During my undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins University, the institutional lore often centered on the dramatic downfall of John B. Watson, a figure revered as the father of American behaviorism. Watson, who coined the very term that would define his professional life, saw his academic career evaporate when he was fired from his tenure-track position. The cause was a scandalous extramarital affair with his 21-year-old graduate assistant, Rosalie Rayner. While the circumstances were sensational, they were not unique to the department. An even more esteemed scholar, the polymath philosopher, mathematician, and logician Charles Sanders Peirce, had been dismissed by Hopkins years earlier under similarly "prurient" circumstances. Both men eventually married the women involved following their respective divorces, but neither was ever permitted to return to the halls of academia.
The paths they took afterward diverged sharply. Watson transitioned into the private sector, where he achieved considerable success and influence. Peirce, however, suffered a far bleaker fate, living out his remaining years in abject poverty. He survived primarily through the charity of admirers, most notably William James—the father of American psychology and a co-developer, with Peirce, of the philosophical school of pragmatism.
The narrative surrounding Watson’s academic tenure is inextricably linked to the 1920 experiment that cemented his fame—and his infamy. A year before Hopkins officials fired him, the university had actually doubled his salary in a desperate bid to retain him. It was during this period that Watson, with Rayner’s assistance, conducted his work on an infant subject known to history as "Little Albert."
The experiment was designed to test the limits of classical conditioning. At nine months old, Albert was exposed to a series of neutral stimuli, including a white rat, monkeys, and various dogs, to establish his lack of inherent fear. By the time the infant reached 11 months, the procedure took a darker turn. Every time Albert reached for the white rat, Watson would strike a steel bar with a hammer behind the child’s head, creating a terrifying, jarring noise. Predictably, the infant developed a profound fear response, manifesting in distress and crying, even when the noise was absent. This conditioning generalized to other white, furry objects, such as cotton wool, a fur coat, and even a Santa Claus mask with a white beard. While Watson intended to "extinguish" the fear through further exposure, the experiment was cut short by the child’s mother, leaving it to be viewed by modern standards as profoundly unethical. The researchers’ core scientific claim was that classical conditioning could be used to manufacture emotional responses, specifically fear, in children.
In 1928, Watson and Rayner, now married and raising two children, published Psychological Care of Infant and Child. In this book, they extrapolated their experimental findings to argue—without empirical evidence—that personality is entirely a product of environmental forces, with no room for innate nature or instincts. The book’s most chilling directive was the advice that parents should refrain from hugging, kissing, or showing affection to their children, under the guise of "toughening" them for the harsh realities of adulthood.
The personal cost of this ideology was immense. Watson and Rayner raised their two sons according to this "no-love" method; as adults, both sons attempted suicide, one of them successfully. Watson also had a daughter from his first marriage who attempted suicide, and she explicitly blamed her father’s emotional detachment for her struggles.
After his exit from the academic world, Watson pivoted to the corporate sphere, joining the New York-based advertising firm J. Walter Thompson. He rose to the rank of vice-president, applying his behavioral theories to the art of persuasion. Watson’s fundamental strategy was to convince consumers that failing to purchase a specific product would expose them or their loved ones to physical or social ruin.
His methods were ruthlessly effective. For Scott’s toilet paper, he orchestrated an ad campaign featuring doctors grimly surrounding a patient, suggesting that the patient’s ailment was the direct result of using "harsh toilet tissue." Similarly, he advised Johnson & Johnson to emphasize that mothers were endangering their children’s lives by failing to use the company’s hygiene products. In the social sphere, he utilized fear of rejection; his toothpaste advertisements did not promise better dental health, but rather protection from the social exile that allegedly accompanied bad breath and discolored teeth.
Watson pioneered the use of psychological conditioning in American advertising, effectively grounding commerce in the manipulation of emotional responses, particularly fear. In the realm of public relations, this torch was picked up by Edward Bernays, the double nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays, the son of Freud’s sister and the husband of Freud’s sister-in-law, was born in Austria and moved to the United States as an infant. He maintained close ties with his uncle, who famously gifted him Cuban cigars and remained an intellectual touchstone throughout his career.
While Watson relied on behaviorism, Bernays drew loosely from psychoanalytic theory. He posited that human actions are driven less by conscious deliberation than by deep-seated, unconscious desires and fears. Though he was not a trained psychoanalyst, he leveraged his association with Freud to build a reputation as a master of public opinion.
Bernays’ commercial success was perhaps most visible in his work for the American Tobacco Company. Advised by Freud’s translator, A.A. Brill, Bernays sought to break the taboo against female smoking. He rebranded Lucky Strike cigarettes as "torches of freedom," framing them as phallic symbols that empowered women to escape male oppression.
However, Bernays’ influence extended far beyond consumer goods. He was a central figure in shaping public support for America’s entry into World War I. Decades later, while working for the United Fruit Company, he orchestrated a campaign to facilitate the CIA-backed overthrow of Guatemala’s democratically elected, left-leaning president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. Borrowing from Watson’s playbook, Bernays painted Árbenz as a communist threat to the American public. He employed similar "Red Scare" tactics during the early stages of the Vietnam War, only distancing himself from the effort once the conflict became untenable in both the battlefield and the court of public opinion.
Bernays justified his propaganda—a term he eventually abandoned due to its pejorative weight—by arguing that it was a necessary tool in a democracy to prevent the populace from descending into chaos. While Watson never publicly articulated a theory regarding the role of advertising in democratic governance, both men shared a fundamental premise: that human behavior is governed by emotion, and that psychology provides the mechanisms for social control.
Neither Watson nor Bernays displayed a commitment to empirical truth as the foundation of their work. Instead, they prioritized the efficacy of their messaging. Today, the ubiquity of fear-mongering in political advertising, often divorced from factual reality, presents a sobering challenge to modern democracy. The techniques refined by Watson and Bernays—once used to sell soap and cigarettes—have been fully integrated into the political arena. It is in this theater, perhaps more than in his ill-fated child-rearing experiments, that the legacy of John B. Watson’s "Little Albert" research continues to exert a profound and unsettling influence on the structure of public life.
