Little Albert Classical Conditioning

Phobia is defined as an overwhelming and irrational fear for an animal, thing or place; also it is described as a mechanism of defence before the torment that provokes the internal conflicts. The individual that develops a phobia has perceived a sense of danger in certain objects or situations. People with phobias do everything possible to avoid a perceived danger, which is much higher in their minds than in real life. It is believed that the model of classical conditioning studied by Pavlov has served to explain how people developed a phobic response. This essay will outline and critically analyse the classical conditioning description of how a phobia is obtained, while also describing other theories on the subject. Finally, it will examine …show more content…
This study, entitled as ‘Conditioned Emotional Reaction’, was the first experiment done in a recently born child of about nine months of age. The child named Albert was in perfect health and totally stable emotionally, and was an attempt to experiment on the baby and caused a little harm. The child was presented with various animals such as a monkey, a white rat, a rabbit with different aspects like without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, among others; showing no response to this, he was practical stable and friendly with all aspects. Then at the age of eleven months, the white rat, which was the conditioned stimulus, was presented and paired with a loud sound, striking an iron bar, in this case (unconditioned stimulus), and the process was repeated several times, until he was conditioned to fear the white rat, showing distressed behaviour such as whimpering, crying and avoiding the rat. The authors stated that this was a conditioned fear response, and the child began to fear objects that resembled the rat’s features, such as Santa Claus because of his white beard, fur coats, among others. After 31 days the conditioned response was still present, but with less intensity. Thus, it is proposed that many phobias have been gained in a similar …show more content…
Even though, this theory has some gaps and many scientists has been arguing about its limited explanation of classical conditioning, it is the most straightforward theory of all times. The strengths of this model are remarkable, and the contributions to the treatments that have been developed from this theory have been helping many people living in torment due to their phobias. Even though, there is still a lot to be studied in phobias these will likely remain as the most effective and trustworthy therapies that are used for many different types of phobias, leaving the next generations with a huge advance over the acquisition of phobias and their