John B. Watson's Little Albert Experiment

Human experimentation has a history of scandal that often shapes people’s views of the ethics of research. Often the earliest cited case is English physician Edward Jenner’s development of the smallpox vaccine in 1796,where he injected an eight-year-old boy child with pus taken from a cowpox infection and then deliberately exposed her to an infected carrier of smallpox. Although Jenner’s experiment was successful and it confirmed his theory, the method of

The final ethical guideline that was broken was that the participants were not debriefed. The children were never told they had participated in an experiment till it was revealed by a newspaper sixty years later. The administrators and teachers at the orphanage were also misled about the purpose of the study and were not debriefed

Little Albert’s was chosen because of his strong emotional stability and researches think his personality could be “relatively little harm by carrying out such experiments…” (Wastson & Rayner, 1920, p. 3). However, from psychologists’ point of view, his emotional reaction was far from mild and experimenters did not put effort to comfort him (Smith & Haslam, 2012). Although the principles of classical conditioning are useful in treatment of phobias and even medical implications, it is questioned whether its worth to cause harm to the subject in order to complete the study. The unethical research method of classic studies brings potential damages to the participants (Russell & Purcell, 2009). The ignorance of such damages overrates the experimental result and conclusion. Studies should be morally and ethically grounded.

The experiment undertaken by Stanley Milgram in 1963 was supposed to answer some questions about obedience and raised some questions and answered some. At the time, that Milgram underwent the experiment, a Nazi war criminal was being trialed. Milgram wanted this experiment to answer whether this Nazi criminal and his followers were just accomplices to Hitler during the Holocaust or did they have some responsibility to it as well.

There are countless scenarios in which a young child could develop a classically conditioned fear of bugs. The most well-known example of instilling an emotional response in a child via classical conditioning is the Little Albert experiment. This experiment was Conducted by John B. Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner, and the results were published in the February 1920 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. The study used a subject named Albert who was around 9 months old. They exposed him to various unconditioned stimuli such as a monkey, masks, a white rat, etc. They observed his reactions, then the next time Albert saw the rat, they added a loud noise that caused the child to cry. After numerous times of the rat being shown with

I found that the little Albert experiment to be interesting and how fear can be classically conditioned. I found it interesting that Watson was able to make Albert be afraid of a white rat by using a loud sound that Albert already didn’t like, but also howAlbert’s fear of the white rat generalized to other things as well. Though I would have liked to know if Albert’s fear stayed with him throughout his life or if the fear eventually went away.

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)?

In 1920, John Watson and his student Rosalie Rayner performed the famous Little Albert experiment where they conditioned an infant to fear a white rat and other furry animals. This experiment helped to prove the theory of behaviorism, specifically in terms that fears could be taught or “conditioned” as opposed to inheritance from biology. However, if John Watson and Rosalie Rayner performed this experiment today, the experiment would violate multiple ethical standards set in place by the American Psychology Association including 8.07b and 8.08c. 8.07b means that any deception used in an experiment cannot inflict severe emotional or physical distress on participants. To relate this standard to the Little Albert experiment, Watson and Rayner

This eventually caused Little Albert to show signs of fear at just the sight of the rat. In this study, the unconditioned stimulus was the loud noise and the unconditioned response was fear. By the end of the experiment, the conditioned stimulus was the white rat and the conditioned response was fear. Watson went on further to show stimulus generalization as Little Albert feared other stimuli aside from white rats; these other stimuli are suggested to be either white and/or furry objects, such as a stuffed animal 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

Watsons experiment was inducing fear of a white rat into a baby boy whose name was Albert. This experiment was brought on by Watsons believed that infants have 3 “unlearned emotional responses: fear, rage and love” (Schultz & Schultz, 2011, pg 225). In his experiment with 8 month old baby Albert, he induced the fear of white rat into the baby by using classical conditioning, something that the baby did not fear before the experiment. He would have a white rat in front of the baby and then would make a loud noise to scare the baby this was him conditioning the baby to fear the rats due to the loud noise (Watson, Rayner,

The subject would need to be deconditioned and followed at regular intervals to ensure there was no lasting harm (in this case, phobia of rodents or other furry animals). If an adult was not a proper subject, the child would need to be older to have a certain level of comprehension of what the experiment entailed for said child to enter the experiment in a voluntary fashion. The informed consent of the child’s primary guardian would be necessary. It would be critical to evaluate the guardian as well, ensuring they are acting in the child’s best interest. Like the Robber’s Cave Experiment, fidelity is also questionable as this relates to the honesty between psychologist and subject

Almost every Introductory Psychology textbook mentions Watson’s work with the infant Albert because it’s a very important factor in classical conditioning. I think the theoretical point made by this experiment was to prove that the classical conditioning principles can be utilized to condition the emotional response of fear. I believe this experiment was unethical, simply because it did not protect Albert from any psychological harm whatsoever. I also believe that it could have been approached in a totally different way.

In the most famous behaviorism experiment done by Watson and Rayner (1920) showed that the overall theory of behaviorism is in fact true. The subject of the experiment was Little Albert, a 9 month old little boy. He was tested and observed on his reactions to different stimuli. Little Albert was presented with a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey and other objects. In the beginning Watson and Rayner noted that the little boy showed no fear or emotion when presented with

The reasoning behind why Watson's work on the infant Albert is in almost all psychology books is because is was so incredibly significant. It's a great example of how classical conditioning can be used to cause an emotional response. Every textbook includes it because it could've possibly led to a treatment to phobias. Also, it showed that fears could be taught over time, that actions or thoughts could be forced in or forced out. It clearly contradicted the idea that biology is everything, and gave solid evidence for the importance of nurture. Perhaps back in the 20's the experiment did not raise any ethical concerns, but I believe if it was done today, it would absolutely be unethical. Today, there are rules and codes of ethics, like "Do no