Chapter 13 Chapter 9 Behaviorist-1

By the 1890s, after some 24 centuries of speculation about how consciousness works, humanity seemed to be on the brink of understanding it.Disciples of Wandert and James perform introspective examinations of their conscious feelings and thoughts with great difficulty.Freud was surreptitiously peering into the dark recesses of his own and his patient's unconscious, and Binet was ready to measure the child's intellectual growth. So why do some psychologists and physiologists play tricks on animals that cannot tell what their inner experiences are, and call this tricks psychological research?

How would feeding chickens two kinds of caterpillars, one of which is supposed to be more bitter, improve the understanding of human consciousness? (We say hypothetical, because the researchers never tasted the caterpillars themselves.) Or, soak some corncobs in quinine and others in sugar water, paint them in different colors, and throw them in front of the chicks .The chicks quickly learned to avoid the bitter one, pecking at both types of corncobs, while the older chickens quickly learned to eat only the sweetened one.But what does this have to do with human learning? How does putting a hungry cat in a slatted "puzzle box" so that it can escape only by stepping on a pedal that opens the door solves some of psychology's biggest problems?The researchers put the cat in a crate, bolted the door, and hung a piece of fish on the outside of the crate.The cat was so irritated by seeing the fish fillet and smelling it, it squeezed its nose into the gap, put its paws in as well, folded back, and scratched around the cage for 2 1/2 minutes until it happened to step on pedal so that the door slides down and open.The cat swooped out and ate the fish - then was put back in to try again.The second time it did better (40 seconds to escape), the third time it did worse (90 seconds), and after only 20 tries, it opened the door immediately each time.This is undoubtedly an increase in knowledge-knowledge about cats.But what does this have to do with humans?

Put a dog in a cage, first use a metronome to beat for 15 seconds, then put some minced meat in a bowl in the cage, and repeat this process until the metronome sounds, and the saliva will flow from the dog. Dripping from the mouth, even if there is no minced meat in the bowl.How can this enlighten humans to understand their own consciousness?Many psychologists, when they first hear about this experiment, say that it is just a type of association that explains simple behavior in some animals. However, the researcher who conducted the experiment thinks otherwise. This principle of science will be able to explain even the most advanced and complex forms of human behavior.

These experiments, and many like them, are part of a bold attempt, begun at the turn of the last century, to answer—indeed, to dispel some of the beliefs that are being discussed—that psychology's most complex and The most untraceable questions: those that have to do with the nature of thinking.Including: — What are the things inside our bodies that we can see, feel and think when we are awake?It disappears briefly when we fall asleep (or, if we dream, it seems to leave the body and go elsewhere), and disappears forever the moment we die.Is it the same as the soul?Or is it part of the soul?Or is it something else, also not of matter?

—In both cases, a being that is not matter—not even a puff of gas, not even a shadow—can have an effect on the physical body on which it depends?How does it feel the physical sensation? — After the body dies, does it survive? — If so, where does it exist?And, since it lacks any connection to sense organs and nerves after death, how can it perceive where it lodges itself? These are just questions about consciousness, mental states, and thought processes that philosophers, theologians, and archetypal psychologists have long sought to answer.But instead of solving these problems, they have in turn created more confusion.

There is, however, an entirely different answer to these questions, one which most philosophers and psychologists loathe, however.Consciousness is an illusion; there is no physical self at all inside our bodies; our mental experiences, including consciousness, feeling and thinking about our own existence, are just physical events that take place in the nervous system and are some stimuli. Over the centuries some materialist philosophers have stated this in vague and unconvincing terms, but as the physical and physiological sciences develop, the hypothesis becomes more concrete and more Makes sense.By the second half of the 19th century, Helmholtz and some other physiologists had connected some simple sensations with the electronic chemical phenomena in the sensory nerves, and Wandert's disciples also began to understand the basic components of sensation and perception. Construct a complete psychology.By the end of the last century, anti-"mindism" (the view that consciousness is a separate being) had gained strength in a very different direction—animal psychology, an area of ​​interest sparked by Darwin's theories, Darwin demonstrated the connection between humans and other species.At first, some biologists and psychologists assumed that animals had the same thought process as we do, although simpler; by the 1880s, an English biologist, George Roman, explored through "analogous introspection" animal psychology; he asked himself what he would do if he were an animal in any given situation.However, in 1894, the zoologist Sy Lloyd Morgan—the same researcher who gave chickens two kinds of caterpillars and two colors of corncobs—used Oakham Ray Zha's words completely refuted this method:

In any case, if an action can be explained by the performance of a mental function lower on the psychic scale, it is impossible to explain it as the result of a higher mental function. Morgan says even some of the complex tricks pet dogs perform can be explained in terms of reflexes and simple associative learning; there's no need to assume the existence of some sort of higher mental function in animals. The German-born biologist Jacques Roy went even further. While teaching in the United States in the 1890s, he demonstrated through very extensive evidence that many animal behaviors consist of "tropisms," a term he used for worms, insects, and even higher animal factors. All responses that come naturally to stimulation.In his view, many, if not most, animal behaviors consist of such tropisms, and these animals are nothing more than stimulus-driven automata.

To a growing group of psychologists, the implication of all these words is clear: if human beings are related to animals, if animal behavior can be explained without the concept of spiritualism, then the So can some—maybe all of them.The answer to the untraceable question of the nature of consciousness and how it works has the potential to be remarkably simple: consciousness does not exist, or, if it does, can be ignored because it is not only unobservable but also explanation is not necessary.Behavior—obvious, indispensable action—is the real subject of psychology, not memory, reasoning, volition, and all the other invisible processes imagined by the mentalist psychologist.It is not conjectures and hypotheses about unobservable functions that can be the real object of a thoroughly objective and rigorously scientific psychology, but a series of laws deduced from observable phenomena, such as the cat's desire to get out of the cage. escape.This was the question that many psychologists pondered in the 1890s and early 20th century, long before the term "behaviorism" was coined and the tenets of its doctrine were unformed.

The above animal experiments cite two different behaviorist principles: the natural learning principle (chickens associate a particular color with the reward of a sweet corncob, cats associate stepping on the pedal with escape and food) ) and the principle of conditioning (dogs salivate upon hearing the sound of a metronome, a stimulus linked to an artificially formed salivary reflex).These principles were discovered by two men with different backgrounds, different training, and different personalities, one an intelligent and dedicated psychologist, the other a physiologist who despised psychology and wondered whether it could be called a science.

The first was Edward Lee Thorndike (1874-1949), a psychologist whose range of interests, however, were so general and varied that some historians list him as a scholar of functional psychology rather than behaviorism , and he himself thought he was neither.With the exception of one year, he spent his life conducting a lengthy work in psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he wrote 50 books and 450 articles discussing educational psychology, learning theory, testing and measurement, industrial psychology, language acquisition and Articles in Social Psychology.As an added bonus, he has edited rarer materials such as the 2000 Teacher's Handbook of English Vocabulary for Reading Common to Students, a list of U.S. cities ranked by the level of desire students wish to live in, and a very popular dictionary.Our interest in Thorndike, however, centers on the work he did as a graduate student, when he had some behaviorist momentum, only to dissent later.

Thorndike was born in Massachusetts, the son of a Methodist minister, and as a child he was unattractive, lonely, shy, and found joy only in his studies.He was exceptionally gifted, consistently ranked first or second in high school, and graduated from Wesleyan in 1895 with the highest grade point average in fifty years.He found the basic psychology courses boring, but James's "Principles of Psychology" course was very interesting.He went to Harvard to continue graduate work, planning to study English, philosophy, and psychology, but after two lectures by James, he was completely enthralled by the last one. Despite his great admiration for James, he chose a topic that was very uncharacteristic of James, "Chicken Intuition and Intellectual Behavior".Later in life, he said, the motivation was "primarily to satisfy the need for credits and diplomas ... There was apparently no particular interest in animals at the time".Perhaps, but there is no doubt that a shy man (and he was such a man at the time) finds it easier to deal with animals than with people.James agreed to the topic, and Thorndike bought a flock of chickens, which he locked up in his house because the laboratory was too small, until an angry landlord ordered him to remove them.When he told James about his troubles, James told him to keep the chickens in the basement of his own house, far beyond a professor's responsibility. There Thorndike made a maze of thick books, with three dead ends and a fourth leading to an adjacent opening where there was some food, water, and other chickens.When he put a chicken in a maze, it would spin around a dead end, squeaking loudly, until it happened to find an exit.As he put it back and experimented again and again, he slowly learned to find the exit faster.Clearly there is no intellectual activity involved here, just something much simpler.According to Thorndike: Chickens respond to loneliness and a closed wall in much the same way that they would escape in a similar natural environment.Some of these actions will lead it to success, and the resulting pleasure will make it remember these actions.And some behaviors that did not lead to pleasure are forgotten. The seeds of behaviorist theory are buried in these words. The following year, Thorndike failed to pursue a young and beautiful woman, so he had to stay away from Cambridge after much deliberation.He transferred to Columbia University to complete his Ph.D.The instructor was James McGinn Cattell, who was conducting research on measuring intelligence through human tests.Although Thorndike also conducted mental tests later, in order to complete his doctoral dissertation, he had to continue his own animal learning research.He made 15 different mazes out of fruit and vegetable boxes, and studied cats (and a few dogs) on the roof of an old university building to see how well they learned how to escape. In some boxes his cat can escape with a simple action: step on a pedal, press a button, or pull a coil of rope.In other boxes, multiple maneuvers were required to escape, such as pulling on a rope and moving a stick.In one experiment, Thorndike let go of the door whenever the cat licked or scratched itself.Driven by fanatical ambition—he was determined to spend five years climbing to the top of his profession—he worked extremely hard, and in less than a year he achieved so much that he became an authority on the industry. Both immediately acknowledged the importance of these findings. In January 1898, the New York Academy of Sciences invited him to present his results at a conference, and in June Science published a paper he wrote on his work; Monograph in Psychological Review.The American Psychological Association invited him to give a presentation at its annual meeting in December.Although Thorndike's experimental findings were simple, their implications were extremely important.First, cats do not learn to escape through reasoning or insight; instead, they use trial and error to slowly eliminate useless movements and then make connections between appropriate movements and desired goals.They learn nothing from seeing an experienced cat run away, or let Thorndike grab their paws to loosen a box door.If escape required only one response, all cats could learn to escape, but more than half of the cats did not learn how to escape when both responses were required. According to all these situations, Thorndike formed a theory of "association method", which is expressed in two laws of learning. The first law is the law of effect.The puzzle box is a stimulus that elicits a series of responses; most of the effects are "anhedonic" (no escape, or access to food), but one is a "pleasant" that leads to escape and Food has two benefits.Anhedonic and hedonic stimuli selectively "inscribe" (or, as Thorndike would later put it, "intensify") certain stimulus-response associations and weaken or eliminate others.The effect of any action thus determines whether it becomes a response to a given stimulus. The second law is called the law of exercise.All other things being equal, "a response will be more strongly associated with a stimulus in proportion to the number of times it is associated with the prevailing situation, and in proportion to the strength of that association and the length of time elapsed." Thorndike's monographs had an immediate impact on psychological thought.It gave new, research-based meaning to old associationist philosophical concepts; Convincing evidence.For the next half century, the animal experimentation method he developed became the model for most studies. Although later researchers (including Thorndike himself) somewhat revised the law of effect and greatly improved the law of exercise, these two laws became the basis of behaviorist psychology, whether it is human or animal.Because, although human behavior is far more complex than that of cats, behaviorists believe that both can be explained by the same principles; Thorndike said that the only difference lies in "the number, precision and quality of the human brain's cellular structure." Complexity' constitutes the 'number, precision and complexity' of the associations it produces".He even goes so far as to suggest that the reason human culture develops so slowly is because it learns by trial and error, with very low success rates, the same way animals do. Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was a very different scientist, an experimental physiologist who spent the first half of his career studying digestion.It was because of this work that he noticed the strange phenomenon of salivating dogs.He devoted the second half of his career to the study of what he called "conditioning."He has always believed that conditioning is a physiological phenomenon rather than a psychological process. Although the rules of conditioning have become indispensable rules of behaviorism, just like the laws of learning and effect, his views on psychology are so Low, going so far as to threaten to shoot anyone who dared to use psychological jargon in his lab.As he lay dying, he claimed that he was not a psychologist, but a physiologist who studied brain reflexes. Pavlov was born in a family estate in central Russia. His father was a local Orthodox priest and his mother was the daughter of a priest. Pavlov also planned to inherit the family tradition.At that time, Tsar Alexander II had just issued a decree allowing gifted children from poor families to go to school for free.Pavlov met both criteria and thus received primary and secondary education.However, in middle school, Pavlov read Darwin's and Russian physiologist Ivan Sekilov's "Brain Reflexes", so he went through a process similar to conversion.He gave up his plans to become a priest and dropped out of St. Petersburg University (again through the Tsar's generosity) to specialize in the natural sciences, where Sekirov was professor of physiology. Pavlov graduated with honors in 1875, and then studied medicine, but his goal was to conduct research work, not an internship, and he had to support himself on the meager salary of an assistant—after 1881 I have to support my wife.At that time, Russia gave young scientists far fewer opportunities than Western countries, and despite Pavlov's outstanding talents and impressive achievements in physiological research, for many years, he could only do his best to maintain the minimum basic survival. However, he was too engrossed in his work to attend to the exigencies of daily survival.He is a symbol of intellectuals who do not eat fireworks.When he was engaged, he had no money to buy luxuries for his lover, and only once bought her a practical thing: a pair of shoes, which she was eagerly waiting to wear when she was away.However, when she arrived at her destination and opened her luggage, she saw that there was only one shoe inside.She wrote to ask what was the matter, and he wrote back: "Don't look for the shoe. I'll put it on my desk as a keepsake to remember you." After they married, they lived almost in poverty , He often forgets to get his salary, and he doesn't know until his wife reminds him.One winter, he didn't have the money to buy some fuel for the apartment, and the colony of butterflies he was using to study transmutation froze to death.His wife complained because of poverty, but Pavlov said angrily: "Oh, don't bother me. All my butterflies are dead, and you still have such a sad thing. Complaining about some stupid, trivial things here." In the laboratory, however, Pavlov was practical, a perfectionist, and methodical.He expects his assistants to live up to his standards and to be punished or fired for any deviation, no matter the reason.During the revolution (for which he remained unsympathetic for many years, but eventually became a supporter of the system), one of the employees was late.When Pavlov questioned him severely, the man said that along the way, there were street fights in the street, and he almost lost his life.But Pavlov angrily replied that this was not a reason, since the contribution to science should outweigh all other motives.According to some, Pavlov fired the man anyway. That was long after Pavlov's success. In 1891, at the age of 42, Pavlov was finally appointed professor at the St. Petersburg Academy of Military Sciences, and a few years later, at St. Petersburg University.With such a solid foundation, he began to form the Institute of Experimental Medicine, where he conducted research for 40 years.His work in the 1890s was conducting digestive research, surgically cutting the stomachs of experimental dogs and inserting a small sac with a fistula inside.This allows him to observe the gastric reflex (the secretion of gastric juices when a dog starts eating) without contaminating the gastric juices with food.His discoveries earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1904, and in 1907 he became a member, or full-time member, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the pinnacle of scientific prestige in Russia. Halfway through his gastric reflex studies between 1897 and 1900, Pavlov noticed a strange and disturbing phenomenon: dogs secreted gastric juices and saliva when they were not being fed, for example, The official feeding time is a little earlier, if it sees or hears the feeder.At first, Pavlov thought this was annoying because it would affect the data on the amount of digestive secretions.It occurred to him, however, that there must be some reason why dogs produce such fluids in their mouths, even when there is no food nearby.An obvious explanation is that the dog "aware" that mealtime was approaching, and the thought would produce secretions, but Pavlov, a staunch anti-psychologist, would not have taken such subjective guesses lightly. Despite his reluctance to carry out research in this area, Pavlov finally decided to find out, because, in his view, this is a purely physiological phenomenon-because people who are seen or heard feeding regularly This stimulation produces a reflex in the brain, which causes "psychic secretion". In 1902 he began to investigate when and how such stimuli, which were not inherently connected with glandular responses, evoked such responses.He has been studying this phenomenon all his life. Although Pavlov was a surgical expert, he did not spend energy making a gastric pouch for this research.Since the dog produces both gastric juice and saliva when it sees a person feeding, it is enough to make a simple sac on the salivary gland, hang it on a high place, and introduce a collection and recording device.Dogs were trained to stand still on a table and were rewarded, petted and fed for doing so.Eager to please, it often hops onto the table without being told, and stands still on it with great patience, with a not-so-tight collar attached to some equipment.Ferrules are required to prevent damage to the device.The apparatus consisted of a rubber tube connecting the glandular sac to the collection container and recording cylinder.The dogs faced a wall with windows, and facing them, inside the laboratory, there was a feeding bucket into which food could be poured by mechanical means. As soon as the food is inside the dog's mouth, its saliva begins to overflow.Since this is a reflex that does not require training, Pavlov called food an "unconditioned stimulus" and this salivary response an "unconditioned reflex."The thing to be investigated, however, is the connection between neutral stimuli and similar reflexes.The most typical pattern is that the experimenter makes a sound in a place where the dog cannot see it, so that it will not form a signal to the dog.Such a sound can be produced by ringing a bell, pressing a buzzer, and will cause food to be poured into the feeding bucket, with an interval of 5-30 seconds between pours.At first, the sound of a bell or a buzzer elicits only a general reflex—the dog pricks its ears—but no salivation reflex.After a few rounds of testing, however, the sound alone caused the dogs to salivate.According to Pavlov, the sound has become the "conditioned stimulus" that causes the salivary response, and the salivary response has become the "conditioned reflex" of the sound. Pavlov and his assistants transformed the experiment into various forms.Often, instead of sound, they flash a light, or turn an object where the dog can see through a window, or manipulate an instrument that can touch the dog, or pull on a part of the dog's leash, changing the neutral stimulus The time interval between feeding and so on.In all cases, neutral stimuli can be transformed into conditioned stimuli, but with varying degrees of ease.A neutral gas (not a food smell) may require more than 20 pairings to become a conditioned stimulus, whereas a turning of an object within the dog's line of sight may require only 5 pairings, a loud bee The chime is only needed once. Psychologists might call this conditioning process associative learning, but Pavlov explained it in physiological terms.He thanked his mentor Sekilov and Descartes who first proposed the theory of reflection, and proposed that the unconditioned response, such as the saliva response when putting food in the mouth, is a brain response: yes A direct connection between sensory and motor nerves in the spine or lower brain centers.In contrast, conditioning, such as salivation upon hearing a bell or other sound that was previously a neutral stimulus, is the result of new reflex pathways established in the cerebral cortex during conditioning. Pavlov laid out his theory of the brain's positioning reflex in great detail to support his findings on conditioning.But this doctrine was largely ignored except in the Soviet Union, where it was totally disproved in the United States by the psychologist Karl Lashley; Lashley removed different parts and different amounts of brains from rats cortex, and then taught them to walk a maze, and found that the loss of learning ability in mice was not related to damage to any specific cortical area, but to the total amount removed. However, Pavlov's physiological theories did not in any way detract from the enthusiastic reception of his experimental data and conditioned laws as great contributions to psychological knowledge.Some of his notable discoveries are as follows: Timing: The order in which stimuli are given is critical.Only when a neutral stimulus precedes an unconditioned reflex does it become a conditioned reflex and can elicit a reflex.In one experiment, an assistant fed the food first, followed by a loud buzzer 5-10 seconds later; after 374 attempts, the buzzer alone still failed to trigger salivation.When he presses the buzzer before feeding, training once forms a conditioned reflex. Loss of reflection: Unlike an unconditioned reflex to an unconditioned stimulus, the link between a conditioned stimulus and a reflex is not permanent.If the conditioned stimulus is repeated without keeping up with the reinforcer (food), the salivary response is diminished until it eventually disappears. Summary: If a dog is presented with a stimulus that is similar to, but somewhat different from, the conditioned stimulus—such as a pitch that is slightly higher or lower than that paired with the food—the dog will also salivate, but more strongly than the conditioned stimulus. worse.The greater the difference between the tones, or the difference between any conditioned stimulus and the related stimulus, the smaller the magnitude of the response.Thus, the dog is actually generalizing from its experience and expects similar experiences to lead to similar results. the difference: After the dogs were conditioned to salivate when they heard a given tone and another tone a few notes lower, if the first tone was always followed by food and the second tone was always not followed by food, Then the dog gradually stops salivating when it hears the second tone.Dogs have learned to "differentiate" between two stimuli - the term "discriminate" is used by Anglo-American psychologists, which means the same thing. Experimental neurosis: In order to determine the limits of dogs' ability to discriminate, Pavlov inadvertently contributed to something like psychosis in dogs.In one historic experiment, a dog learned to distinguish between a lighted circle on a screen followed by food, and an elongated oval always followed by no food.When the relationship that the dog secreted when seeing a circle and not when seeing an ellipse was established, the assistants began to change the shape of the ellipse to make it more and more like a circle.The dog keeps learning to distinguish between circles and increasingly rounded ellipses until the ellipse has an axis ratio of 7:8.The assistant then tried rounder ellipses until their axial ratio became 8:9, at which point Pavlov later wrote: The dog, which had been quiet so far, began screaming in its station, writhing about, and with its teeth dislodged the device for mechanical stimulation of the skin and gnawed through the tube connecting the animal feed and observation chamber. , this behavior is something that it has never had before. (Later,) as soon as it was led to the laboratory, the dog barked, which was just the opposite of its usual habits.In short, it exhibits all the symptoms of an acute neurosis. Only after a long period of rest and careful treatment will the dog recover enough to endure the experiments with which the distinctions are more easily made. Pavlov believed he had identified the basic unit of learning in animals and humans.All learned behavior, he says, whether acquired in or out of school, is "nothing but a long chain of conditioned reflexes" whose acquisition, maintenance, and disappearance are patterns that he and his assistants have discovered. controlled by law.His thoughts profoundly influenced Russian psychology from the early 1900s to the 1950s, but remained unknown in the West for many years, even though Pavlov had already mentioned the conditions in his Nobel acceptance speech in 1904. form. Robert Yerkes (who later headed the development of the AAB) and a colleague learned of Pavlov's work from a German journal, established a correspondence with him, and published it in the Journal of Psychology An article briefly describing their methodology and key findings.They emphasized the usefulness of his method, but failed to predict the impact the concept of conditioning would have on the American Psychological Association. In 1916, however, John B. Watson—whom we will get to later—began to elaborate on how Pavlovian conditioning theory expanded behaviorist theory in psychology, and a few years later he called conditioning It has become the "keystone under the arch" of behaviorism theory and methodology. In 1926, Pavlov's book Lectures on Conditioning Reflexes was published in English, and since then behaviorist psychologists have quickly absorbed his ideas and borrowed his methods.Beginning in the 1920s, papers published on Pavlovian conditioning appeared in psychological and medical journals in geometric progression, and by 1943, the total number had reached nearly 1,000. In 1951, Professor Henry Garrett of Columbia University summed up the influence of Pavlovian ideas on what was essentially behaviorist experimental psychology over a period of more than 30 years: Perhaps no subject in experimental psychology has taken as much time and effort as the study of conditioning.The relationship between the conditioned reflexes acquired by animals, children and adults, the relative ease with which different reflexes are conditioned, their disappearance and reappearance, schooling and the ease with which they are conditioned... (all) placed in the experiment Put to the test... many psychologists hope—and strict objectivists believe—that conditioning will prove to be the unit or factor of all habit formation. No one peddled behaviorism among American psychologists harder than John B. Watson of Johns Hopkins University.He was a gifted hawker, selling himself and his ideas to his colleagues with enthusiasm and skill, and he quickly rose to the top of his career while launching the behaviorist movement; Expelled from academia, he found a lucrative second career as a psychology consultant for a major advertising agency. Like the traveling salesman in the novel, Watson shows strong self-confidence, promotes his views in a very provocative and confident tone, and is a lifelong flower picker.But behind the scenes, he is insecure, afraid of the dark and emotionally frozen.He can be very social and charming when he's with people, but if the conversation gets to deep emotions, he'll leave the room and get on with errands.He has a deep affection for animals, but can hardly express his love for people. (He never kissed or held his children, and at bedtime he shook their hands goodnight.) After his second wife died in infancy, he never mentioned him in front of his two children.似乎很在乎的妻子，其中一个孩子后来很痛苦地回忆说：“就好像她从来就没有存在过。”毫不奇怪，他拥护一种排斥内省和自我启示，而只处理外部行动的心理学，并且在选择实验对象的时候，宁愿要老鼠而不选择人。 沃森的成功故事跟荷拉西奥·阿尔杰的任何一部发迹史同样令人感到惊奇。他1878年出生在南卡罗莱那州的格林维尔市附近，是位名声极差、性情暴躁的小农场主和一位正直虔诚的浸信会女教友的儿子。沃森处在这两种各不相同的成人模式中倍受折磨，因而是个全无计谋，也很懒惰的孩子。他13岁那年，父亲弃家出走，与另一个女人私奔他乡，他母亲只好卖掉农场搬到格林维尔市了。沃森在那里因为乡下人生活习惯和父亲的出走而受到同学嘲笑，因而成绩很差。“我很偷懒，”他后来回忆说，“不怎么听话，而且，就我记忆所及，从来没有哪一门课及过格。”跟他消失无踪的父亲一样，他有暴力倾向：经常与别人打架，直到其中一个或者两个人都血乎乎的为止，还特别喜欢搞他称作“捧黑鬼”的把戏（打黑人），有两次被逮捕，一次为种族吵闹，另一次为在城区范围内鸣枪。 尽管他一副农民的样子，还有农民的陋习，可他多少起心要出头露面，还鼓起勇气，壮着胆子要求与格林维尔一座小规模浸信会机构，费尔马学院的院长面谈。他的要求被接受了，由于印象良好他被准许入学。他打算学习浸信会牧师专业——按他母亲的要求——可是，他一向具有反骨，因而放弃了宗教。他与同学总没有平和的时候，可是，他慢慢长大了，成为一个特别漂亮的年轻人，棱角分明，下巴坚挺，一头飘扬的黑发，以后就开始了终生不辍的情场生涯。可是，他对理想一类的事情还是很严肃的，学习认真，成绩也不错。他还特别喜欢哲学系的教程，因为里面包括一些心理学课程。 毕业之后，沃森在一所只有一个教室的学校里教了一年书，可是，他最喜欢的哲学教授乔治·莫尔调到芝加哥大学后敦促他去那里读研究生。沃森又一次傲慢无礼地一步登上顶峰。他给这所大学的校长威廉·瑞恩尼·哈泼写了一封胆大包天的信，告诉他说自己虽然很穷，可是学习劲头很足，恳求他要么免除学费，要么等沃森以后再交清。他还劝说费尔马学院的院长为他写一封特别的推荐信。哈泼校长接受了他——学费问题如何解决的至今不详——而沃森蹭蹭蹭立即就去了。他带着属于他自己的50元钱去了芝加哥，完全靠自己养活自己（他母亲已经去世，他父亲再也没有听说过），可是，他却雄心勃勃准备大干一番。 一开始他选了哲学作为专业，可马上认识到他真正关心的是心理学，于是便转了系。他学习非常刻苦，并靠干好几份零活来养活自己：他在寄宿区当侍应生，在心理学系当管楼人，在一个实验室里照管老鼠。有一阵子，因为焦虑和无法睡眠，他患上了精神症，只得花一个月时间去乡间疗养。换了别人，在这次经历之后，也许会开始寻找自我并产生对内省心理学的兴趣，而沃森却在1901年和1902年之间的冬季进行了他的博士论文研究，即幼鼠的大脑发展水平与如何跟学习迷宫和打开门取食物有关系。从一部分来说，他只是在追赶当时最新的心理学潮流（桑代克已于4年前宣布了他的迷宫箱发现成果），可是，从另一部分来说，他是在选择自己觉得志趣相投的心理学： 在芝加哥，我试着思考以后才提出来的一些观点。我从不想使用人类当试验对象。我不喜欢当试验对象。我不喜欢给受试者们下的一些乏味和虚假的指令。我总是不舒服，而且表现不自然。可跟动物相处就不然。我感觉到，在研究它们的时候，我会站在坚实的大地上靠近生物学。一个想法越来越多地自我表现出来：别的学生通过观察者发现的一些东西，我难道就不能靠观察动物的行为找到吗？ 沃森在芝加哥做的工作非常优秀，他毕业的时候，系里给了他一份实验心理学助教的职称。仅两年之后，他就被提升为讲师，再过两年，选为副教授，一年之后，他30岁，被授予约翰·霍普金斯大学的心理学教职，且得到一份当时（1908年）非常可观的收入：3500美元。 他快速的提升有一部分归因于小心养成的与人周旋的能力，可是在更大的程度上却是因为他在动物学习方面杰出的实验工作。他教老鼠穿出了仿照亨利八世于伦敦郊外的皇家行宫汉普顿宫制作的微型复制品迷宫。开始，老鼠们需要半个多小时的时间才能找到出口，可是，经过30次的尝试之后，它们可以在10秒钟内直奔出口。它们是通过什么办法知道路线的？为了找出原因，沃森先拿去了它们的第一个感觉提示，接着再拿去一个，以了解是哪一个对迷宫学习至为关键。他把一些经过培训的老鼠的眼睛蒙上，它们的动作水平立刻降下来，可又立即恢复到以前的水平了。他冲洗迷宫道，以去掉味道的提示，可经过培训的老鼠同样跟以前一样干得好。他用外科手术破坏了一些未经培训的老鼠的嗅觉，可是，它们跟未受损坏的老鼠一样稳定地学会了走迷宫。沃森下结论说，肌肉运动觉提示——即肌肉的感觉——是学习过程的关键因素。 通过这样一些研究，通过他对桑代克和其它客观主义者的工作的了解，沃森否定了所有有关隐形精神过程的猜想，开始形成一种新的、完全以可观察到的行为为基础的心理学。他于1908年和1912年（在1912年他与詹姆斯R·安吉尔各自独立地提出了“行为主义者”这个词）的心理学大会上首先提出了这些观点，1913年还写了一篇文章，发表在《心理学评论》上，它经常被人称作“行为主义者宣言”，正式揭开了心理学史上行为主义时代的序幕。 这份“行为主义者眼中的心理学”的宣言一开始就宣布与所有处理精神过程的各心理学学派脱离关系： 行为主义者眼中的心理学是自然科学当中一种完全客观的、实验性的分支。它的理论目标是要预示并控制行为。内省并不成为其方法论中必需的部分，其数据的科学价值并不依赖于人们是否乐意以意识的术语来解释。 他在三句话里宣布了三个革命性的原则：第一，心理学的内容应该是行为，而不是意识；第二，它的方法应该是客观的而不是内省式的；第三，它的目标应该是“预测并控制行为”，而不是对精神现象的基础理解。 沃森严厉指出，心理学一直没有能够成为一种不可辩驳的自然科学，是因为它关心的只是一些看不见的、主观的和无法准确定义的意识过程。他抛弃了希腊哲学家、中世纪学者、理性主义者和经验主义者的心理学理论，也抛弃了像康德、休谟、万德特、詹姆斯和弗洛伊德这样一些伟人，在他的观点看来，这些人全都是误入歧途了。 心理学必须抛弃所有意识方面的时候似乎已经到来了，它不再需要以为它是在把精神状态当作观察的对象而自欺欺人了。在有关意识的元素、意识内容的本质等的一些思辨当中，我们已经受到太多的羁绊了，作为一个实验学者，我感觉到某些前提和因之而来的一些问题是错误的。如某些机智的人过后所言：“心理学首先在达尔文那里失去了灵魂，现在又在沃森这里失去了思想。” 他对内省作为一种研究办法的攻击，是建立在这种办法无法得出客观数据的基础上的。它经常导致人们就一些主观和无法确定的话题进行无休止的争辩，如感觉的数目、其强度，或者某人报告他所体验到的某种东西是什么意思等等，以致于这个方法本身就必须被判定为有缺陷的，它阻挡了进步。 沃森还大刀阔斧地摒弃了所有的灵肉二元讨论，不管它们是形而上的还是现代的。这些概念，这些“经久时间考验的、哲学思辩的遗迹”，不管是作为引向值得研究的心理学问题的向导，还是作为这些问题的解决办法，都毫无用处；他说，他本人倒宁愿使他自己的一些学生永远都不知道这些假说。 为了替代他视为垃圾的一些心理学方法，他提出了一种新的、全然没有“意识”、“精神状态”和“思维”这些术语的方法。它惟一的主题是行为。心理学以所有的有机体都会适应其环境，某些刺激会引导它们作出必要的反应为基础，它会研究刺激与反应之间的联系，也就是说，奖励性的反应被学习，没有奖励的反应不被学习的各种方法。由于意识会被忽略，这个研究的很大部分就可以在动物上进行；的确，“人和动物的行为必须在同一平面上加以考虑，它们都同样是行为研究中不可缺少的部分。” 沃森的宣言实际上没有它看起来的那么具有创造性，它提出的一些思想过去15年来一直在露芽。可是，它以大胆、有力而且清晰的方式提了出来；简单来说，它是一人销售计划。沃森的思想并没有一夜之间就扫平了整个战场，可是，在后来的五六年中，行为主义成了会议上的重要话题，并对心理学家的思想产生了结构上的影响。到20年代，它已经开始统治心理学了，成为美国心理学中的主导范式和欧洲40多年的重要范式。 大众传媒对沃森的生活所作的叙述说，这份宣言像弹射机一样将沃森一把推上1915年美国心理学协会主席的宝座，可是，社会心理学家弗兰茨·森默尔逊对这个事实更为仔细地回顾一番后说，更值得人相信的是，他之所以被选中，是因为他作为《心理学评论》的编辑经常抛头露面，他与提名委员会的三位成员相互认识而且相处不错，他还是新一代真正的实验心理学家的代表。 不管原因何在，他毕竟高飞起来，可是，他知道，他还没有提出一个具体的方法，行为主义者可以借此进行研究工作，他在至美国心理学协会的主席就任演说辞里也提出了这个问题。他现在终于有东西可以拿出来了：条件反射法。虽然他只知道巴甫洛夫所进行的工作的大致轮廓，木过，他把它提出来是作为一个模式，说明行为主义者进行的实验不仅可以用动物，而且可以用人类。他提请人们注意，他的学生卡尔·莱施里（他曾反对过巴甫洛夫的生理学理论）已经做成了一只可移动囊，它可以植入人的面颊底下。他用这只可移动囊已经成功地测量到人类志愿者非条件形成和条件形成下的唾液反射。 沃森本人也开始研究人类的条件反射，不过，毫不奇怪，他用的是婴儿而不是成人。约翰·霍普金斯大学菲律普斯精神病门诊医院的负责人、精神病学家阿道夫·迈耶曾邀请他去那里建立一个实验室，1916年，沃森开始观察婴儿，从出生到头一年的大部分时间。一战干扰了这些工作，可是，1918年晚期他又恢复了这项工作。 沃森首先希望发现婴儿具有哪些非条件反射，即，什么样的刺激可以在没有任何学习过程的情况下引起反射。根据门诊的一些简单实验，他得出结论说，人类只有少数本能反射，其中有吸吮、伸手和抓取。（有一张著名的图片显示沃森抓住一根棍棒，一个新生儿用一只手臂像只小猴子一样吊在上面。）他还发现，婴儿对某些刺激有三种天生的情感反应：听到很响的声音，或者被突然扔下时感到害怕（婴儿呼吸急促，缩拢嘴唇，然后放声哭喊）；头、手运动被强行挡住时感到愤怒（身体僵直，手臂扑打，闭住呼吸，面部发红）；还有在被抚弄、摇动、轻拍和类似动作时感到爱（他会咯咯发笑，呢喃自语或者微笑）。 可是，按他的观点，这些东西构成了天生的人类反应总量——后来的研究会得出不同的结果——他更大的目标是要揭示，几乎所有其它的人类行为和情感反应是如何由条件反射构成的。他以解释巴甫洛夫有关情感反应的假设作开头： 当一个激发情感的物体与另一个不会激发情感反应的物体同时刺激受试者时，后者到时（经常是经过一次这样的联合刺激即可）可能也会引起与前者同样的情感反应。 为了检验这个假说，沃森及其学生之一罗萨莉·雷纳在1919年至1920年的冬天进行了后来成为心理学史上最为著名的一次实验，该项实验旨在对他们在报告中称为阿尔伯特·B的11个月的婴儿身上形成对恐惧的条件反应。当阿尔伯特还只有9个月大的时候，他们把一只白色老鼠放在他身边，可他一点也不害怕；可是，当用一把锤子在他脑后敲响一根钢轨时，他就害怕了，带着恐惧的反应。给他两个月的时间使这次经历淡忘，然后，他们俩又开始这些实验。一只老鼠从正面放在阿尔伯特的面前，他用左手去抓它；就在他碰到老鼠的时候，他的脑后又响起了钢轨敲响的声音，他就猛地一跳，向前仆倒，把脸理在床垫里面。第二次试的时候，阿尔伯特用右手去抓，当他快要抓住的时候，钢轨又在身后响起。这次，阿尔伯特跳起来，向前仆倒，开始啜泣。 沃森和雷纳把进一步的试验推迟了一个星期，“以避免过度刺激孩子”，他们写道：这是个奇怪的说法，因为他们的目的是要做到这样，而且事实上在他们继续的时候也已经过度刺激他了。又进行了五六次配对试验，把老鼠放在阿尔伯特身边，钢轨在他脑后震响，阿尔伯特对老鼠就形成了完全的恐惧条件反应： 老鼠一出现，婴儿就开始哭。他几乎立即向左侧猛地一转身，倒在左侧，用四肢撑起身体快速地爬动，在他到达试验台的边缘前，用了相当大的劲才拖住他。 更进一步的试验显示，阿尔伯特对其它毛乎乎的东西也产生了概括性的恐惧：兔子、狗、海豹皮大衣、棉绒，还有沃森装圣诞老人戴的面罩。停止一个多月以后，又对阿尔伯特进行试验，如沃森和雷纳明显满怀喜悦地在报告中说明的一样，他哭了起来，对老鼠和其它一系列展现在他眼前的毛乎乎的刺激感到害怕，这时候，并没有任何铁轨敲击的声音。 令人万分惊讶的是——按照今天的研究标准来看——沃森和雷纳并没有采取消除阿尔伯特的条件反射的措施，这个孩子在最后的一些试验完成之后离开了门诊医院。他们在报告中的确提到，“假如有机会，我们可能会尝试好几种（消除条件反射的）办法”，他们曾做过消除办法的提纲。接着，他们嘲笑说，20年后，某些弗洛伊德式心理分析师可能会从阿尔伯特身上得出一个虚假的记忆，说他约在3岁的时候曾想玩弄母亲的阴毛，结果被狠狠训斥了一顿（因此落下病根——译者）。 沃森没有为他对阿尔伯特的所做所为付出代价，却为合作期间所做的事情付出了高昂的代价。他慢慢疯狂地爱上了年轻美丽的罗萨莉·雷纳，并与她发生了性关系。有人看见他俩在城里，经常离家外出，并不小心地（也许是无意识的设计）把罗萨莉给他的一封热情洋溢的信留在了一只口袋里，被他妻子玛丽发现。他以前曾有过不忠行为，而玛丽也曾对一些插曲早有耳闻，但她都忍下了。可是，这次的婚外恋对她的威胁太大了，她感到非采取行动不可了。 她想出了一个办法来捉赃，希望以此迫使他放弃罗萨莉而不去冒因桃色事件而被取消教授头衔的风险。沃森夫妇有天晚上在罗萨莉父母家进餐，席中，玛丽谎称头疼，想去罗萨莉的床上稍事休息。她一个人来到房间关上门后，对房间进行了搜索，找到井偷走了沃森给她的一些情书，里面尽是沃森异乎寻常地极富表现力的情话，而且里面有明确的做爱描述。 可是，当她面对沃森并威胁要把此事张扬出去的时候，沃森却不愿与罗萨莉分手。玛丽决定起诉离婚，而且，要么是她，要么是她兄弟，就把这些信寄给了大学的校长弗兰克·古德劳；她曾把这些信借给她兄弟看过，而后者却复印了这些信。在当时，在当地，教授作出这样的行为是绝对不允许的。1920年9月，古德劳召沃森去办公室，要求他辞职；沃森激烈地为自己辩解，可是，他没有选择，只好服从。他离开办公室，回到家里，打起行包，直奔纽约而去。他在心理学上令人炫目的职业生涯突然而且永久地结束了，而他掀起的一场心理学运动却正在风起云涌。 沃森后来娶了罗萨莉，与她生了两个儿子。他在纽约找了份工作，这份工作最后给他带来很大一笔薪水，即作为杰·沃尔特·汤普逊广告代理公司的常驻心理学家。他在这里把自己的心理学知识和他的推销术结合了起来，为公司设计了最为成功的一些广告策划活动，包括除臭剂、冷霜、骆驼香烟和其它一些产品。他的成功业绩包括：为旁氏冷霜和雪花膏设计的促销活动，其中使用了来自西班牙女王和罗马尼亚女王的推荐材料；为强生公司说服母亲们，说婴儿每次换过尿布后换上新的爽身粉很重要；帮助麦氏咖啡使“咖啡休息”成为美国办公室、工厂和家庭的习惯。 他被驱出学术世界以后的头一年还在进行有关行为主义理论和儿童教育方面的著述和写作。（他提倡严格的行为主义方法，禁用任何的情绪和感情。）可是，他再也没有进行心理学研究，在这个领域里也不再起领导作用了，他在一些著述中表达出来的更为广泛的行为主义思想被他以前的一些同事们采纳了，因而也被汇入行为主义者思想。 还有大众思想。沃森心理学把几乎所有的人类行为都归结为刺激——反应条件形成，它对高尔顿主义者的遗传学观点是一种简单而有力的反驳，受到自由主义者和平等主义者的广泛欢迎——这很是令人啼笑皆非，因为沃森是个政治上保守的人。在他的大众作品中，他听起来像是救世主一样：行为主义会科学地处理性格的发展，从而创造一个更美好的世界。1925年，在《行为主义》一书中，他说出了可能是他最为著名的和经常被引用的一句话： 给我十来个健康的婴儿，形体良好，并在我自己独特的世界里让他们成大，我担保随便从中挑选一个，就可以把他训练成我可能选择的任何类型的专家——医生、律师、艺术家、商场巨贾和甚至乞丐和大盗，而不管他的天才、倾向、能力、职业和他祖辈的种族是什么。 从1930年起，沃森与心理学断了联系，只是在广告中应用一些心理学。他和罗萨莉在康乃狄格买房置地，过上了很好的生活。可是，刚过了几年安定生活，悲剧就发生了：罗萨莉感染痢疾，久治不愈，30多岁正当年就死了。58岁的沃森心痛欲裂。他继续在广告公司上班（他最近刚转到威廉·埃斯迪代理公司了），可是他惟一真正的兴趣是在他的农场上闲逛。他的一生总是有女人相伴，可再也没有走到近似婚姻这一步。一方面他年岁已高，对自己已无所谓了，穿得也不那么讲究，一方面还胖了起来，还变得孤独难处了。 1957年，沃森快80岁的时候，美国心理学协会给他一份通知，说要给他一份金奖，奖励他对心理学所作出的贡献。他深感震惊，非常高兴，便与儿子们一起去纽约领奖，可到最后一刻，他害怕自己在近40年的流亡之后，会在仪式上哭起来，便只好让儿子代他出席仪式了。颁奖词为： 至约翰B·沃森，他的工作是构成现代心理学形式和实质的重要决定因素之一。他发动了心理学思想上的一场革命，他的作品是富有成果的研究工作延续不断的航程的起点。 这是个相当高的评价。可事实上，沃森在许多问题上是过分简单化和说得过了头的，其他一些行为主义者后来得进一步完善和修饰它们。今天，几乎没有哪个人持有他那种极端的环境论思想，也没有谁建议对孩子保留感情，并通过极端严厉的行为主义规则来培养他们。他视作理论系统基石的巴甫洛夫条件形成论证明不是惟一重要的理论系统，后来的行为主义者给它增加了另外一种模式，叫“操作性”条件反射。最为重要的是，就在沃森接受金奖的同时，事情业已变得很明显了，即SR单元链（一系列互相联系着的条件刺激-反应连接）不管有多么长，总不足以解释多重和复杂的行为种类。 尽管如此，沃森还是一个在近半个世纪的时间内主导了美国心理学的激进理论和实践的第一位，也是最为重要的代言人。雷蒙德·番切尔在他的《心理学的开拓者》一书中写道，尽管行为主义的许多进展没有沃森可能也会发生，但是，“他很明显地加速了此事的发生，并给客观心理学运动带来了一种否则不会有的活力与威力”。 沃森于1958年逝世，即他接受金奖的次年。他至死相信，他发动的这场革命，这个在美国心理学界执掌牛耳达如此漫长时间的学派，一定也会成为未来的心理学。He was wrong.我们会谈到这一点的。