The ideas of B.F. Skinner, John Watson, and Ivan Pavlov are really important in understanding behavioral psychology. They have some things in common, but also some differences in how they view behavior.

Ivan Pavlov:

• He is famous for classical conditioning.
• He did experiments with dogs and found out that if you ring a bell when you give them food, they start to salivate just at the sound of the bell.
• This shows that dogs can learn to connect things together and behave in a certain way.

John Watson:

• He supported behaviorism, which means he believed we should focus on what we can see and measure in behavior, not what goes on inside our minds.
• He didn’t think looking at our thoughts and feelings (called introspection) was helpful for psychology.
• One of his famous experiments is the Little Albert experiment. It showed that we can learn to have feelings, like fear, based on what we experience.

B.F. Skinner:

• He came up with the idea of operant conditioning, which looks at how rewards and punishments affect behavior.
• One of his big inventions is the Skinner box, which he used to show that people (and animals) change their behavior based on the results of that behavior.
• He found out that if a behavior is rewarded, it can happen more often, sometimes by as much as 80%.

Where They Agree:

• All three of them think it’s important to look at how our environment influences our behavior.
• They believe that we should study behavior in a scientific way instead of just thinking about our thoughts and feelings.

Where They Disagree:

• Pavlov and Watson focus on how associations are made (like the bell and food), while Skinner looks at how consequences (like rewards or punishments) affect behavior.
• Watson didn’t pay attention to what was going on in the mind, but Skinner thought it was okay to consider some thoughts, like how rewards are given over time.