In this paper, it is tried to explain the first force (Behaviourism) and the third force (Humanistic Psychology) and, compare differences and similarities between them. Each school of thought in psychology was sometimes born as a reaction to the previous ones or a new version of them. Although behaviourism is very popular, reactions to it and alternative thoughts are also strong in modern psychology. The debate between structuralism and functionalism was only the prelude to other fundamental controversies in psychology. In the early 1900s, another major school of thought appeared that dramatically altered the course of psychology.
Founded by John B. Watson (1878-1958), behaviourism is a theoretical orientation based on the premise that scientific psychology should study only observable behaviour. It is important to understand what a radical change this definition represents. Watson (1913) was proposing that psychologists abandon the study of consciousness altogether and focus exclusively on behaviours that they could observe directly. In essence, he was redefining what scientific psychology should be about. The shift in direction of psychology was caused by his belief that the power of the scientific method rested on the idea of verifiability.
In principle, scientific claims can always be verified (or disproved) by anyone who is able and willing to make the required observations. However, this power depends on studying things that can be observed objectively. Otherwise, the advantage of using the scientific approach -replacing vague speculations and personal opinion with reliable, exact knowledge – is lost. For Watson mental processes were not a proper subject for scientific study because they are ultimately private events. After all, no one can see or touch another’s thoughts.
Consequently, if psychology were to be a science, it would have to give up consciousness as its subject matter and become instead the science of behaviour. Behaviour refers to any overt (observable) response or activity by an organism. Watson asserted that psychologists could study anything that people do or say -shopping, playing, chess, eating- but they couldn’t study scientifically the thoughts, wishes, and feelings that might accompany these observable behaviours. Watson’s radical reorientation of psychology did not end with his redefinition of its subject matter.
After Watson, behaviourists eventually came to view psychology’s mission as an attempt to relate overt behaviours (responses) to observable events in the environment (stimuli). A stimulus is any detectable input from the environment. Behaviourism’s stimulus-response approach contributed to the rise of animal research in psychology. Having deleted consciousness from their scope of concern, behaviourists no longer needed to study human subjects who could report on their mental processes. Many psychologists thought that animals would make better research subjects anyway.
One key reason was that experimental research is often more productive if experimenters can exert considerable control over their subjects. Otherwise, too many complicating factors enter into the picture and contaminate the experiment. Obviously, a researcher can exert much more control over a laboratory rat or pigeon than over a human subject, who arrives at a lab with years of uncontrolled experience who will probably insist on going home at night. Thus, the discipline that had begun its life a few decades earlier as the study of the mind now found itself heavily involved in the study of simple responses made by laboratory animals.