Why Women Fainted Fainting and “fainting rooms” were common in the 18 th and 19 th century because of the tight lacing of corsets required to be fashionable. Corsets restricted breathing, compressed internal organs and put pressure on bones in the rib cage. Constriction of women’s ability to move freely and modification of their bodies in the name of beauty is analogous to foot-binding in Asian culture. Reform movements gave women experience organizing that was useful in suffrage and temperance movements.
Transcript
Why Women Fainted
Fainting and “fainting rooms” were common in the 18th and 19th century because of the tight lacing of corsets required to be fashionable.
Corsets restricted breathing, compressed internal organs and put pressure on bones in the rib cage. Constriction of women’s ability to move freely and
modification of their bodies in the name of beauty is analogous to foot-binding in Asian culture.
Reform movements gave women experience organizing that was useful in suffrage and temperance movements.
Earlier Bustles were Bigger
British fashion 1880, busts were padded too
French fashion 1765used Pannier side hoops underneath
1890’s Styles
Grey cotton bustle stuffed with horsehair. These soft quilted bustles became popular in the early 1890's when the old style jutting out 1880's bustle went out of fashion.
In the 1860s, corsets were stiffened with whalebone or steel. By the 1880s, the dress reform movement was campaigning against the pain and damage to internal organs and bones caused by tight lacing.
Flapper Styles (1920s)
Flapper styles were easier to sew and thus accessible to middle class women.
CHAPTER 12 – PAVLOV AND WATSON
Dr. Nancy Alvarado
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) Pavlov was born in Ryazan, Russia, into a
“pure Russian” religious family, the oldest of 11 kids. He abandoned the idea of becoming a priest
after reading Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” and Sechenov’s “Reflexes of the Brain.”
Pavlov left seminary to attend the University of St. Petersburg where Sechenev was professor of physiology.
Sechenev had demonstrated that a higher brain center could inhibit activity of a lower one using frog reflexes.
Pavlov’s Early Research
Pavlov graduated in 1875 and won a medal for his research on pancreatic nerves.
In 1878, Botkin invited him to direct a new lab in experimental medicine, where he earned an M.D. Botkin thought stress caused most diseases as the
central nervous system failed to adapt to the demands of life.
He worked in Germany, then returned to Russia and had trouble finding a job, starving with no heat, but continuing his research in his apt. In 1891, hired at St. Petersburg Military Academy.
Pavlov’s Conditioning Experiments In 1895, Pavlov was hired at Univ. of St.
Petersburg and he earned a Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work studying digestive processes.
Pavlov’s aim was to study living systems. His dogs went through the same surgical procedures as people, including sepsis and anesthesia procedures. He developed a surgically created miniature stomach
pouch to study digestion uncontaminated by food. He discovered that a gastric reflex occurred even
without food present elicited by a “psychical reflex.”
Psychical Reflexes
Pavlov’s Nobel speech was not about digestion but about psychical reflexes occurring without food. Ovsianitskii’s dissertation was about salivation to a
variety of stimuli, including sight of food or a bowl or the footsteps of the lab personnel who fed the dogs.
Pavlov designed a “Tower of Silence” to isolate dogs from all other stimuli except the ones being studied (buzzers, metronomes, tactical and thermal stimuli).
Generalization of the CS was also demonstrated, and secondary conditioning (pairing first CS with a 2nd one).
More Conditioning Phenomena Pavlov’s co-worker Tolochinov discovered
extinction via presentation of the CS without food. He also found that dogs could be trained to
discriminate between two stimuli (CS+ signalling food and CS- signalling absence of food).
Pavlov believed these produced excitation or inhibition in the cortex.
When a CS- occurred many times, dogs went to sleep.
Dogs could discriminate between accelerating and decelerating metronome speeds.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov
Research on Neuroses
Dogs trained to discriminate ellipses and circles with a ratio of 8/7 showed acute neuroses when the ratio was changed to 9/8. Neuroses included disrupted behavior, biting,
barking. Dogs nearly drowned in a lab flood showed
changes in behavior after rescue, including easily disrupted CRs, sensitivity to stimuli, especially water.
A simultaneous presentation of food and shock induced neurosis – this was reduced by sodium bromide given to inhibit excitation.
Pavlov on Individual Differences Pavlov found 4 types of dogs with large individual
Choleric – unstable and impetuous, learned easily but little discrimination, easily neurotic. Excitation excessive.
Phlegmatic – inert and slothful, showed poor learning, resistant to experimental neurosis. Inhibition dominant.
Individual Differences (cont.) The sanguine and melancholy types seemed
most common but all dogs were different. Pavlov believed the types were genetically
determined but he studied the influence of environment, raising dogs in different conditions: Total freedom with varied contacts with dogs &
humans. Isolation in individual cages with little contact.
At 3 months, isolated dogs were more frightened of everything, but habituated quickly to isolation.
Pavlov’s Later Life
Pavlov was initially hostile to the Bolsheviks who took power in 1917 because they took his Nobel Prize award money.
Lenin approved of his research and gave the Pavlovs special treatment & supported his research. During famine Pavlov rejected the rations because they
did not include his lab and dogs, growing a garden. Pavlov visited the US twice, including Yerkes
primate lab at Yale. Later Pavlov changed his views and supported the govt, especially against Germany.
Pavlov’s Diverse Research
Beyond his conditioning experiments, Pavlov did a wide range of comparative studies, including studies of problem solving using chimpanzees. He visited Kohler but rejected his idea of insight
learning; more sympathetic to Thorndike’s trial & error.
He believed his chimps gained “practical experience” while roaming freely later applied to problem solving.
He was devoted to science, punctual to a fault, a severe taskmaster, shouting insults at his workers. “Happiness is nothing – the dogs mean all.” he said.
Conditioning Before Pavlov
The phenomenon of conditioning was known before Pavlov studied it systematically: Bousfeld describes Lope de Vega’s play “The Chaplain
of the Virgin” in which a young monk conditions cats to leave him alone while eating using a cough as a CS.
Several people in the 1800s noted that thinking about food is enough to produce saliva without food present.
Twitmyer (under Witmer, 1902) used a bell paired with a knee-jerk reflex in humans – his findings went unnoticed and he didn’t pursue it (Pavlov was first).
John Broadus Watson (1878-1958) Watson is most closely associated with the
term Behaviorism – he caused a revolution in psychology. His goal was to replace concerns about the
structure and functions of consciousness with the study of behavior.
Behaviorism involves observation, prediction and control of behavior in humans and animals.
Pavlov’s research was a foundation for Watson’s Behaviorist approach.
Watson’s Early Life
Watson’s father was a violent man of unsavory and notorious reputation, his mother was pious and strict. He was a poor student initially, constantly in trouble. He begged admission to Furman College with the
intention of studying for the Baptist ministry. He falsely downgraded himself in his autobiography.
Professor Gordon B. Moore, on sabbatical from Univ of Chicago, introduced him to works by Wundt, Titchener, James and the Chicago functionalists. He taught for a year then applied to grad school there.
John B. Watson
“He was an honors student and many women saw him as a handsome and attractive young man.”p. 459
A handsome and attractive young rat.
Watson at University of Chicago Watson was most inspired by Angell and
Donaldson, working in the animal lab under their guidance to train rats in labyrinths (mazes). He studied tropisms (unlearned orienting responses)
with Jacques Loeb, later important as UCS’s. In 1902 he had a serious psychological
breakdown, overwhelmed with depression & anxiety.
He recovered and completed his dissertation at age 25, then was offered a job at Univ of Chicago teaching a class in Titchener’s experimental methods
Watson’s Work with Rats
Watson’s work with animals undermined the structuralist approach because they could not talk to describe their introspections – they only behaved. He decided he could learn everything the
structuralists could just by observing behavior. Angell was not encouraging of this approach.
Watson designed his own apparatus, originally using the “Hampton Court” maze designed by Willard S. Small, testing vision and smell cues. Kinesthetic or muscle sensations mattered most.
Antivivisectionist Response
Vivisection is defined as the act of operating on living animals (especially in scientific research). Antivivisectionists were the 1906 equivalent of
PETA. Because Watson did things like gradually
depriving rats of their senses, he was branded a torturer. Angell defended Watson, pointing out that the expts
were done under asepsis and with anesthesia, that the rats had recovered and were subsequently happy.
Opposition to animal research continues today.
Watson was not “Ratomorphic” Watson studied noddy and sooty terns on the
Dry Tortugas Islands 75 miles West of Key West. Parent birds signal to their young when returning
to the nest – young gulls peck the parent’s bill to get fed.
Nesting birds accept fake painted wooden eggs. Birds can return from locations
miles away in all directions. He observed imprinting on him-
self in 3 day old sooty terns,anticipating Lorenz.
Watson at Johns Hopkins University Watson left U. of Chicago reluctantly when offered
the chair of psychology at Johns Hopkins. The Dept head, Baldwin, was caught in a scandal
involving prostitution and fled to Mexico. Watson was left with no supervision and took over as
editor of the Psychological Review, where he published his own work.
He became increasingly convinced that psychology should become the science of behavior – he published his behaviorist manifesto in 1913.
Watson’s Behaviorist Manifesto With “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,”
Watson intended to force psychologists to choose between his approach and older psychology. Psychology had failed to develop as a science. Concentration on structure or function of an
undefinable consciousness was the cause. Introspection was a faulty and defective method
which must be replaced with objective experimental methods.
Psychology is no longer the study of the mind but of behavior – its goal is to observe, predict & control it.
Action and Reaction
Other psychologists shared his dissatisfaction with structuralist and functionalist approaches. Knight Dunlap had published “The case against
introspection” in Psychological Review one year earlier.
Watson’s personality was more dynamic than earlier critics who had made similar proposals earlier.
Titchener defended introspective studies, calling Watson too impatient and his Behaviorism crude. This may have stimulated support for Behaviorism.
Behaviorism in Action
Yerkes published a paper presenting Pavlov’s work to American psychologists. Karl Lashley worked with Watson on
comparative studies. In 1913, to explain how thought could be
observed, Watson defined thinking as subvocal speech (a behavior) involving recordable muscle contractions.
In his APA address, he suggested a new method for studying conditioned reflexes.
Watson’s Research with Children At Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore, Watson
began studying reflexes and emotions in infants. He identified reflexes such as sneezing, hiccuping,
yawning, coughing, grasping, swallowing and sucking. He identified emotions of fear, rage and love, evoked
by a restricted set of stimuli and characterized by specific responses in a reliable and predictable way.
Many stimuli said to evoke fear reactions were ineffective (no fear of dark, snakes, rats, dogs). He suggested that fears arise through conditioning.
Albert B.
Watson and coworker Rosalie Rayner selected Albert B. because of his stolid (calm) temperament. They conditioned a strong fear response by striking
a metal bar behind his head while he played with a rat.
5 days later, he generalized his fear response to a rabbit, dog, cotton, and a sealskin coat.
He was removed prematurely from the expt. A number of researchers tried to replicate these
findings without success – details were distorted. Watson used his findings to attack Freud.
Watson Leaves Psychology
Watson had an affair with Rosalie Rayner, writing her love letters. His wife found these, then her brother used them to blackmail Watson & Rayner. When they refused, the brother gave the letters to
the president of Johns Hopkins, which demanded Watson’s resignation.
The publicity made it impossible for Watson to find another position in academia.
Watson married Rayner after a public divorce trial. Watson joined the J. Walter Thompson ad
agency.
Watson in Advertising
Starting in the field, Watson acquired an appreciation for consumer behavior.
He became an adept ad man: He was the first to use careful demographic surveys
of target populations of consumers, with free samples for filling in questionnaires.
He stressed style over substance and used testimonials.
He tried to manipulate consumer motives and emotions.
He popularized the “coffee break.” He used radio effectively.
Overcoming Fears – Peter B.
Watson continued with psychology as a “pop psychologist.”
He worked with Mary Cover Jones to conduct research on overcoming children’s fears. After hearing Watson lecture on Albert B, Jones
developed the idea of eliminating “homegrown” fears using conditioning.
While Peter was eating, a rabbit was brought progressively closer until it could be placed on his table without arousing fear – now called desensitization.
Watson on Nature vs Nurture Watson is usually considered an arch-
environmentalist but his early views on instincts were more moderate. He gradually became more extreme in his view of
the contribution of habit. How humans form habits became central to his
ideas. He said: “Give me a dozen healthy infants…and
I’ll guarantee to [train one] to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist…” Watson’s sons with Rayner found life difficult.
Watson’s Environmentalism
Why did he switch to such a strongly environmentalist position? Instincts are difficult to observe in humans. Too large an array of behaviors had been described
as instinctive by others, in circular ways (why war?). Animal research questioned whether some instincts
in animals were really instinctive (Kuo raised kittens with rats, showing they did not attack each other).
The process of habit formation can be studied whereas instincts are innate (part of genetics) and cannot be.
Behaviorism and Child Care
In 1928, Watson & Rayner published a book on child care which became a bestseller. It presents a harsh Behaviorist approach to
child raising, with love and affection minimized.
Even Watson and Rayner didn’t follow this approach with their own children.
A competing view on raising children was presented by Benjamin Spoke in “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1943).” which sold 25 million copies.
Watson’s Later Life
Hothersall wonders what Watson’s contribution to psychology might have been if he had had a full academic career.
Despite his ridiculous and extreme statements, he did succeed in initiating a revolution in psychological thought -- Behaviorism.
His early work with animals laid a strong methodological foundation for later researchers, as did his early work on learned fear (Albert B.).
