The Battle of Behaviorism: An Exposition and an Exposure

The book is a published debate between John B. Watson and William McDougall, in which Watson defends behaviorism as the only scientific psychology and McDougall attacks it as an inadequate account of human nature. Watson argues that psychology must confine itself to observable stimulus-response relations and abandon consciousness, instinct, and purpose as explanatory concepts. McDougall counters that behaviorism cannot explain goal-seeking conduct, the inheritance of mental characteristics, or the social nature of mind. The volume is structured in three parts: McDougall's systematic critique of behaviorism, Watson's reply, and a brief rejoinder. McDougall's essay is the more substantial theoretical contribution, while Watson's response restates the behaviorist program in its most uncompromising form.

William McDougall (1871–1938) was a British-American psychologist and the leading proponent of hormic psychology, which held that behavior is driven by purpose and instinct. He was the author of An Introduction to Social Psychology (1908), in which he proposed a list of innate instincts as the foundation of human conduct, and Body and Mind (1911), which defended interactionist dualism. McDougall's alternative to behaviorism centered on the concept of horme—the striving toward goals that characterizes all mental life—and on the inheritance of mental characteristics. He argued that behaviorism's rejection of purpose and consciousness made it incapable of explaining the most distinctive features of human conduct. His critique in The Battle of Behaviorism drew on these positions and was among the most systematic contemporary attacks on Watson's program.

McDougall raises several objections. First, he argues that behaviorism cannot account for purpose or goal-directed behavior, which is the most salient feature of human and animal conduct. Second, he contends that behaviorism ignores the inheritance of mental characteristics—the fact that intelligence and temperament run in families—and thus cannot explain individual differences. Third, he argues that behaviorism's rejection of consciousness leaves it unable to explain the difference between a purposeful action and a mere reflex, or between meaningful speech and a chain of vocal movements. Fourth, he objects that behaviorism's claim to be the only scientific psychology is dogmatic, since it excludes from the outset phenomena that any adequate psychology must address. McDougall's critique anticipated later objections to behaviorism from cognitive, evolutionary, and social psychology.

Watson's reply restates the behaviorist program in uncompromising terms. He dismisses McDougall's appeal to purpose and instinct as prescientific verbalism, arguing that these terms merely name the behavior they are supposed to explain. He contends that the inheritance of mental characteristics can be understood in terms of the inheritance of bodily structures, without positing inherited mental entities. He rejects the distinction between reflex and purposeful action as a false dichotomy, arguing that all behavior can be analyzed in stimulus-response terms. Watson's method is to translate every mentalistic term into observable behavior and then show that the explanation offered by the mentalistic term is superfluous. The reply reveals Watson's conviction that behaviorism is not one approach among others but the only method that meets the standards of natural science.

The book was widely reviewed and became a standard reference in the debate over behaviorism. Reviewers noted that McDougall had made the strongest case yet against Watson's program and that Watson had responded with characteristic force. The debate crystallized the terms of the controversy for the following decades: on one side, the demand that psychology be objective and methodologically pure; on the other, the insistence that an adequate psychology must account for purpose, meaning, and the social dimensions of mind. The book is now read as a historical document of the 1920s controversy, and it is valuable for the clarity with which McDougall articulates the objections that later, more technical criticisms would develop. It is also a revealing portrait of Watson's rhetorical style and his confidence in the behaviorist program.

The Battle of Behaviorism (1929) is a companion to Watson's popular Behaviorism (1924/1930), which presented the behaviorist program to a general audience, and to McDougall's An Introduction to Social Psychology (1908), which had established the instinct-based hormic psychology that Watson rejected. Watson's contribution to the debate restates the position he had developed in Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919) and popularized in Behaviorism. McDougall's contribution extends the critique he had been developing for two decades, drawing on his instinct theory and his defense of mental inheritance. Together the three books provide a comprehensive view of the debate that defined American psychology in the 1920s: Watson representing the environmentalist, objective, stimulus-response program, and McDougall representing the purposive, instinct-based, hereditarian alternative.