The Little Albert Experiment by John Watson and Rosalie Rayner

In the following essay I will be looking into the study conducted by Watson and Rayner (1920) on a small child known as ‘Little Albert’. The experiment was an adaptation of earlier studies on classical conditioning of stimulus response, one most common by Ivan Pavlov, depicting the conditioning of stimulus response in dogs. Watson and Rayner aimed to teach Albert to become fearful of a placid white rat, via the use of stimulus associations, testing Pavlov’s earlier theory of classical conditioning.

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).

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

Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov had done experiments on dogs showing the conditioning process, but Watson was interested in taking Pavlov’s research to the next level and show that emotional reactions can be classically conditioned in people (Cherry, 2016). They used a nine-month-old baby boy and exposed him to a series of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks and burning newspapers and watched the boys reaction, initially he showed no fear of the objects he was shown (Cherry, 2016). He then decided that he

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.

His most famous experiment is the Little Albert experiment. He gave a little boy by the name of Albert a white furry rat. He let Albert love and play and get attached to the rat. Later on, he would give the rat to Albert and when he went to touch it, Watson would play a loud sound, frightening the child. He continued this until one day he gave Albert the rat without playing a loud noise. Albert was still frightened of the rat. This is the same thing they did to the children in Brave New World to condition them to not like or want books or nature.

      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.

In an experiment called "Little Albert" by psychologist John B. Watson, an infant named Albert was conditioned to fear white rats. He was repeatedly exposed to white rats and was taught fear response to these furry animals which wouldn’t otherwise occur naturally. Although this wouldn’t have been what Albert wanted to perceive as part of his reality, he became extremely distressed whenever he saw a white rat and it was out of his control to

The child interpreted the sound of the hammer hitting the steel bar in coincidence with the visualization of the white rat. Even in nine months the child had been programmed by repeatedly hitting the bar and visual stimulation of contact with the white rat, had now become an unconditioned stimulus response by automatically changing physical and emotional outcomes from the child (Porter, B., 2013).

Albert’s baseline reactions to the stimuli were noted. He showed no fear when presented with a rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, a mask with hair, or cotton wool. When Albert was 11 months old the experiments started.

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.

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 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.

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.

Behaviourists regard behaviour has a response and stimulus which is determined by the environment one lives in. With this reductionist idea, it is therefore easy for behaviourists to control experiments. Behaviourists carry out experiments with control over variables, precise measurements objectivity and observability, resulting in very reliable results. However, some critics may argue that behaviour is studied under artificial conditions which do not match real life environments, resulting in low ecological validity. Furthermore, another strength of this approach is that all three of its theories, classical conditioning, operant conditioning and social learning theory have succeeded when applied to its studies. For instance, classical conditioning is when new behaviours maybe acquired through association between an environmental stimulus and a neutral stimulus. An example of this is Watson’s little Albert experiment (1920) where the neutral stimulus (white rat) and