A Brief History of Behavioral Psychology

Father of "Classical Conditioning." His contributions in behaviorism stemmed from his research on physiology of digestion.

Father of "Behaviorism." His contributions in behaviorism were influenced by the work of Pavlov.

Father of "Radical Behaviorism." His contributions in behaviorism were influenced by the work of Pavlov, Watson, Thorndike, Peirce, and James.

Classical Conditioning was born out of Pavlov's 1906 publications. This school of thought analyzes respondent behavior.

Methodological Behaviorism was born out of Watson's 1913 publication "Psychology As The Behaviorist Views It." This school of thought analyzes behavior strictly through public events.

The Little Albert Experiment was a demonstration of the effectiveness of classical conditioning in a human participant. Fear was conditioned into a child by pairing a rat (neutral) with loud aversive sounds (unconditioned).

The translation of Pavlov's book into English meant that over 20+ years of his work was not accessible in the United States.

Radical Behaviorism was born out of Skinner's 1938 publication "The Behavior of Organisms." This school of thought analyzes respondent and operant behavior through both public and private events.

The Skinner Box study was a demonstration of the effectiveness of operant conditioning. The study involved conditioning behaviors of a rat by use of reinforcement and punishment.

Applied Behavior Analysis was born out of Lovaas' work on early intensive behavior intervention, discrete trial training, etc. Much of what the general public understands about behaviorism is overgeneralized into ABA and the work of Lovaas.