Editing John B. Watson (section)

=== "Twelve infants" ===
Watson has been misquoted in regards to the following passage, which is often presented out of context and with the last sentence omitted, making his position appear more radical than it actually was: 
{{Blockquote|text=Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.|author=|title=''Behaviorism'' (2009) [1958], p. 82|source=}}
In Watson's ''Behaviorism'', the sentence is provided in the context of an extended argument against [[eugenics]]. That Watson did not hold a radical [[Environmentalism (psychology)|environmentalist]] position may be seen in his earlier writing in which his "starting point" for a science of behavior was "the observable fact that organisms, man and animal alike, do adjust themselves to their environment by means of hereditary and habit equipments."<ref name="Watson" /> Nevertheless, Watson recognized the importance of nurture in the [[nature versus nurture]] discussion which was often neglected by his eugenic contemporaries.<ref name="Hothersall" />