Little Albert Experiment

Douglas Merritte, better known as Little Albert was 9 months when he participated in a study along with John Watson. Watson exposed Little Albert to a white rat and furry objects, who before not feared rats and furry objects. As he played with the rat, Watson made a loud noise with a hammer. After numerous of trials, Watson introduced the rat and the furry objects to Little Albert who began to cry in fear of the loud noise. When the rate and furry objects were placed in front of Albert he cried, although there was no noise. Something that was first enjoyment to him has become fear to him. The bad thing about this experiment is that Watson created a child with a previously nonexistent fear. It has been said that Douglas known as Little Albert

      The theoretical proposition of this study is that one’s emotions can come from an external or an internal situation which creates a certain emotion for example afraidness. If this emotion is felt more than one time occurring at the same moment as something else for example seeing a spider or snake , the spider or snake will therefore will become connected with being afraid in your brain. This example is very similar to the one Watson used, which was rats he then said that us as humans were “not born to fear rats.” In fact, he said we learned this fear “through conditioning.” This led to one of Watson 's most famed experience that included the subject “Little Albert B.” It is clear the aspect of human behavior in which Watson was interested in is a person’s emotions.

Little Albert an 11 month old boy was chosen as the participant. Watson identified that a white rat did not provoke any fear response in Albert, so it was a neutral stimulus. Little Albert was then exposed to the white rat, but every time he reached out to touch it Watson would make a loud noise. Albert would get frightened and start to cry. After repeating this several times, Albert started getting frightened just by seeing the rat. Just like the bell in Pavlov's experiment, the white rat had become a conditioned stimulus to Albert. Watson therefore concluded that even complex behaviour such as fear was a learned response.

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

How were Watson and Rayner able to condition Albert to react to different stimuli such as masks, other animals, and a fur coat?

The baby Albert experiment was in 1920 where a psychologist named John B. Watson tested the idea of whether fear was

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.

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

Soon after, Albert, again reached to interact with the white rat, only to be met by yet another loud striking noise. Consequently, Albert's reaction to the latter noise caused his lip to pucker and he began to cry, showing signs of apparent fear. After repeated trials of exposure to the CS and US together, Albert's conditioned response (CR) was to unconsciously display fear and refuse to have any further interaction with the white rat (Watson & Rayner,

Watson conducted this experiment because he was interested in knowing if people’s emotions could be classically conditioned. Classical Conditioning had been researched before by a Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, who used dogs as his subject hence Watson wanted to know if this applied to humans as well. (McLeod, 2014) The participant in the experiment was a nine month old boy which Watson and Raynor called ‘Albert B’. They started the experiment by revealing Albert to a sequence of items and animals, including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and burning newspapers. They observed the Albert’s reaction and he initially showed no fear of any of the objects he was shown. Watson then exposed Albert to the rat and while doing that he used a metal pipe and a hammer to create a loud noise behind his head. Afterwards, Albert began to cry every time the rat was exposed to him. (Cherry,

For the second stage, a white rat was used as Watson’s CS, the CS must be a neutral stimulus that initially has no effect on the UR. Little Albert showed no phobia towards the rat before conditioning occurred. By pairing the US with the CS, the infant learned to associate the loud noise of the hammer and metal bar with the white rat. After strengthening the association between the US and the CS by repetition, Little Albert eventually became fearful and upset when only presented with the once neutral stimulus, the white rat. This response was the CR which marked the completion of step three. Little Albert was now afraid of the white rat because it triggered his fear of the loud noise. Classical conditioning can be used to prove many forms of behavior between subjects when looking at the the right unconditioned/ conditioned stimuli and unconditioned/ conditioned responses. The theory of classical conditioning can be used to explain the development of distrust and trust issues in the relationships between people.

The video, “The Little Albert Experiment”, showed an example of an experiment conducted in order to observe human behavior and more specifically “conditioning”. Although it has become a well-known experiment, it went against many ethics created for experiments based on psychology. Regardless of how the experiment was performed, it gave significant discoveries about how humans are affected by their nature and nurturing. In the experiment, John B. Watson was observing classical conditioning which had been influenced by Ivan Pavlov.

Instead he believed that all behaviors were learned based on early infant instruction from parents and environmental factors. He based his idea on his study of birds and similar behaviors in infants. Watson and Rosalie Rayner taught a little child to fear the rat when it did not fear it before. He alleged that his ideas were indispensable because he trusted that all emotional responses were due to internal signals from physical changes in the human body. His experiment on the infant nicknamed little Albert was his evidence of such reactions.

What is Watson’s Classical Conditioning? Classical Conditioning was found by Dr. Ivan Pavlov. Watson’s research was influenced by Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning Theory. Watson made a research on children’s emotions using the Classical Conditioning model. According to Watson, love, fear, and anger are the three kinds of emotions inherited by humans (Hall 1988). He believed these emotions could be learned through conditioning. He formed his hypothesis and carried out an experiment. John B. Watson’s classical condition experiment was on a child named Little Albert. This experiment was while a child was playing with a rabbit, smashing two bars to make a loud noise behind the child’s head. After hearing the loud noise the child

Classical Conditioning. Due to Pavlov’s success, Watson was inclined to do his own experimentation. His most famous, yet controversial, being on “Little Albert.” “Albert” was a child conditioned by Watson to be afraid of rats. Essentially, Watson would create a loud, banging noise. This would eventually lead to the fear of not just rats, but all fuzzy animals (John Watson - Little Albert, 2008).