The Contribution and Limitation of Watson's Behaviorism

1, taking behavior as the research object of psychology, eliminates the subjectivity of traditional psychology and adheres to the objective principle of general science.

2. The objective observation method has been developed, which makes psychology better and better in methods. Watson's viewpoint of predicting and controlling behavior has promoted the development of applied psychology, and his viewpoint of environmental determinism has influenced American psychology for 30 years.

Second, shortcomings.

The biggest defect of Watson's behavioral psychology is that he excludes the intermediary processes such as consciousness and cognition from the scope of psychological research, making people's psychological process an unknowable "black box". This fatal mistake made some of his later followers deviant; It also makes him even paler when computer science and artificial intelligence science put forward requirements and challenges to psychology.