In 1919 John B. Watson published Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviourist. In this book, along with his other writings, Watson proposed that the study of Psychology should not be considered the study of the mind, but rather the study of behaviour. He believed that all human behaviours can be explained by the external environment and that the attempt to understand the conscious and unconscious states of the mind that occur between environmental factors and response behaviours was an irrelevant distraction.

 

The early work in behaviourism focused on classical conditioning: the eliciting of reflex reactions by neutral stimuli through repeated pairing with salient stimuli. The most famous example of classical conditioning is Ivan Pavlov’s work with dogs, trained to salivate at the sound of a bell, which they had learned to associate with the arrival of food.