learned is that whenever someone would do the thing (toilet flushing) the water would get hot. The noise would then trigger than to jump while in the shower not wanting to get hot water on them. The topic then changed to John B. Watson and his behaviorism. The Watson/Carr maze was bizarre to me. I thought the whole cutting out eyes of a rat was weird to see if they would adjust to two different sizes of these mazes. Basically they did it to see what would happen and be able to actually physically watch it happen which was behaviorism at its best. The little Albert study done by Watson and Rayner was also a study I have reviewed a lot. This just was you could show the child something and something that was generalized to it would cause the same effect if the third variable was present. An idea I had was wondering if you could do this kind of thing to help people remember things or do better on exams. Could doing something before an exam they do really well on and keep doing it affect the outcome? That would be very interesting. This has built on from other chapters in that it started with evolutionary which also looked at animals and now behaviorism is based off of mostly animals actions and observations.

One thing I remember from chapter 10 is the section about Pavlov. I found it interesting to learn that Pavlov was originally going to become a priest, until he sparked an interest in science. He left seminary school and decided to study physiology. He investigated the physiology of the digestive system; this research earned him a Nobel Prize. I liked the part about Pavlov’s pouch. By studying the digestive system and taking digestive fluids and measuring the function of the substance, Pavlov opened doors to the development of surgical techniques that isolate and get digestive secretions in dogs that functioned normally otherwise. Food was not able to enter the body when it reached the stomach after going through the esophagus.
I found it interesting to read about Classical Conditioning. I am also taking behavior modification this semester and classical conditioning is something that we talk about a lot. I liked reading about it a different book because it is another person’s way of explaining it. You can easily confuse UCS, UCR, CS, and CR. I enjoy reading about generalization and differentiation too because they are things we do all the time that we don’t even realize most of the time. We tend to generalize our emotions towards someone who looks like someone we use to date, as an example.
Another thing I liked in this chapter was about how Watson started to work in advertising. Watson was asked to resign from John Hopkins University because of his affair with his graduate school while he was married. His chances of getting hired in the academic world were zero, so he decided to join the business world and work in advertising. Within four years Watson grew in the company and became Vice President. He was able to put to use his theories about the three basic emotions of fear, rage, and love through several advertising campaigns. One famous campaign Watson was a part of was an advertisement for Johnson & Johnson baby powder. He used testimonials to sell this product, personalities (like movie stars) and experts (like doctors). He left his mark in advertising by showing the need for applying scientific thinking to marketing. I enjoyed reading about this because he learned how to continue his career even though his name was tainted. He didn’t give up.
I disliked reading about John Watson’s behavior therapy technique, systematic desensitization. I find it interesting but I feel that I covered this topic it so much in all of my psychology classes. I also wish that the chapter would go more in depth about systematic desensitization and give more examples. It only really talks about the study of Little Albert.
Pavlov work with salivation seems like something useful to the understanding of history because it is one of the basic studies all psychologists need to know and understand. It was part of a big breakthrough in breaking down the ability to differentiate stimuli.
This chapter relates to the previous chapters because to shows how psychology keeps growing and expanding. Behaviorism is a different direction of psychology that was introduced to America. Watson and Pavlov were two big influences in behaviorism, so it makes sense that we would focus on these two historical figures in psychology.
I would like to learn more about systematic desensitization because I only disliked that section because it didn’t have enough information in it. I also thought that it would be more interesting if the book used more examples and instead of just focusing on the Little Albert study by
Watson.
This chapter made me think about how in psychology sometimes we have a lot of repetitive material. Pavlov and Watson are talked about a lot in psychology, especially in introductory psychology classes. It also made me think about how studies and the guidelines for research have changed over the years. A study like Watson’s with little Albert would not be allowed today.