Abstract

SARAIVA, Fernando Tavares; CARVALHO NETO, Marcus Bentes de  and  ARAUJO, Saulo de Freitas. The impact of J. B. Watson's work on American Psychology: Some comparison parameters. Estud. pesqui. psicol. [online]. 2016, vol.16, n.3, pp. 1053-1069. ISSN 1808-4281.

The impact of J. B. Watson's work has been explored in the historiography of psychology. In this context, bibliometric analysis has been often used as a methodological strategy. However, such studies do not present comparative parameters that may indicate more precisely its degree of impact. The goal of this paper is to fill this gap, by making a comparative bibliometric analysis of citations to Watson and three other representative psychologists at that time: Edward B. Titchener, Edward L. Thorndike and William James. Five important American journals were scrutinized for the period between 1903 and 1923, a decade before and a decade after the publication of Watson's Behaviorist Manifesto. The results suggest that, even if it cannot be taken as a revolutionary milestone, Watson's work had, in the first decade after the publication of the Behaviorist Manifesto (1914-1923), an impact similar to Titchener's and higher than Thorndike's, although still distant from James's influence.

Keywords : J. B. Watson; Behaviorism; bibliometric analysis; History of Psychology.

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