History of Psychology

With its founder John Watson exiled from psychology, behaviorism might have been expected to decline in importance and influence. But that was not the case. Watson’s behaviorism was modified and expanded but his rejection of consciousness, his definition of psychology as the “science of behavior,” and his insistence on objective, observational data – his methodological behaviorism – were accepted by the three neobehaviorist psychologists presented in this chapter. Edward Tolman, Clark Hull, and B. F. Skinner dominated American psychology from 1940 to 1970 in an extremely productive period of behavioral theory and research (Jenkins, 1979). In this chapter, we cover the work of these three psychologists. Although they were all neobehaviorists, their approaches were quite different from each other. As you read about these three scientists, compare and contrast their ideas; consider what core behavioral elements they had in common, as well as what made each theory unique.