Abstract
Eugenicist interest in the prediction and control of human behavior served as a foundation for American behaviorism. John B. Watson, founder of behaviorism, was a committed eugenicist, and his experiments on animals and young children reflected his values. Watson’s views on control of emotions, derived from his behaviorist experiments, are outlined, and histories of supposedly empirically proven (mis)treatments of young children, including his own, are described.
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Yakushko, O. (2019). From the Science of Human Betterment to the Science of Behavioral Control. In: Scientific Pollyannaism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15982-5_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15982-5_5
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