Little Albert Research Paper

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.

Session Four: To see how time had affected the response, Albert was presented with the rat on its own five days later. The dog and rabbit were also presented, and the steel bar was hit each time. Albert was then taken to a well-lit lecture theatre to see if the response was the same as it was in the small room used up till now.

The study that John Watson is best known for was that of Little Albert. In this study, Watson and his assistant placed an infant, baby Albert, in a room along with a white rat. At first, Albert attempted to reach out toward the rat as it moved around him however soon after Watson slammed together two steel pipes creating a noise loud enough to scare Albert. After this initial scare, the pipes were hit together each time Albert would reach for the rat eventually resulting in his complete fear of the rat and anything that resembled it (Watson & Rayner, 1920). It was in this study that Watson was using a strategy of conditioning that would pair Albert with an unconditioned stimulus and then conditioning him to become fearful of this stimulus. Do to his research in the field, Watson became known as the founder of behaviorism.

Although Rosalie did not make any contributions on her own to psychology, her name is paired with John Watson’s on one of the most influential studies of the 1920’s. “Little Albert” is such a landmark study because Watson and Rayner were able to show that emotional responses could be conditioned, or learned. The implications of this research over the years have been outstanding. The “Little Albert” study is extremely important in psychology and other disciplines. It has inspired other important researchers of the past and continues to impact the direction of psychological investigation today. The “Little Albert” implications had a profound effect on the world at the time. In fact, Watson’s findings continue to influence psychology, especially therapy, even in modern times.

This paper is about an experiment to condition a phobia into a young infant, performed in 1920 by the name of Albert B by a John B. Watson, supposedly a pseudonym. More specifically this paper is about what happened to little albert and where he is now. A lot of research has gone into this subject and there are many different angles to come from on this subject. Some believe that he was never seen again after the experiments and died at a young age. The majority believes he is Douglas Merritt and infant that supposedly died and a young age. The ethical and moral problems with this experiment were of great controversy and it has been accepted now that little Albert had a neurological impairment at the time of the experiment, Which Watson kept from the public records. Little Albert was taken from the experiments to go home and was never deconditioned or scheduled for long term follow-up. Some people went as far as to analyze the videos to find matching features.

After the experiment, we were able to observe if the experiment had any evidence of classical conditioning. And according to the result of the

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.

The “Little Albert” experiment was a study that depicted clear evidence of classical conditioning and stimulus generalization. Classical conditioning refers to learning procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus is paired with a previously neutral stimulus.(e.g. A dog hears a bell every time before he is fed, and after repeating this multiple times, the dog is conditioned to salivate at the sound of the bell.) Stimulus generalization refers to the reaction one might have to other objects similar in shape, color, size, etc, after a traumatic or very positive experience. (e.g. Someone gets sick after eating an orange and then might feel uncomfortable eating other orange foods.) The examination of these factors, however, left Little

In February of 1920 at The Johns Hopkins University, John Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner performed a controlled experiment that would show the effects of classical conditioning in humans. Drawing from the influence of earlier psychologists such as Ivan Pavlov, and inspiring many psychologists to come, Watsons’ experiment truly changed the field of psychology.

The ‘Little Albert’ experiment was a psychological experiment conducted by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner. This experiment was inspired by Ivan Pavlov’s experiment ‘Pavlov’s dog’ which studied the conditioning process in dogs. The Little Albert experiment was created to bring Pavlov’s research further to show how emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in people.

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

The experiment was to test whether the likelihood of children being honest would increase if they were self-aware of themselves before given an opportunity to be dishonest rather than the normal method used by people around children which is making

Considering the current standards, I do think it could be replicated by researchers today by looking back viewing Watson's, and Rayner Journal on experimental psychology from 1920. Researchers today can get help from technology and other high experience researchers in this field to get more answers for experiments like this one. Some ethical issues in this experiment was having the child go through psychological harm by teaching the child to be afraid of innocuous

The little Albert experiment was conducted by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner at Johns Hopkins University which showed empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. This experiment is noted as one of the most influential behavioral experiments in psychology since it revealed more than expected. Watson and Rayner adapted the classical conditioning method from Ivan Pavlov who used the method on conditioning dogs. However, instead of conditioning dogs, Watson and Rayner took a different approach and researched conditioning in humans during the 1920s. Little Albert is a pseudonym for the normal baby who was born to a nurse that received $1 for her baby's participation. Watson wanted to prove that humans could be classically conditioned

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