Behaviorism is a theory in psychology in which behaviors are believed to be conditioned, trained, changed and can be measured. It was established in 1913 by John B. Watson with his publication of “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It”. Behaviorists believe that out behaviors are being shaped through our responses to different environment stimuli. Behaviorism focuses more on the observable responses that can be objectively and scientifically measured rather than the internal events, such as thinking and emotion.

The history of behaviorism started when Pavlov released his results in 1897 about his experiments on conditioning after originally studying digestion on dogs. Then, Watson formally launches the behavioral school of psychology which is also known as classical conditioning. As part of scientists’ pursuit of better understanding with behaviorism, Watson and Rayner perform an experiment of conditioning a patient to fear a white rat in 1920. Skinner then wrote “The Behavior of Organisms” that introduced operant conditioning then in 1943, Clark Hull published “Principles of Behavior”. B.F. Skinner described a utopian society based upon the principles of behaviorism in his book “Walden Two” that has been published in 1948 and a journal entitled “Experimental Analysis in Behavior” started to circulate during 1958. In 1963, Bandura published a book that combines the cognitive and behavioral principles entitled “Social Learning Theory and Personality Development”. Skinner once again published a book about behaviorism entitled “Beyond Freedom and Dignity” in which he argued that a person’s free will is just an illusion. Watson, Skinner and Pavlov’s efforts were the main influences to the study of behaviorism.

Further studying behaviorism paved way to in depth understanding intopeople’s way of thinking and it helped in understanding as to why people do things involuntarily despite of lack in environmental stimulus. Behaviorism’s contributions to different psychological treatments are so significant that it was considered as one of the pillars of pharmacological therapy.