Introspection vs Behaviourism free essay sample

Watson claimed there is no place in psychology for the ‘mind’; he felt they should take the ‘psych’ out of psychology. Does it not follow that he was suggesting that it doesn’t exist, therefore why strive to uncover its mysteries or hypothesize on its nature? How is that different than saying that if you can’t imagine it, it must not exist? Think of the first time an isolated tribe in Amazonia perceived an airplane flying overhead. Assume that they could distinguish its nature as an unnatural object zooming through their skies.Before that time they could not fathom how such a thing could exist in their reality, yet here it was directly observable; it was just a matter of time. Again I agree with MacDougall; why should Psychology be so concerned with being strictly scientific as defined by the prevailing paradigm? Why do we even attempt constrain the study of psychology to such a strict and, dare I say, dogmatic approach? Human motivations, emotions, thoughts and behaviours are messy, unpredictable and every human being is a unique bit of mystery. We will write a custom essay sample on Introspection vs Behaviourism or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Maybe it shouldn’t be a question of ‘can the experiment be replicated in the laboratory’ because we don’t live in labs. I believe a more pragmatic approach will eventually answer many of the questions psychology struggles with and that’s also what I think MacDougall was advocating in his argument. Watson, as a leading behaviourist of the day advocated for complete rejection of mental phenomena and the concept of consciousness had no place in science b/c mental phenomena cannot be directly observable. So Watson was suggesting that psychology can only be defined as a science if it denies the mind, whaa?!I suggest advocates for this position would instead be more comfortable if they left â€Å"Psych†ology to its rightful place as the study of the human mind, and therefore human nature, and instead form a science called Behaviourology. But really, what is the point of experimenting and making observations if you don’t further attempt to det ermine WHY the observed behaviour occurs? For example: take a child that was physically abused every day of his life and then observe that he grows into an adult who physically abuses his children. Wow how fascinating, not. I believe that this only becomes a question for/of psychology when the observer attempts to determine WHY these patterns of behavior exist among humans and even more importantly how can we change the way the abusers mind works, i. e. the motivations, thoughts and emotions that go along with the abusive behavior. After we observe a heinous or deplorable act we question the perpetrators motives and intentions by asking questions like â€Å"have you no conscience?! † Conscience is defined as the awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to ones conduct together with the urge [motivation] to prefer right over wrong.We say things like â€Å"let your conscience be your guide. .. . † This suggests that we as individuals make choices that result in our behaviours, rather than being at the complete mercy of the laws of physics and chemistry. I return to the abused/abuser scenario; if a certain stimulus (physical abuse) creates abusive tendencies, as observed in correlational studies, why don’t all abused children grow up to be abusers themselves? This suggests that there exists an element of introspection that moderates the elicited behavior.Therefore I don’t believe Watsonian Behaviourism addresses the question of why not all adult survivors of child abuse then abuse their own children. As I struggle with this discussion question I realize I’m a victim of the present Zeitgeist because I can’t move past the question of what’s the point of Behaviourism as defined by Watson, if it doesn’t answer the subjective and qualitative questions of human nature. Simply observing an objective phenomenon that results from objec tive stimuli without questioning what mental phenomena may be associated with it seems rather pointless.