John Watson And Rosalie Rayner

Photo of Rosalie Rayner

Rosalie Rayner

Birth:

1898

Decease:

1935

Grooming Location(s):

BA, Vassar College (1919)

Primary Affiliation(s):

Johns Hopkins Academy (1919-1920)

Career Focus:

Behaviorism; behavioral psychology; emotional conditioning.

Biography

Rosalie Alberta Rayner was born September 25, 1898 in Baltimore to a well-established Maryland family. Both her begetter, Albert William Rayner, and her grandfather, William Solomon Rayner, were prominent Baltimore businessmen. Her uncle, Isidor Rayner, was a Maryland Senator who managed public inquiries into the sinking of the Titanic and served as Attorney General of Maryland from 1899 to 1903. Female parent Rebecca Selner Rayner and sister Evelyn completed the family unit. William Rayner, who established the family unit'southward fortune in railroads, mining and shipbuilding, was a strong supporter of Johns Hopkins Academy, contributing $ten,000 to an institution recognized then (equally at present) for its focus on original inquiry. Upon graduating from Vassar College in 1919, where she overlapped with Mary Comprehend Jones, Rosalie Rayner enrolled at Johns Hopkins for graduate studies. This conclusion would affect not merely her life, but the entire field of psychology.

At Johns Hopkins, Rayner became an assistant to John B. Watson—widely regarded as the "father" of behaviorism. By 1919, Watson had forcefully introduced the concept of behaviorism into the field of psychology, asserting that in order for psychology to become a truly objective and experimental branch of natural science information technology must ignore consciousness and focus on behavior. The goal of this new approach was to predict and command behavior, and information technology was thoroughly environmentalist in its ethos. Watson believed that very few emotional responses were hardwired at nativity, and that most were "built up" through conditioning.

Under this premise, Watson and Rayner embarked on the now infamous "Niggling Albert" experiments to prove that an individual's responses could be learned in much the same way that Pavlov had conditioned dogs to salivate upon hearing a bell in the decade prior. They placed a white rat adjacent to eleven-month-old "Albert B" while loudly striking a metal rod out of sight of the child. Even though he had previously been attracted to the rat, he soon displayed fear whenever information technology approached. Other furry stimuli, including a seal-skin coat, a domestic dog, a rabbit and a Santa Claus mask, were presented in similar manner, resulting in a similar fear response. According to Watson and Rayner, this proved that infants could indeed exist taught to fright previously neutral objects and that agreement this was key to controlling the development of human emotions. Though their research contained a number of flaws and has never been adequately replicated, Conditioned Emotional Reactions remains a archetype psychological experiment that has had considerable influence on the field.

The other result of this collaboration was an affair between Watson and Rayner that precipitated Watson's biting and very public divorce from his wife, Mary Ickes. As a result of this turn of events, Watson was asked to resign from Johns Hopkins and was forced to leave academia. Rayner, even so, stayed with him. She left the academy without completing her caste, marrying her former supervisor on Dec. 31, 1920. They moved to Connecticut and Watson went to piece of work for the prominent advert agency, J. Walter Thompson. Neither gave up the study of behavioral psychology.

During their first year of wedlock, Rayner and Watson collaborated on Studies in Infant Psychology, an commodity summarizing their written report of over 500 children at dissimilar stages of development. Given they had to go out Johns Hopkins before completing this inquiry, they referred to the paper as a "preliminary exposition of possibilities rather than as a catalogue of concrete usable results." Nonetheless, they concluded that behavior is always the result of some type of stimulus, and that if the relationship between the stimulus and elicited behavior could be recognized in time, more adequate forms of emotional expression could be taught. Further, they believed that experiences essentially fix personality by two years of historic period. They therefore advocated that parents accept responsibleness for the environs in which they raised their children and discipline by reason, not by emotions. This set the stage for an unsuccessful real-life experiment of their own, and a book —Psychological Care of Babe and Child—thatbecame the most popular child care guide of its time; it remained so until Benjamin Spock'southward Baby and Child Care was published in 1946.

Rayner and Watson had 2 sons, William in 1921 and James in 1924, whom they raised according to behaviorist principles. According to Watson, showing children affection promoted a parental zipper detrimental to their growing independence, then William and James were non kissed or coddled at home. Instead, they were treated like small adults, encouraged to enjoy their ain company, pursue special hobbies, and sent from home at an early age to camps and weekend clubs. According to James Watson, his mother kept notes on his and his brother's upbringing, suggesting a careful attending to methodological experimental principles. She took special intendance to avoid engendering a strong maternal bond.

Psychological Care of Infant and Child was a "how-to" volume encouraging mothers to arroyo kid-rearing with scientific principles in mind. In a affiliate titled Too Much Mother Beloved, the maternal bond is addressed:

When you lot are tempted to pet your child remember that mother beloved is a unsafe instrument. An instrument which may inflict a never-healing wound, a wound which may brand infancy unhappy, adolescence a nightmare, an instrument which may wreck your adult son or daughter'south vocational future and their chances for marital happiness.

Rayner's outset sole-authored article, I am the Mother of a Behaviorist'south Sons, was published in 1930. Given that her experimental notes were never published, and every other commodity her proper name appears on was co-authored with Watson, this is the simply available access to her own "voice." Did she truly believe that her love was a "unsafe instrument?" She peppered the article with numerous anecdotes that are both candid and direct. Though she was "unanimously in favor of breaking the mother attachment every bit early as possible," she displayed low-cal-heartedness, emotional warmth and an obvious amore for her sons. About behaviorism as a kid-rearing tool, she came beyond as sorely conflicted:

In some respects I bow to the great wisdom in the science of behaviorism, and in others I am rebellious…I cannot restrain my affection for the children completely; I secretly wish that on the score of their affections they will be a fiddling weak when they grow up, that they will savour a little coddling…that they will take a tear in their optics for the verse and drama of life and a throb for all romance.

Still, she persevered, believing she was raising well-adjusted children open to life and unafraid of their environment, with a "self-confidence which will carry them through many struggles." She did non live long plenty to consummate this experimental journey. On June xviii, 1935, but five years afterward her commodity was published, Rayner died in Norwalk Hospital, Connecticut, having contracted dysentery from eating tainted fruit. Her husband never remarried. Her sons both attempted suicide afterward in life, William successfully. According to James:

I honestly believe the principles for which Dad stood as a behaviorist eroded both Bill's and my ability to deal effectively with human emotion…and it tended to undermine self-esteem in after life, ultimately contributing to Pecker's death and to my ain crisis. Tragically, that'due south the antithesis of what Dad expected from practicing these philosophies.

Although Psychological Care of Babe and Kid sold thousands of copies, its strict parental communication was also anachronistic and severe to last. Behaviorism lost its hold on the public consciousness equally the 1960s arrived, but it prepare the foundation for 1 of the most widely used mental wellness support practices of today—behavior modification therapy. Equally Watson'southward steadfast partner in love and inquiry, Rayner made a very sizable contribution to the history of psychology.

by Corinne Smirle (2013)

To cite this article, see Credits

Selected Works

By Rosalie Rayner

Watson, J. B. & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology , iii, 1-fourteen.

Watson, J. B. & Watson, R. R. (1921). Studies in infant psychology. The Scientific Monthly, 13(6), 493-515.

Watson, J. B. & Watson, R. R. (1928). Psychological Care of Infant and Child. New York: Norton.

Watson, R. R. (1930). I am the female parent of a behaviorist'south sons. Parent's Magazine & Better Family Living, five(12), 16-18, 67-68.

About Rosalie Rayner

Boakes, R. (1984). From Darwin to behaviourism: Psychology and the minds of animals. New York: Cambridge Academy Press.

Buckley, Grand.Westward. (1989). Mechanical man: John Broadus Watson and the beginnings of behaviorism. New York: Guilford Press.

Duke, C., Fried, S., Pliley, W., & Walker, D. (1989). Contributions to the history of psychology: LIX. Rosalie Rayner Watson: The female parent of a behaviorist's sons. Psychological Reports, 65, 163-169.

Hannush, Chiliad.J. (1987). John. B. Watson remembered: An interview with James B. Watson. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 23, 137-151.

Hannush, M.J. (2002). Condign good parents: An existential journey. Albany, NY: State Academy of New York Printing.

Harris, B. (2014). Rosalie Rayner, feminist? Revista de Historia de la Psicología, 34, ane, 61-70.

Rosalie Rayner Watson [Obituary]. (1935, June 19). The New York Times. Copy in possession of the author.

Stimpert, J. (2001). Hopkins history: John Broadus Watson: The father of behavioral psychology.The Gazette Online: The newspaper of the Johns Hopkins University, 30(eight).

Thorne, B.M. (1998). Contributions to the history of psychology: CXI. Factual errors and Watson'southward autobiographical essay. Psychological Reports, 82, 1147-1152.

Thorne, B.M., & Watson, J.B. (1999). When was Rosalie Rayner born? Psychological Reports, 85, 269-270.

Todd, J.T., & Morris, Due east.K. (Eds.). (1994). Modern perspectives on John B. Watson and classical behaviorism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.