Write a 6 page essay on Psychology/Are psychologists any better now at looking at what people do and say and inferring what people think than they were one hundred years ago.According to Broad, “…

Write a 6 page essay on Psychology/Are psychologists any better now at looking at what people do and say and inferring what people think than they were one hundred years ago.

According to Broad, “…behaviorism in particular….are instances of the numerous class of theories which are so preposterously silly that only very learned men could have thought of them.” (Broad, 1923, p 17)

Behaviorism emerged when psychology was beginning to be acknowledged as a science. The scientific validity of experiments to provide a hypothesis was evolving during this time and this experimental-verification approach was also applied to phenomena that involved human aspects.

Behaviorism as a definite theory originated with a paper published in 1913 by John B. Watson titled “Psychology as the behaviorist views It” (Watson, 1913) and this document has been dubbed the behaviorist manifesto because it sets out the underlying principles that fashion this theory.

The behaviorist theory aims to study and predict human behavior, and thereby devise means to control behavior. However the behaviorist theory aims to derive this theory on the basis of externally observed responses and does not make any provisions for internal interpretation, rather man’s behavior is only one aspect of the behaviorist’s study of the total scheme of things,. (Watson, 1913, p 158.). Behaviorism states that psychology in order to be eligible to be considered a science, can concern itself only with externally observable phenomena which can also be experimentally proven to be scientifically valid, therefore internal consciousness cannot form a part of behaviorism because it cannot be externally observed. Behaviorism therefore focused on the study of external behavior and Watson stated that it must develop methods for publicly observing behavior.

Watson’s theory met with resistance from psychologists of the time, because it raised a basic conflict of whether psychology could be considered a science. Watson’s theory rejected then