Little Albert Experiment

Little Albert Experiment

Srika Prathipati

14 May 2007

John B . Watson and Rosalie Rayner conducted important studies on psychology in 1920 , which turned out to be one of the influential studies . Conditioned Emotional Reactions ' was a , which was based on experiments conducted by J .B . Watson with his assistant Rosalie Rayner . This was also known as the Little Albert study . The reason this study was considered a milestone was because Watson succeeded in proving that emotional responses could be conditioned or educated . On the contrary , Watson also stressed the

significance of environmental features on a person 's mannerisms Watson carried out the test on a human and trained an emotional reaction

Watson was sure that infants were not afraid of animals naturally . He conducted his experiments on a small child called Albert , who was not originally afraid of rabbits , rats and other fluffy animals . Watson was interested in showing how this little boy could be conditioned to fear a specific object or animal . At the age of nine months Albert was exposed to different fluffy objects like a monkey , a white rat , a dog , a rabbit cotton wool , with masks with and without hair , burning newss , etc All of Albert 's reactions were recorded on a tape , but Albert didn 't show any sort of fear to this exposure

After a few days Albert was again exposed to a fluffy animal and simultaneously , a steel bar was struck with a hammer , which made a loud noise , and immediately Albert was startled , shaken and moved away Similar experiments were conducted on Albert with the sound , he

Little Albert Experiment

whimpered in the beginning and later started crying . When Albert was eleven months old he was exposed to the white rat and a simultaneous loud sound , he was immediately frightened and started crying . After a series of such experiments , he was exposed only to the rat , and he was again frightened and crying . Albert who was previously not scared of rats or other animals , after being exposed continuously to fluffy animals and objects along with a loud sound , feared even rats . This showed that fear can be conditioned in an infant . This sort of response to classical conditioning is called conditioned response . Albert was made to be fearful of the rat by means of classical conditioning . Albert was exposed to the rat accompanied with a loud sound

According to Watson phobias and anxieties were mostly conditioned responses . As a person grows older phobias could stem up from fear of the original stimulus or could have been shifted to other stimuli . Every adult will be affected by his early childhood experiences . Watson believed that conditioned responses to particular situations in childhood moved across environments and stimuli over a period of time The studies conducted by Watson have a great affect in the field of psychology , and his introduction of relaxation in cognitive therapies is widely used and acclaimed

Watson must have faced some challenges in using animals for his experiments . Obtaining the animals and acquiring the necessary permissions to use animals for his experiments must have been very difficult . There always must have been the fear of using animals in conjunction with an infant , as there are chances of any accidents occurring during the experiments

References

`How Do Psychologists Define Learning , Learning

Retrieved 14 May 2007 http /scienceofpsychology .com /prospectus /chapter-07 .pdf

`Little Albert , Retrieved 14 May 2007

http /www .psychology .sbc .edu /Little 20Albert .htm

Ben Harris , `Whatever Happened to Little Albert , Vassar College

Retrieved 14 May 2007 http /htpprints .yorku .ca /archive /01 /BHARRIS .HTM

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