What is the Little Albert study?
Further, they called the Little Albert Study “Conditioned Emotional Reactions by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner.” Based on his detailed study on infants, John. B Watson claimed that there are only a few original emotional reaction patterns in infants. These include mainly love, rage, and fear.
What is the significance of the case of Little Albert?
Thus, the case of little Albert is used by behaviorists to explain that one could condition an emotional response in humans. He further claimed these conditioned emotional responses could be transferred to other stimuli. (other animals and objects in this case like cotton wool, rabbit, a seal fur coat, etc).
Why was the Little Albert experiment not allowed?
The experiment also raises many ethical concerns. Little Albert was harmed during this experiment—he left the experiment with a previously nonexistent fear. By today's standards, the Little Albert experiment would not be allowed. What Ethical Guidelines Do Psychologists Follow?
Why is Little Albert not a case study?
Criticism and Ethical Issues The experiment also raises many ethical concerns. Little Albert was harmed during this experiment—he left the experiment with a previously nonexistent fear. By today's standards, the Little Albert experiment would not be allowed. What Ethical Guidelines Do Psychologists Follow?
Why was Little Albert removed from the study?
Watson had originally planned to decondition Albert to the stimulus, demonstrating that conditioned fears could be eliminated. However, Albert was removed from the experiment before this could happen, and thus Watson created a child with a previously nonexistent fear.
What was the method of the Little Albert experiment?
A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer each time the baby touched the rat. Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear.
Who was Little Albert and what happened in this experiment?
“Little Albert,” the baby behind John Watson's famous 1920 emotional conditioning experiment at Johns Hopkins University, has been identified as Douglas Merritte, the son of a wetnurse named Arvilla Merritte who lived and worked at a campus hospital at the time of the experiment — receiving $1 for her baby's ...
Is the Little Albert experiment ethical?
This experiment is considered very unethical. The researchers failed to decondition Albert to the stimuli he was afraid of, which should have been done after the experiment. Albert ended up passing away at the age of six due to hydrocephalus, a condition that can lead to brain damage.
What Happened to baby Albert after testing?
He died in 2007 after a long, happy life, says his niece. She says the family had no idea he might be Little Albert, and that his mum had hidden the fact that he was born out of wedlock.
What was the purpose of the Little Albert experiment quizlet?
Watson & Rayner's (1920) experiment on 'Little Albert' demonstrated that classical conditioning principles could be applied to condition the emotional response of fear.
What does the story of Baby Albert demonstrate about ethics?
What does the story of Baby Albert demonstrate? Early experiments on children don't fit today's standards of ethical treatment.
Did Little Albert have informed consent?
The unethical aspects of the Little Albert experiment were; Protection of the participants, as most babies are hurt by loud noises this experiment brought harm to him, Informed consent, Little Albert was too young to understand so he would never have been able to give proper informed consent, Withdrawal from an ...
What is the Little Albert experiment?
This process is known as generalization. The Little Albert Experiment demonstrated that classical conditioning could be used to create a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear, that is out of proportion to the danger. In this experiment, a previously unafraid baby was conditioned to become afraid of a rat. Over the next few weeks and months, Little ...
Why was Albert unusual?
Albert had been reared in a hospital environment from birth and he was unusual as he had never been seen to show fear or rage by staff. Therefore, Little Albert may have responded differently in this experiment to how other young children may have, these findings will therefore be unique to him.
How many pairs of rat and noise did Albert have?
After seven pairings of the rat and noise (in two sessions, one week apart), Albert reacted with crying and avoidance when the rat was presented without the loud noise. By now little Albert only had to see the rat and he immediately showed every sign of fear.
What did Watson and Rayner show about Albert?
In a famous (though ethically dubious) experiment, Watson and Rayner (1920) showed that it did. Little Albert was a 9-month-old infant who was tested on his reactions to various neutral stimuli. He was shown a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey and various masks. Albert described as "on the whole stolid and unemotional" showed no fear of any ...
What was the Little Albert experiment?
It was a psychology experiment performed to demonstrate the effects of behavioral conditioning in humans. John was influence by the studies of Ivan Pavlov, where he used conditioning process in dogs. John want to prove that taking Pavlov’s research a step further could show how emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in humans. John used an 9 month old boy to be the subject of the little Albert experiment.
What animals did Albert have before the experiment?
Before the experiment, Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks (with and without hair), cotton, wool, burning newspapers, and other stimuli. Albert showed no fear of any of these items during the baseline tests.
How many boys did Bandura study?
Bandura believed that through observational learning process behavior is learnt from the environment. The subjects in the study consisted of 36 boys and 36 boys, who all attended the Stanford University Nursey School. The students ranged in ages 3-6, and used one adult male model and one female adult model. Read More.
When was the fearful response of children to loud noises first published?
The results were first published in the February 1920 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. After observing children in the field, Watson hypothesized that the fearful response of children to loud noises is an innate unconditioned response.
Who was the therapist who created the total bobo doll experiment?
They should ask help from therapists and make sure that the participant is total-Bobo doll The experiment was executed by Albert Bandura with the aim of demonstrating that the aggressive behaviour is learnt by social environment.
What was the aim of Watson and Rayner?
The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child. [1] . For this study they chose a nine-month old infant from a hospital referred to as "Albert" for the experiment. [2] . Watson followed the procedures which Pavlov had used in his experiments with dogs.
What is the Little Albert experiment?
Play media. The film of the experiment. The Little Albert experiment was a controlled experiment showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. The study also provides an example of stimulus generalization. It was carried out by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at Johns Hopkins University.
What animals did Albert have before the experiment?
Before the experiment, Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks (with and without hair), cotton, wool, burning newspapers, and other stimuli. Albert showed no fear of any of these items during the baseline tests.
What was the aim of Watson and Rayner?
Method. The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child. For this study they chose a nine-month old infant from a hospital referred to as "Albert" for the experiment. Watson followed the procedures which Pavlov had used in his experiments with dogs.
What is the Belmont report?
In 1979, the Commission issued a report entitled Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research (commonly called the Belmont Report ), which provided the ethical framework on which current federal regulations for the protection of human participants in research are based.
What were the failings of Watson's experiment?
Watson's experiment had many failings by modern standards. For example, it had only a single subject and no control subjects. Furthermore, such an experiment could be hard to conduct in compliance with current law and regulations, given the expected risks to the subject.
How did Albert respond to the noise?
Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was presented with only the rat. Upon seeing the rat, Albert became very distressed, crying and crawling away. Apparently, the infant associated the white rat with the noise.
How old was Albert when he was put on a mattress?
Albert showed no fear of any of these items during the baseline tests. For the experiment proper, by which point Albert was 11 months old, he was put on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it.
What is the Little Albert study?
The Little Albert study is the very first laboratory demonstration of the conditioned emotional responses in people. Watson expanded on the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning study. Pavlov studied conditioned responses to stimuli in the case of animals.
Who conducted the Little Albert experiment?
The psychologist John B. Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner conducted the Little Albert Experiment. John B. Watson was an American Psychologist known for Waston’ Behaviorism. Watson argued that psychology shouldn’t be defined as a science of consciousness.
What did Watson observe about the White Rat?
Watson observed that Albert’s fear for the white rat transferred to other stimuli like Santa Claus mask, dog, cotton wool, etc. Thus, the conclusion of little Albert experiment was that humans could be conditioned for certain emotional responses. Further, these emotional responses could be transferred to other stimuli.
Why did John B Watson study Albert?
John B Watson conducted the little Albert study to show that humans could be classically conditioned for certain emotional responses. In this experiment, Watson and his colleague Rosalie Rayner exposed nine-month-old little Albert to a white rat. Initially, the infant did not show any sign of fear of white rats.
What did John Watson discover about the Little Albert experiment?
Watson and his student Rosalie Rayner. In John Watson’s experiment with little Albert, he demonstrated that emotional responses could be classically conditioned in humans. In other words, classical conditioning ...
Why did Watson and Rayner not research the removal of the conditioned emotional responses?
Both Watson and Rayner could not research the removal of the conditioned emotional responses. This is because both Little Albert and his mother left the hospital. Still, Watson and Rayner suggested certain ways in which such conditioned emotional responses could die out.
Why was Albert harmed during the experiment?
This is because he was classically conditioned to fear white rats, and such fear did not exist earlier in baby Albert. This could also have resulted in Albert suffering for his entire life.
Who was Little Albert?
Initially, researchers believed that Little Albert was actually a young man named Douglas Merritte, a child with hydrocephalus. Merritte passed at the age of six, and if he was "Little Albert," some believe the emotional stress suffered at the hands of Watson and Rayner contributed to his end.
Why did Albert's mother allow Watson to use her child in his experiment?
One theory as to why Albert's mother allowed Watson to use her child in his experiment is that she worked at the hospital where the experiments took place.
How did Watson and Rayner train Albert to fear the rat?
Watson and Rayner concluded that they could train Albert to fear the rat by making noise, though this conclusion was far from objective.
Why did Watson choose a baby?
Modern scholars believe Watson specifically chose a baby for his experiment who was more passive than active. One theory claims that Albert suffered from a neurological disorder, and that in the film footage of the experiment, he's "alarmingly unresponsive.". Even if Albert did not have such a disorder, he displayed antisocial behavior.
Why didn't Watson and Rayner have time to extinguish Albert's fears?
Supposedly, the duo didn't have time to extinguish the child's fears because Albert's mother left town the moment the study was finished.
What did Watson know about Albert?
Watson May Have Known About And Hid Albert's Poor Health. According to Watson, the child used in the Little Albert experiment was a normal, docile child who could represent the "children of the world.". Watson wrote in 1920:
What is the purpose of scientific experiment?
Essentially, other scientists should be able to step into the laboratory and find similar results. Rather than employing these experimentation methods, Watson and Rayner carried out their experiment on only one child without any means to objectively evaluate his reactions.
What were Albert B.'s stimuli?
In order to see if Albert was afraid of certain stimuli, he was presented with a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, a dog, masks with and without hair, and white cotton wool. Albert's reactions to these stimuli were closely observed. Albert was interested in the various animals and objects and would reach for them and sometimes touch them, but he never showed the slightest fear of any of them. Since they produced no fear, these are referred to as neutral stimuli.
What was Watson's goal in his study?
Watson had two fundamental goals in this study and in all his work: (a) to demonstrate that all human behavior stems from learning and conditioning and (b) to demonstrate that the Freudian conception of psychology, that our behavior stems from unconscious processes, was wrong. This study, with all its methodological flaws and serious breaches of ethical conduct (to be discussed shortly) succeeded to a large extent in convincing a great portion of the psychological community that emotional behavior could be conditioned through simple stimulus-response techniques. This finding helped, in turn, to launch one of the major schools of thought in psychology: behaviorism. Here, something as complex, personal, and human as an emotion was shown to be subject to conditioning, just as a rat in a maze learns to find the food faster and faster on each successive try. A logical extension of this is that other emotions, such as anger, joy, sadness, surprise, or disgust, may be learned in the same manner. In other words, the reason you are sad when you hear that old song, nervous when you have a job interview or a public speaking engagement, happy when spring arrives, or afraid when you hear a dental drill is that you have developed an association in your brain between these stimuli and specific emotions through conditioning. Other more extreme emotional responses, such as phobias and sexual fetishes, may also develop through similar sequences of conditioning. These processes are the same as what Watson found with little Albert, although usually more complex.
What did Watson say about rats?
Watson theorized that if a stimulus that automatically produces a certain emotion in you (such as fear) is repeatedly experienced at the same moment as something else, such as a rat, the rat will become associated in your brain with the fear . In other words, you will eventually become conditioned to be afraid of the rat. He maintained that we are not born to fear rats, but that such fears are learned through conditioning. This formed the theoretical basis for his most famous experiment, involving a subject named "Little Albert B."
What is Watson's 1920 article?
Watson's 1920 article continues to be cited in research in a wide range of fields, including parenting and psychotherapy. One potentially valuable study, examined the facial expressions of emotion in infants (Sullivan & Lewis, 2003). We know that facial expressions corresponding to specific emotions are consistent among all adults and across cultures. This study, however, extended this research to how such expressions develop in infants and what the various expressions mean at very young ages. A greater understanding of infants' facial expressions might be of great help in adults' efforts to communicate with and care for babies. The authors noted that their goal in their research was "to provide practitioners with basic information to help them and the parents they serve become better able to recognize the expressive signals of the infants and young children in their care" (Sullivan & Lewis, 2003). This study's use of Watson's findings offers us a degree of comfort in that his questionable research tactics with Little Albert, may, in the final analysis, allow for greater sensitivity and perception into the feelings and needs of infants.
Overview
The Little Albert experiment was a controlled experiment showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. The study also provides an example of stimulus generalization. It was carried out by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at Johns Hopkins University. The results were first published in the February 1920 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psych…
Method
The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child. For this study they chose a nine-month old infant from a hospital. The child was referred to as "Albert" for the experiment. Watson followed the procedures which Ivan Pavlov had used in his experiments with dogs.
Before the experiment, Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exp…
Subsequent events
Albert was about one year old at the end of the experiment, and he reportedly left the hospital shortly thereafter. Though Watson had discussed what might be done to remove Albert's conditioned fears, he had no time to attempt such desensitization with Albert, and it is thought likely that the infant's fear of furry things continued post-experimentally.
Watson later gave a series of weekend lectures describing the Little Albert study. One of these le…
Identifying Little Albert
According to some textbooks, Albert's mother worked in the same building as Watson and did not know the tests were being conducted. When she found out, she took Albert and moved away, letting no one know where they were going. A 2009 report, however, disputes that. The original report had stated that the baby's mother was a wet nurse at the hospital, who may have felt coerced and unable to turn down a request for her baby to be used in Watson's experiment.
Ethical considerations
The experiment today would be considered unethical according to the American Psychological Association's ethic code, and legislation has been passed to prevent such potentially harmful experiments. In the early 1970s, following widely publicized cases of research abuse, the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (NCPHS) was created to study issues surrounding the protection of humans in research. In 1979…
Criticisms
A detailed review of the original study and its subsequent interpretations by Ben Harris (1979) stated:
Critical reading of Watson and Rayner's (1920) report reveals little evidence either that Albert developed a rat phobia or even that animals consistently evoked his fear (or anxiety) during Watson and Rayner's experiment. It may be useful for modern learning theorists to see how the …
Further reading
• Weiten, Wayne (2001). Psychology: Themes & Variations. Belmont: Wadsworth Thomson Learning. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-534-36714-5.