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The problem with introspection was that it was impossible for the researcher

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to verify people’s reports about their subjective experiences.

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This made it difficult to construct a formal scientific process of discovery.

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So psychology turned away from introspection to a more objective approach

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that emphasized controlled experiments on observable behavior.

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In the first decade of the 1900s, Ivan Pavlov published his famous studies of salivating dogs

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and established the principles of a type of learning that we now call classical conditioning.

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At about the same time, Edward Thorndike discovered a basic principle of learning

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called the “law of effect” by observing how cats learn to escape from a box.

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Margaret Floy Washburn, who in 1894 became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in psychology

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published an important book on her studies of animal behavior in 1908.

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This was a remarkable achievement,

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considering that women did not gain the right to vote in the United States until 1920.

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John Watson formalized the new, objective approach to psychology

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and redefined psychology as the “science of observable behavior” in a 1913 article

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launching the form of psychology called behaviorism.

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John Watson and Rosalie Rayner demonstrated that the behavioral findings from animal research

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could also be applied to humans through a controversial study in which they conditioned an infant to fear a white rat.

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In the 1930s, B. F. Skinner built on Thorndike’s law of effect to show that behavior

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could be controlled by the application of reinforcers and punishers

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a process that we now call operant conditioning.

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Behaviorism became the dominant approach to psychology from the 1920s to the 1960s,

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though other approaches also emerged.

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One of note is the Gestalt psychology movement

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founded in Germany by Max Wertheimer with the study of a visual illusion in 1910.

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Gestalt psychology started with the study of how we organize our perception

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and from this an entire theory of the mind emerged.

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When the Nazis came to power in 1933

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Wertheimer and his chief followers left Germany for the United States, where they spread their ideas.