Fast Facts About
JOHN B. WATSON
(1878-1958)

• John Broadus Watson was born on January 9, 1878, near Greenville, South Carolina to Emma and Pickens Watson.
  
  
• Watson's mother, who was very religious, named John after a local minister.

• Watson's father, Pickens, had extra-marital affairs and left the family in 1891.
  
  
• With the absence of his father during childhood, Watson often rebelled and was once arrested for shooting a gun.
  
  
• Watson was accepted to Greenville’s Furman University as a sub-freshman.

• Watson had planned to attend Princeton Theological Seminary to become a clergyman but was held back a year for handing in his philosophy-psychology exam backwards.
  
  
• In an attempt to upstage his instructor, Gordon Moore, Watson decided to pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy-psychology (something Moore did not have).

• With the help of Moore, Watson was admitted to the philosophy-psychology department at the University of Chicago.   It was at the University of Chicago where Watson began his experiments on animals.
  
  
• Watson received his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1903.  At the University of Chicago, Watson was a departmental star being the youngest student with a Ph.D. at the university and had the second-best final exam in the history of the department.

• Watson married Mary Ickes in December 1903.   They had two children, Mary and John.
  
  
• In 1903, Watson accepted a professor of psychology position at Johns Hopkins University.

• After a year at John Hopkins University, Watson became the department leader and editor of the Psychological Review.
  
  
• In 1913, Watson published the article “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It."

• In 1915, Watson became the President of the American Psychological Association.

• Watson enlisted in the Signal Corps in 1917 during World War I.

• In 1920, he published his experiments on “Little Albert” with Rosalie Rayner.

• John Hopkins University forced Watson to resign after finding out that he had an affair with Rayner.  Watson and Mary divorced and married Rayner.  Watson and Rayner had two children, James and William.

• Watson was offered a job at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency for $25,000 a year (four times his professor’s salary).   In 1924, Watson became vice-president of the agency.

• Watson continued to publish psychological works, but stopped in the 1930s to focus on his advertising career.
  
  
• Watson died in 1958.
  

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