Btec Unit 8,P1 Health and Social Essay

The hypothesis was that through a series of pairings, they could condition a nine-month-old child to develop an irrational fear.” (The 25 most influential) Watson started the experiment by placing a white rat in front of little Albert, who wasn’t afraid of it and every time the rat appeared Watson made a loud striking noise. Eventually, Albert was terrified of the rat and in the end, Albert’s fear spread to other common

A man who did very similar experiments to the ones they used in Brave New World was John B. Watson. He came into the time period where behaviorism was just beginning to bloom. His main focus was learning just how you could “condition and control the emotions of human subjects”. He started off doing experiments similar to Pavlov’s but unlike him, he took it a step farther. Watson began doing experiments on human subjects. Whether it was a step in the right direction is debatable.

Food was the unconditioned stimulus, the bell was the conditioned stimulus, and salivation was the conditioned response. Pavlov’s work showed that the conditioned response could be reduced or eliminated by presenting the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned stimulus. Generally this required several pairings or a pairing for an extended period of time to be successful. This process is called extinction. John Watson, in his famous Little Albert experiment, was able to build on Pavlov’s work when he conditioned a young child to fear a white rat using a loud noise. Joseph Wolpe studied Watson’s work. Wolpe was able to reduce fear in cats by feeding them in various feeding situations (Abramowitz, Deacon, & Whiteside, 2010). He created a hierarchy of feared situations for the cats. He began by feeding the cats in the least threatening situation and gradually was able to move to the most threatening situation (Abramowitz, Deacon, & Whiteside, 2010). He noticed that the cats became

I recently reviewed the classic article," Conditioned emotional reactions," by Watson and Rayner. In this study, the authors evaluated the possibility of conditioning various types of emotional response. They centered their research on one child, Albert, who had been born in the hospital and was by all accounts a healthy although previously unemotional. At approximately 9 months of age the researchers ran through emotional test to determine whether fear reactions may be elicited by various stimuli. To be honest, I felt that the experiments the authors performed were somewhat mean and potentially unpleasant. Nevertheless, the authors present a child with a rat to determine if Albert showed any fear. A second stimulus involved banging on a steel rod to make a loud sound. On the third stimulation the child broke into a sudden crying fit (Watson, 1920). The authors were pleased that the child showed his first reaction to any type of stimulus.

Watson’s most infamous work was the Little Albert study he conducted with Rosalie Rayner. The study illustrated that humans can be taught to fear objects through classical conditioning, ultimately providing a foundation for phobias. Watson and Rayner were looking to answer several questions: (1) Is it possible to teach an infant to pair a sound made by striking a steel bar with an animal, and if so will the sight of the animal then make the infant fret? (2) Can the feared response transfer to other animals or objects? (3) After some time, will the infant stop associating the noise with the animal? (4) What can be done to extinguish the fear, given that it doesn’t disappear on its own (Watson & Rayner, 1920)?

The Little Albert experiment has become a famous case study that has been discussed by a plethora of professionals in the psychology industry. In 1920, behaviorist John Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner began to conduct the first experiment that had been done with a child. Watson and Rayner chose Albert because they thought he was stable; he was accustomed to a hospital environment due to his mother’s career as a wet nurse, he was healthy and showed little emotion. Stability played a major factor in choosing Albert for this case study because Watson wanted to ensure that they would do as little harm as possible with the experiment. The conditioning of Albert began with a series of emotional tests that became part of a routine in which Watson and Rayner were “determining whether fear reactions could be called out by other stimuli than sharp noises and the sudden removal of support” (-----). Watson’s method of choice for this experiment was using principles of classic conditioning to create a stimulus in children that would result in fear. Since Watson wanted to condition Albert, he used a variety of objects that would otherwise not scare him. These objects included white rat, dog, blocks, rabbit, fur coat, wool and a Santa Claus mask.

In 1920, John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner set out to support their revolutionary behaviorist ideology, seeking to explain all behavior as conditioned by environmental influences and to prove environmental influences can condition any behavior into man or beast, through the groundbreaking and controversial “Little Albert” experiment. An 8- month-old infant informally named Little Albert was previously shown to be of remarkably stable disposition and to innately fear none of many selected animals serving as neutral stimuli, and Watson and Rayner demonstrated they could condition Little Albert to fear a white rat and, through generalization and second-order conditioning, animals and objects similar in enough respects to trigger the same conditioned

This experiment was conducted by John B. Watson who was a behavioral psychologist he conducted an experiment on a 9-month child names Albert B. but today best known as Little Albert. This type of experiment is best known as Classical Conditioning which is a type of behavioral learning. Psychologist believe that all learning occurs through interactions with the environment shaping our behavior. They also believe that “Taking internal mental states such as thoughts, feelings, and emotions into consideration is useless in explaining behavior” by: Kendra Cherry ( HYPERLINK "http://www.verywell.com" www.verywell.com).

John B. Watsons experiment came in known as Watson’s “Little Albert” Experiment. Little Albert, an infant, was first shown a white rat. At first, he was not afraid of the white rat. However Watson presented the white rat repeatedly with a frightening high-pitched noise, which then scared little Albert and after five times, the infant became frightened whenever the white rat was presented. The white rat was what he associated with the fear of the loud noise and was now the conditioned stimulus. This experiment proved that psychological fears could be influence by classical

John Watson used an infant named “Little Albert”, he showed the child many objects such as white rat, rabbit, monkey, masks, burning paper and so on. The child showed no fear towards any of these objects. Then Watson paired the white rat with a loud noise, which made Little Albert cry. After doing this repeatedly the child would just cry at the sight of the white rat alone. This experiment demonstrates how powerful the environment was for Little Albert. Also how two stimuli in an environment, creates a conditioned response. This conditioned response would be the child crying just by seeing the white rat. This also created stimulus generalization, Little Albert then started crying at just similar white things and furry things. Many suspect that Little Albert will stay frightened from these objects. This experiment confirms how environment gratefully impacts human behaviour because of how first they were able to create a conditioned response, secondly it turned into generalized stimulus and lastly how many suspect Little Albert will stay fearful of these white and furry

Throughout psychology we have learned a variety of experiments that have made an impact toward the field of psychology. One important experiment that was significant in the field was the “Little Albert Experiment” by John B. Watson. John B. Watson was a behaviorist where he wanted to conduct an experiment that further Ivan Pavlov research on classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a theory engages a new behavior through the process of association. This theory includes three stages of classical conditioning; the first stage is called unconditioned stimulus, which produces an unconditioned response within an organism. One example of this stage is where a perfume is the unconditioned stimulus, which can create a response of pleasure or desire (unconditioned response). The second stage is during the conditioning where the conditioned stimulus is presented. The conditioned stimulus is the stimulus that does not produce any response related to the unconditioned stimulus. The third stage is what happened after the conditioning, this stage represents the roll of all three conditioning combined and how it can impact the organism. John B. Watson went more in depth about classical conditioning where he created his well know experiment involving a child instead of an animal. Watson’s research revolved around an observational method. According to McLeod (2015) from the simply psychology website, the author says, “Participant observation is a variant of the above (natural

During 1920, the unforgettable experiment The Little Albert Experiment was performed by the father of behaviorism, John B. Watson. To him it was an innate unconditioned response. Because of his thought he wanted to test his knowledge. John B. Waston choose to use the principle “classical conditioning”. Classical Conditioning is “a type of behaviourism first demonstrated by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov in the 1890s.Through a series of experiments he demonstrated that dogs which normally salivated when presented with food could be conditioned to salivate in response to any stimulus in the absence of the original stimulus, food. He rang a bell every time a dog was about to be fed, and after a period of time the dog would salivate to the sound of the bell irrespective of food being presented.” ( Saul McLoed, 2008).

Learning Theories are one of the largest branches of modern psychology, branching mainly from the theory presented by Ivan Pavlov in the early twentieth century. Learning, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is described as the modification of a behavioral tendency by experience. In psychology terms, learning is often known as a lasting change in behavior as a result of experience. The psychology behind learning became more and more of a focus in the early 1900’s as behaviorism (the theory that human, and animal, behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning) rose to fame upon the release of an article written by John Watson. From then on, more and more learning theories were released. These theories were attempts to

Although many argue the ethical implications of Watson’s study, The Little Albert experiment clearly displayed the ability of infants to develop a fear of a neutral stimulus by pairing it with a negative stimulus. These finings were a major contribution to psychology. Not only did the researchers contribute to the practice of psychology as a science by use of the scientific method, they also gave evidence to the idea that

There are four primary conditioning theories of behaviorism. These four theories are Pavlov’s (1849-1936) classical conditioning, Thorndike’s (1874-1949) connectionism (also known as law of effect), Guthrie 's (1886-1959) contiguous conditioning, and Skinner’s (1904-1990) operant conditioning.