Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it. John B. Watson (1913).

First published in Psychological Review, 20, 158-177 Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective experimental branch o natural science! "ts theoretical goal is the prediction and control o behavior! "ntrospection orms no essential part o its methods, nor is the scienti ic value o its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms o consciousness! #he behaviorist, in his e orts to get a unitary scheme o animal response, recogni$es no dividing line between man and brute! #he behavior o man, with all o its re inement and complexity, orms only a part o the behaviorist%s total scheme o investigation! "t has been maintained by its ollowers generally that psychology is a study o the science o the phenomena o consciousness! "t has ta&en as its problem, on the one hand, the analysis o complex mental states 'or processes( into simple elementary constituents, and on the other the construction o complex states when the elementary constituents are given! #he world o physical objects 'stimuli, including here anything which may excite activity in a receptor(, which orms the total phenomena o the natural scientist, is loo&ed upon merely as means to an end! #hat end is the production o mental states that may be %inspected% or %observed%! #he psychological object o observation in the case o an emotion, or example, is the mental state itsel ! #he problem in emotion is the determination o the number and &ind o elementary constituents present, their loci, intensity, order o appearance, etc! "t is agreed that introspection is the method par excellence by means o which mental states may be manipulated or purposes o psychology! )n this assumption, behavior data 'including under this term everything which goes under the name o comparative psychology( have no value per se. #hey possess signi icance only in so ar as they may throw light upon conscious states!1 *uch data must have at least an analogical or indirect re erence to belong to the realm o psychology! "ndeed, at times, one inds psychologists who are sceptical o even this analogical re erence! *uch scepticism is o ten shown by the +uestion which is put to the student o behavior, %what is the bearing o animal wor& upon human psychology,% " used to have to study over this +uestion! "ndeed it always embarrassed me somewhat! " was interested in my own wor& and elt that it was important, and yet " could not trace any close connection between it and psychology as my +uestioner understood psychology! " hope that such a con ession will clear the atmosphere to such an extent that we will no longer have to wor& under alse pretences! -e must ran&ly admit that the acts so important to us which we have been able to glean rom extended wor& upon the senses o animals by the behavior method have contributed only in a ragmentary way to the general theory o human sense organ processes, nor have they suggested new points o experimental attac&! #he enormous number o experiments which we have carried out upon learning have li&ewise contributed little to human psychology! "t seems reasonably clear that some &ind o compromise must be a ected. either psychology must change its viewpoint so as to ta&e in acts o behavior, whether or not they have bearings upon the problems o %consciousness%/ or else behavior must stand alone as a wholly separate and independent science! *hould human psychologists ail to loo& with avor upon our overtures and re use to modi y their position, the behaviorists will be driven to using human beings as subjects and to employ methods o investigation which are exactly comparable to those now employed in the animal wor&!

0ny other hypothesis than that which admits the independent value o behavior material, regardless o any bearing such material may have upon consciousness, will inevitably orce us to the absurd position o attempting to construct the conscious content o the animal whose behavior we have been studying! )n this view, a ter having determined our animal%s ability to learn, the simplicity or complexity o its methods o learning, the e ect o past habit upon present response, the range o stimuli to which it ordinarily responds, the widened range to which it can respond under experimental conditions -- in more general terms, its various problems and its various ways o solving them -- we should still eel that the tas& is un inished and that the results are worthless, until we can interpret them by analogy in the light o consciousness! 0lthough we have solved our problem we eel uneasy and unrest ul because o our de inition o psychology. we eel orced to say something about the possible mental processes o our animal! -e say that, having no eyes, its stream o consciousness cannot contain brightness and color sensations as we &now them -- having no taste buds this stream can contain no sensations o sweet, sour, salt and bitter! 1ut on the other hand, since it does respond to thermal, tactual and organic stimuli, its conscious content must be made up largely o these sensations/ and we usually add, to protect ourselves against the reproach o being anthropomorphic, %i it has any consciousness%! *urely this doctrine which calls or an anological interpretation o all behavior data may be shown to be alse. the position that the standing o an observation upon behavior is determined by its ruit ulness in yielding results which are interpretable only in the narrow realm o 'really human( consciousness! #his emphasis upon analogy in psychology has led the behaviorist somewhat a ield! 2ot being willing to throw o the yo&e o consciousness he eels impelled to ma&e a place in the scheme o behavior where the rise o consciousness can be determined! #his point has been a shi ting one! 0 ew years ago certain animals were supposed to possess %associative memory%, while certain others were supposed to lac& it! )ne meets this search or the origin o consciousness under a good many disguises! *ome o our texts state that consciousness arises at the moment when re lex and instinctive activities ail properly to conserve the organism! 0 per ectly adjusted organism would be lac&ing in consciousness! )n the other hand whenever we ind the presence o di use activity which results in habit ormation, we are justi ied in assuming consciousness! " must con ess that these arguments had weight with me when " began the study o behavior! " ear that a good many o us are still viewing behavior problems with something li&e this in mind! 3ore than one student in behavior has attempted to rame criteria o the psychic -- to devise a set o objective, structural and unctional criteria which, when applied in the particular instance, will enable us to decide whether such and such responses are positively conscious, merely indicative o consciousness, or whether they are purely %physiological%! *uch problems as these can no longer satis y behavior men! "t would be better to give up the province altogether and admit ran&ly that the study o the behavior o animals has no justi ication, than to admit that our search is o such a %will o% the wisp% character! )ne can assume either the presence or the absence o consciousness anywhere in the phylogenetic scale without a ecting the problems o behavior by one jot or one tittle/ and without in luencing in any way the mode o experimental attac& upon them! )n the other hand, " cannot or one moment assume that the paramecium responds to light/ that the rat learns a problem more +uic&ly by wor&ing at the tas& ive times a day than once a day, or that the human child exhibits plateaux in his learning curves! #hese are +uestions which vitally concern behavior and which must be decided by direct observation under experimental conditions! #his attempt to reason by analogy rom human conscious processes to the conscious processes in animals, and vice versa: to ma&e consciousness, as the human being &nows it, the center o

re erence o all behavior, orces us into a situation similar to that which existed in biology in 4arwin%s time! #he whole 4arwinian movement was judged by the bearing it had upon the origin and development o the human race! 5xpeditions were underta&en to collect material which would establish the position that the rise o the human race was a per ectly natural phenomenon and not an act o special creation! 6ariations were care ully sought along with the evidence or the heaping up e ect and the weeding out e ect o selection/ or in these and the other 4arwinian mechanisms were to be ound actors su iciently complex to account or the origin and race di erentiation o man! #he wealth o material collected at this time was considered valuable largely in so ar as it tended to develop the concept o evolution in man! "t is strange that this situation should have remained the dominant one in biology or so many years! #he moment $oology undertoo& the experimental study o evolution and descent, the situation immediately changed! 3an ceased to be the center o re erence! " doubt i any experimental biologist today, unless actually engaged in the problem o race di erentiation in man, tries to interpret his indings in terms o human evolution, or ever re ers to it in his thin&ing! 7e gathers his data rom the study o many species o plants and animals and tries to wor& out the laws o inheritance in the particular type upon which he is conducting experiments! 2aturally, he ollows the progress o the wor& upon race di erentiation in man and in the descent o man, but he loo&s upon these as special topics, e+ual in importance with his own yet ones in which his interests will never be vitally engaged! "t is not air to say that all o his wor& is directed toward human evolution or that it must be interpreted in terms o human evolution! 7e does not have to dismiss certain o his acts on the inheritance o coat color in mice because, orsooth, they have little bearing upon the di erentiation o the genus homo into separate races, or upon the descent o the genus homo rom some more primitive stoc&! "n psychology we are still in that stage o development where we eel that we must select our material! -e have a general place o discard or processes, which we anathemati$e so ar as their value or psychology is concerned by saying, %this is a re lex%/ %that is a purely physiological act which has nothing to do with psychology%! -e are not interested 'as psychologists( in getting all o the processes o adjustment which the animal as a whole employs, and in inding how these various responses are associated, and how they all apart, thus wor&ing out a systematic scheme or the prediction and control o response in general! 8nless our observed acts are indicative o consciousness, we have no use or them, and unless our apparatus and method are designed to throw such acts into relie , they are thought o in just as disparaging a way! " shall always remember the remar& one distinguished psychologist made as he loo&ed over the color apparatus designed or testing the responses o animals to monochromatic light in the attic at 9ohns 7op&ins! "t was this. %0nd they call this psychology:% " do not wish unduly to critici$e psychology! "t has ailed signally, " believe, during the i tyodd years o its existence as an experimental discipline to ma&e its place in the world as an undisputed natural science! Psychology, as it is generally thought o , has something esoteric in its methods! " you ail to reproduce my indings, it is not due to some ault in your apparatus or in the control o your stimulus, but it is due to the act that your introspection is untrained!; #he attac& is made upon the observer and not upon the experimental setting! "n physics and in chemistry the attac& is made upon the experimental conditions! #he apparatus was not sensitive enough, impure chemicals were used, etc! "n these sciences a better techni+ue will give reproducible results! Psychology is otherwise! i you can%t observe <-= states o clearness in attention, your introspection is poor! i , on the other hand, a eeling

seems reasonably clear to you, your introspection is again aulty! >ou are seeing too much! Feelings are never clear! #he time seems to have come when psychology must discard all re erence to consciousness/ when it need no longer delude itsel into thin&ing that it is ma&ing mental states the object o observation! -e have become so enmeshed in speculative +uestions concerning the elements o mind, the nature o conscious content ' or example, imageless thought, attitudes, and 1ewusstseinslage, etc!( that ", as an experimental student, eel that something is wrong with our premises and the types o problems which develop rom them! #here is no longer any guarantee that we all mean the same thing when we use the terms now current in psychology! #a&e the case o sensation! 0 sensation is de ined in terms o its attributes! )ne psychologist will state with readiness that the attributes o a visual sensation are quality, extension, duration, and intensity. 0nother will add clearness. *till another that o order. " doubt i any one psychologist can draw up a set o statements describing what he means by sensation which will be agreed to by three other psychologists o di erent training! #urn or a moment to the +uestion o the number o isolable sensations! "s there an extremely large number o color sensations -- or only our, red, green, yellow and blue, 0gain, yellow, while psychologically simple, can be obtained by superimposing red and green spectral rays upon the same di using sur ace: " , on the other hand, we say that every just noticeable di erence in the spectrum is a simple sensation, and that every just noticeable increase in the white value o a given colour gives simple sensations, we are orced to admit that the number is so large and the conditions or obtaining them so complex that the concept o sensation is unusable, either or the purpose o analysis or that o synthesis! #itchener, who has ought the most valiant ight in this country or a psychology based upon introspection, eels that these di erences o opinion as to the number o sensations and their attributes/ as to whether there are relations 'in the sense o elements( and on the many others which seem to be undamental in every attempt at analysis, are per ectly natural in the present undeveloped state o psychology! -hile it is admitted that every growing science is ull o unanswered +uestions, surely only those who are wedded to the system as we now have it, who have ought and su ered or it, can con idently believe that there will ever be any greater uni ormity than there is now in the answers we have to such +uestions! " irmly believe that two hundred years rom now, unless the introspective method is discarded, psychology will still be divided on the +uestion as to whether auditory sensations have the +uality o %extension%, whether intensity is an attribute which can be applied to color, whether there is a di erence in %texture% between image and sensation and upon many hundreds o others o li&e character! #he condition in regard to other mental processes is just as chaotic! ?an image type be experimentally tested and veri ied, 0re recondite thought processes dependent mechanically upon imagery at all, 0re psychologists agreed upon what eeling is, )ne states that eelings are attitudes! 0nother inds them to be groups o organic sensations possessing a certain solidarity! *till another and larger group inds them to be new elements correlative with and ran&ing e+ually with sensations! 3y psychological +uarrel is not with the systematic and structural psychologist alone! #he last i teen years have seen the growth o what is called unctional psychology! #his type o psychology decries the use o elements in the static sense o the structuralists! "t throws emphasis upon the biological signi icance o conscious processes instead o upon the analysis o conscious states into introspectively isolable elements! " have done my best to understand the di erence between unctional psychology and structural psychology! "nstead o clarity, con usion grows upon me! #he terms sensation, perception, a ection, emotion, volition are

used as much by the unctionalist as by the structuralist! #he addition o the word %process% '%mental act as a whole%, and li&e terms are re+uently met( a ter each serves in some way to remove the corpse o content% and to leave % unction% in its stead! *urely i these concepts are elusive when loo&ed at rom a content standpoint, they are still more deceptive when viewed rom the angle o unction, and especially so when unction is obtained by the introspection method! "t is rather interesting that no unctional psychologist has care ully distinguished between %perception% 'and this is true o the other psychological terms as well( as employed by the systematist, and cperceptual process% as used in unctional psychology! "t seems illogical and hardly air to critici$e the psychology which the systematist gives us, and then to utili$e his terms without care ully showing the changes in meaning which are to be attached to them! " was greatly surprised some time ago when " opened Pillsbury%s boo& and saw psychology de ined as the %science o behavior%! 0 still more recent text states that psychology is the %science o mental behavior%! -hen " saw these promising statements " thought, now surely we will have texts based upon di erent lines! 0 ter a ew pages the science o behavior is dropped and one inds the conventional treatment o sensation, perception, imagery, etc!, along with certain shi ts in emphasis and additional acts which serve to give the author%s personal imprint! )ne o the di iculties in the way o a consistent unctional psychology is the parallelistic hypothesis! " the unctionalist attempts to express his ormulations in terms which ma&e mental states really appear to unction, to play some active role in the world o adjustment, he almost inevitably lapses into terms which are connotative o interaction! -hen taxed with this he replies that it is more convenient to do so and that he does it to avoid the circumlocution and clumsiness which are inherent in any thoroughgoing parallelism!< 0s a matter o act " believe the unctionalist actually thin&s in terms o interaction and resorts to parallelism only when orced to give expression to his views! " eel that behaviorism is the only consistent and logical unctionalism! "n it one avoids both the *cylla o parallelism and the ?harybdis o interaction! #hose time-honored relics o philosophical speculation need trouble the student o behavior as little as they trouble the student o physics! #he consideration o the mind-body problem a ects neither the type o problem selected nor the ormulation o the solution o that problem! " can state my position here no better than by saying that " should li&e to bring my students up in the same ignorance o such hypotheses as one inds among the students o other branches o science! #his leads me to the point where " should li&e to ma&e the argument constructive! " believe we can write a psychology, de ine it as Pillsbury, and never go bac& upon our de inition. never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, introspectively veri iable, imagery, and the li&e! " believe that we can do it in a ew years without running into the absurd terminology o 1eer, 1ethe, 6on 8ex&@ll, 2uel, and that o the so-called objective schools generally! "t can be done in terms o stimulus and response, in terms o habit ormation, habit integrations and the li&e! Furthermore, " believe that it is really worth while to ma&e this attempt now! #he psychology which " should attempt to build up would ta&e as a starting point, irst, the observable act that organisms, man and animal ali&e, do adjust themselves to their environment by means o hereditary and habit e+uipments! #hese adjustments may be very ade+uate or they may be so inade+uate that the organism barely maintains its existence/ secondly, that certain stimuli lead the organisms to ma&e the responses! "n a system o psychology completely wor&ed out, given the response the stimuli can be predicted/ given the stimuli the response can be predicted! *uch a set o statements is crass and raw in the extreme,

as all such generali$ations must be! >et they are hardly more raw and less reali$able than the ones which appear in the psychology texts o the day! " possibly might illustrate my point better by choosing an everyday problem which anyone is li&ely to meet in the course o his wor&! *ome time ago " was called upon to ma&e a study o certain species o birds! 8ntil " went to #ortugas " had never seen these birds alive! -hen " reached there " ound the animals doing certain things. some o the acts seemed to wor& peculiarly well in such an environment, while others seemed to be unsuited to their type o li e! " irst studied the responses o the group as a whole and later those o individuals! "n order to understand more thoroughly the relation between what was habit and what was hereditary in these responses, " too& the young birds and reared them! "n this way " was able to study the order o appearance o hereditary adjustments and their complexity, and later the beginnings o habit ormation! 3y e orts in determining the stimuli which called orth such adjustments were crude indeed! ?onse+uently my attempts to control behavior and to produce responses at will did not meet with much success! #heir ood and water, sex and other social relations, light and temperature conditions were all beyond control in a ield study! " did ind it possible to control their reactions in a measure by using the nest and egg 'or young( as stimuli! "t is not necessary in this paper to develop urther how such a study should be carried out and how wor& o this &ind must be supplemented by care ully controlled laboratory experiments! 7ad " been called upon to examine the natives o some o the 0ustralian tribes, " should have gone about my tas& in the same way! " should have ound the problem more di icult. the types o responses called orth by physical stimuli would have been more varied, and the number o e ective stimuli larger! " should have had to determine the social setting o their lives in a ar more care ul way! #hese savages would be more in luenced by the responses o each other than was the case with the birds! Furthermore, habits would have been more complex and the in luences o past habits upon the present responses would have appeared more clearly! Finally, i " had been called upon to wor& out the psychology o the educated 5uropean, my problem would have re+uired several li etimes! 1ut in the one " have at my disposal " should have ollowed the same general line o attac&! "n the main, my desire in all such wor& is to gain an accurate &nowledge o adjustments and the stimuli calling them orth! 3y inal reason or this is to learn general and particular methods by which " may control behavior! 3y goal is not %the description and explanation o states o consciousness as such%, nor that o obtaining such pro iciency in mental gymnastics that " can immediately lay hold o a state o consciousness and say, %this, as a whole, consists o gray sensation number <5A, ) such and such extent, occurring in conjunction with the sensation o cold o a certain intensity/ one o pressure o a certain intensity and extent,% and so on ad infinitum. " psychology would ollow the plan " suggest, the educator, the physician, the jurist and the business man could utili$e our data in a practical way, as soon as we are able, experimentally, to obtain them! #hose who have occasion to apply psychological principles practically would ind no need to complain as they do at the present time! 0s& any physician or jurist today whether scienti ic psychology plays a practical part in his daily routine and you will hear him deny that the psychology o the laboratories inds a place in his scheme o wor&! " thin& the criticism is extremely just! )ne o the earliest conditions which made me dissatis ied with psychology was the eeling that there was no realm o application or the principles which were being wor&ed out in content terms! -hat gives me hope that the behaviorist%s position is a de ensible one is the act that those branches o psychology which have already partially withdrawn rom the parent, experimental psychology, and which are conse+uently less dependent upon introspection are today in a most lourishing condition! 5xperimental pedagogy, the psychology o drugs, the psychology o advertising, legal psychology, the psychology o tests, and psychopathology are all vigorous growths! #hese are sometimes wrongly called %practical% or %applied% psychology!

*urely there was never a worse misnomer! "n the uture there may grow up vocational bureaus which really apply psychology! 0t present these ields are truly scienti ic and are in search o broad generali$ations which will lead to the control o human behavior! For example, we ind out by experimentation whether a series o stan$as may be ac+uired more readily i the whole is learned at once, or whether it is more advantageous to learn each stan$a separately and then pass to the succeeding! -e do not attempt to apply our indings! #he application o this principle is purely voluntary on the part o the teacher! "n the psychology o drugs we may show the e ect upon behavior o certain doses o ca eine! -e may reach the conclusion that ca eine has a good e ect upon the speed and accuracy o wor&! 1ut these are general principles! -e leave it to the individual as to whether the results o our tests shall be applied or not! 0gain, in legal testimony, we test the e ects o recency upon the reliability o a witness%s report! -e test the accuracy o the report with respect to moving objects, stationary objects, color, etc! "t depends upon the judicial machinery o the country to decide whether these acts are ever to be applied! For a %pure% psychologist to say that he is not interested in the +uestions raised in these divisions o the science because they relate indirectly to the application o psychology shows, in the irst place, that he ails to understand the scienti ic aim in such problems, and secondly, that he is not interested in a psychology which concerns itsel with human li e! #he only ault " have to ind with these disciplines is that much o their material is stated in terms o introspection, whereas a statement in terms o objective results would be ar more valuable! #here is no reason why appeal should ever be made to consciousness in any o them! )r why introspective data should ever be sought during the experimentation, or published in the results! "n experimental pedagogy especially one can see the desirability o &eeping all o the results on a purely objective plane! " this is done, wor& there on the human being will be comparable directly with the wor& upon animals! For example, at 7op&ins, 3r! 8lrich has obtained certain results upon the distribution o e ort in learning -- using rats as subjects! 7e is prepared to give comparative results upon the e ect o having an animal wor& at the problem once per day, three times per day, and ive times per day! -hether it is advisable to have the animal learn only one problem at a time or to learn three abreast! -e need to have similar experiments made upon man, but we care as little about his %conscious processes% during the conduct o the experiment as we care about such processes in the rats! " am more interested at the present moment in trying to show the necessity or maintaining uni ormity in experimental procedure and in the method o stating results in both human and animal wor&, than in developing any ideas " may have upon the changes which are certain to come in the scope o human psychology! Bet us consider or a moment the subject o the range o stimuli to which animals respond! " shall spea& irst o the wor& upon vision in animals! -e put our animal in a situation where he will respond 'or learn to respond( to one o two monochromatic lights! -e eed him at the one 'positive( and punish him at the other 'negative(! "n a short time the animal learns to go to the light at which he is ed! 0t this point +uestions arise which " may phrase in two ways. " may choose the psychological way and say %does the animal see these two lights as " do, i.e., as two distinct colors, or does he see them as two grays di ering in brightness, as does the totally color blind,% Phrased by the behaviorist, it would read as ollows. %"s my animal responding upon the basis o the di erence in intensity between the two stimuli, or upon the di erence in wavelengths,% 7e nowhere thin&s o the animal%s response in terms o his own experiences o colors and grays! 7e wishes to establish the act whether wave-length is a actor in that animal%s adjustment!C " so, what wave-lengths are e ective and what di erences in wave-length must be maintained in the di erent regions to a ord bases or di erential responses, " wave-length is not a actor in adjustment he wishes to &now what di erence in intensity will serve as a basis or response, and whether

that same di erence will su ice throughout the spectrum! Furthermore, he wishes to test whether the animal can respond to wavelengths which do not a ect the human eye! 7e is as much interested in comparing the rat%s spectrum with that o the chic& as in comparing it with man%s! #he point o view when the various sets o comparisons are made does not change in the slightest! 7owever we phrase the +uestion to ourselves, we ta&e our animal a ter the association has been ormed and then introduce certain control experiments which enable us to return answers to the +uestions just raised! 1ut there is just as &een a desire on our part to test man under the same conditions, and to state the results in both cases in common terms! #he man and the animal should be placed as nearly as possible under the same experimental conditions! "nstead o eeding or punishing the human subject, we should as& him to respond by setting a second apparatus until standard and control o ered no basis or a di erential response! 4o " lay mysel open to the charge here that " am using introspection, 3y reply is not at all/ that while " might very well eed my human subject or a right choice and punish him or a wrong one and thus produce the response i the subject could give it, there is no need o going to extremes even on the plat orm " suggest! 1ut be it understood that " am merely using this second method as an abridged behavior method!5 -e can go just as ar and reach just as dependable results by the longer method as by the abridged! "n many cases the direct and typically human method cannot be sa ely used! *uppose, or example, that " doubt the accuracy o the setting o the control instrument, in the above experiment, as " am very li&ely to do i " suspect a de ect in vision, "t is hopeless or me to get his introspective report! 7e will say. %#here is no di erence in sensation, both are reds, identical in +uality!% 1ut suppose " con ront him with the standard and the control and so arrange conditions that he is punished i he responds to the %control% but not with the standard! " interchange the positions o the standard and the control at will and orce him to attempt to di erentiate the one rom the other! " he can learn to ma&e the adjustment even a ter a large number o trials it is evident that the two stimuli do a ord the basis or a di erential response! *uch a method may sound nonsensical, but " irmly believe we will have to resort increasingly to just such method where we have reason to distrust the language method! #here is hardly a problem in human vision which is not also a problem in animal vision. " mention the limits o the spectrum, threshold values, absolute and relative, lic&er, #albot%s law, -eber%s law, ield o vision, the Pur&inje phenomenon, etc! 5very one is capable o being wor&ed out by behavior methods! 3any o them are being wor&ed out at the present time! " eel that all the wor& upon the senses can be consistently carried orward along the lines " have suggested here or vision! )ur results will, in the end, give an excellent picture o what each organ stands or in the way o unction! #he anatomist and the physiologist may ta&e our data and show, on the one hand, the structures which are responsible or these responses, and, on the other, the physics-chemical relations which are necessarily involved 'physiological chemistry o nerve and muscle( in these and other reactions! #he situation in regard to the study o memory is hardly di erent! 2early all o the memory methods in actual use in the laboratory today yield the type o results " am arguing or! 0 certain series o nonsense syllables or other material is presented to the human subject! -hat should receive the emphasis are the rapidity o the habit ormation, the errors, peculiarities in the orm o the curve, the persistence o the habit so ormed, the relation o such habits to those ormed when more complex material is used, etc! 2ow such results are ta&en down with

the subject%s introspection! #he experiments are made or the purpose o discussing the mental machineryD involved in learning, in recall, recollection and orgetting, and not or the purpose o see&ing the human being%s way o shaping his responses to meet the problems in the terribly complex environment into which he is thrown, nor or that o showing the similarities and di erences between man%s methods and those o other animals! #he situation is somewhat di erent when we come to a study o the more complex orms o behavior, such as imagination, judgment, reasoning, and conception! 0t present the only statements we have o them are in content terms!7 )ur minds have been so warped by the i ty-odd years which have been devoted to the study o states o consciousness that we can envisage these problems only in one way! -e should meet the situation s+uarely and say that we are not able to carry orward investigations along all o these lines by the behavior methods which are in use at the present time! "n extenuation " should li&e to call attention to the paragraph above where " made the point that the introspective method itsel has reached a cul de sac with respect to them! #he topics have become so threadbare rom much handling that they may well be put away or a time! 0s our methods become better developed it will be possible to underta&e investigations o more and more complex orms o behavior! Problems which are now laid aside will again become imperative, but they can be viewed as they arise rom a new angle and in more concrete settings! -ill there be le t over in psychology a world o pure psychics, to use >er&es% term, " con ess " do not &now! #he plans which " most avor or psychology lead practically to the ignoring o consciousness in the sense that that term is used by psychologists today! " have virtually denied that this realm o psychics is open to experimental investigation! " don%t wish to go urther into the problem at present because it leads inevitably over into metaphysics! " you will grant the behaviorist the right to use consciousness in the same way that other natural scientists employ it - that is, without ma&ing consciousness a special object o observation you have granted all that my thesis re+uires! "n concluding, " suppose " must con ess to a deep bias on these +uestions! " have devoted nearly twelve years to experimentation on animals! "t is natural that such a one should dri t into a theoretical position which is in harmony with his experimental wor&! Possibly " have put up a straw man and have been ighting that! #here may be no absolute lac& o harmony between the position outlined here and that o unctional psychology! " am inclined to thin&, however, that the two positions cannot be easily harmoni$ed! ?ertainly the position " advocate is wea& enough at present and can be attac&ed rom many standpoints! >et when all this is admitted " still eel that the considerations which " have urged should have a wide in luence upon the type o psychology which is to be developed in the uture! -hat we need to do is to start wor& upon psychology, ma&ing behavior, not consciousness, the objective point o our attac&! ?ertainly there are enough problems in the control o behavior to &eep us all wor&ing many li etimes without ever allowing us time to thin& o consciousness an sich. )nce launched in the underta&ing, we will ind ourselves in a short time as ar divorced rom an introspective psychology as the psychology o the present time is divorced rom aculty psychology! !ummary 1! 7uman psychology has ailed to ma&e good its claim as a natural science! 4ue to a mista&en notion that its ields o acts are conscious phenomena and that introspection is the only direct method o ascertaining these acts, it has enmeshed itsel in a series o speculative

+uestions which, while undamental to its present tenets, are not open to experimental treatment! "n the pursuit o answers to these +uestions, it has become urther and urther divorced rom contact with problems which vitally concern human interest! ;! Psychology, as the behaviorist views it, is a purely objective, experimental branch o natural science which needs introspection as little as do the sciences o chemistry and physics! "t is granted that the behavior o animals can be investigated without appeal to consciousness! 7ereto ore the viewpoint has been that such data have value only in so ar as they can be interpreted by analogy in terms o consciousness! #he position is ta&en here that the behavior o man and the behavior o animals must be considered on the same plane/ as being e+ually essential to a general understanding o behavior! "t can dispense with consciousness in a psychological sense! #he separate observation o %states o consciousness%, is, on this assumption, no more a part o the tas& o the psychologist than o the physicist! -e might call this the return to a non-re lective and nave use o consciousness! "n this sense consciousness may be said to be the instrument or tool with which all scientists wor&! -hether or not the tool is properly used at present by scientists is a problem or philosophy and not or psychology! <! From the viewpoint here suggested the acts on the behavior o amoebE have value in and or themselves without re erence to the behavior o man! "n biology studies on race di erentiation and inheritance in amFbE orm a separate division o study which must be evaluated in terms o the laws ound there! #he conclusions so reached may not hold in any other orm! Gegardless o the possible lac& o generality, such studies must be made i evolution as a whole is ever to be regulated and controlled! *imilarly the laws o behavior in amFbE, the range o responses, and the determination o e ective stimuli, o habit ormation, persistency o habits, inter erence and rein orcement o habits, must be determined and evaluated in and or themselves, regardless o their generality, or o their bearing upon such laws in other orms, i the phenomena o behavior are ever to be brought within the sphere o scienti ic control! C! #his suggested elimination o states o consciousness as proper objects o investigation in themselves will remove the barrier rom psychology which exists between it and the other sciences! #he indings o psychology become the unctional correlates o structure and lend themselves to explanation in physico-chemical terms! 5! Psychology as behavior will, a ter all, have to neglect but ew o the really essential problems with which psychology as an introspective science now concerns itsel ! "n all probability even this residue o problems may be phrased in such a way that re ined methods in behavior 'which certainly must come( will lead to their solution! Ge erences 1 #hat is, either directly upon the conscious state o the observer or indirectly upon the conscious state o the experimenter! ; "n this connection " call attention to the controversy now on between the adherents and the opposers o imageless thought! #he %types o reactors% 'sensory and motor( were also matters o bitter dispute! #he complication experiment was the source o another war o words concerning the accuracy o the opponents% introspection!

< 3y colleague, Pro essor 7! ?! -arren, by whose advice this article was o ered to the Review, believes that the parallelist can avoid the interaction terminology completely by exercising a little care! C 7e would have exactly the same attitude as i he were conducting an experiment to show whether an ant would crawl over a pencil laid across the trail or go round it! 5 " should pre er to loo& upon this abbreviated method, where the human subject is told in words, or example, to e+uate two stimuli/ or to state in words whether a given stimulus is present or absent, etc!, as the language method in behavior! "t in no way changes the status o experimentation! #he method becomes possible merely by virtue o the act that in the particular case the experimenter and his animal have systems o abbreviations or shorthand behavior signs 'language(, any one o which may stand or a habit belonging to the repertoire both o the experimenter and his subject! #o ma&e the data obtained by the language method virtually the whole o behavior -- or to attempt to mould all o the data obtained by other methods in terms o the one which has by all odds the most limited range -- is putting the cart be ore the horse with a vengeance! D #hey are o ten underta&en apparently or the purpose o ma&ing crude pictures o what must or must not go on in the nervous system! 7 #here is need o +uestioning more and more the existence o what psychology calls imagery! 8ntil a ew years ago " thought that centrally aroused visual sensations were as clear as those peripherally aroused! " had never accredited mysel with any other &ind! 7owever, closer examination leads me to deny in my own case the presence o imagery in the Haltonian sense! #he whole doctrine o the centrally aroused image is, " believe, at present, on a very insecure oundation! 0ngell as well as Fernald reach the conclusion that an objective determination o image type is impossible! "t would be an interesting con irmation o their experimental wor& i we should ind by degrees that we have been mista&en in building up this enormous structure o the centrally aroused sensation 'or image(! #he hypothesis that all o the so-called %higher thought% processes go on in terms o aint reinstatements o the original muscular act 'including speech here( and that these are integrated into systems which respond in serial order 'associative mechanisms( is, " believe, a tenable one! "t ma&es re lective processes as mechanical as habit! #he scheme o habit which 9ames long ago described - where each return or a erent current releases the next appropriate motor discharge - is as true or ,thought processes% as or overt muscular acts! Paucity o %imagery% would be the rule! "n other words, wherever there are thought processes there are aint contractions o the systems o musculature involved in the overt exercise o the customary act, and especially in the still iner systems o musculature involved in speech! " this is true, and " do not see how it can be gainsaid, imagery becomes a mental luxury 'even i it really exists( without any unctional signi icance whatever! " experimental procedure justi ies this hypothesis, we shall have at hand tangible phenomena which may be studied as behavior material! " should say that the day when we can study re lective processes by such methods is about as ar o as the day when we can tell by physicochemical methods the di erence in the structure and arrangement o molecules between living protoplasm and inorganic substances! #he solutions o both problems await the advent o methods and apparatus!

I0 ter writing this paper " heard the addresses o Pro essors #horndi&e and 0ngell, at the ?leveland meeting o the 0merican Psychological 0ssociation! " hope to have the opportunity to discuss them at another time! " must even here attempt to answer one +uestion raised by #horndi&e! #horndi&e I!!!J casts suspicions upon ideo-motor action! " by ideo-motor action he means just that and would not include sensori-motor action in his general denunciation, " heartily agree with him! " should throw out imagery altogether and attempt to show that practically all natural thought goes on in terms o sensori-motor processes in the larynx 'but not in terms o %imageless thought%( which rarely come to consciousness in any person who has not groped or imagery in the psychological laboratory! #his easily explains why so many o the welleducated laity &now nothing o imagery! " doubt i #horndi&e conceives o the matter in this way! 7e and -oodworth seem to have neglected the speech mechanisms! "t has been shown that improvement in habit comes unconsciously! #he irst we &now o it is when it is achieved -- when it becomes an object! " believe that %consciousness% has just as little to do with improvement in thought processes! *ince, according to my view, thought processes are really motor habits in the larynx, improvements, short cuts, changes, etc!, in these habits are brought about in the same way that such changes are produced in other motor habits! #his view carries with it the implication that there are no re lective processes 'centrally initiated processes(. #he individual is always examining ob"ects, in the one case objects in the now accepted sense, in the other their substitutes, vi$!, the movements in the speech musculature! From this it ollows that there is no theoretical limitation o the behavior method! #here remains, to be sure, the practical di iculty, which may never be overcome, o examining speech movements in the way that general bodily behavior may be examined!J