TOPIC: LITTLE ALBERT’S EMOTIONAL CONDITIONING EXPERIMENT
INTRODUCTION
In the 1920s, a new movement in psychology known as behaviorism, spearheaded by Pavlov and Watson, began to take hold. The behaviorist viewpoint was radically opposed to the psychoanalytic school and proposed that behavior is generated outside the person through various environmental or situational stimuli. Therefore, Watson theorized, emotional responses exist in us because we have been conditioned to respond emotionally to certain stimuli in the environment. In other words, we learn our emotional reactions. Watson believed that all human behavior was a product of learning and conditioning, as he proclaimed in his famous statement of 1913:
Give me a dozen healthy infants, …show more content…
Watson was a science that used repeated, observable human activity to develop hypotheses that would eventually predict and control responses. He 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 would 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." Through repeated experiments, Watson developed a thorough knowledge of what he defined as base human reactions. Stanley Resor, then president of J. Walter Thompson Agency, hired Watson to promote a partnership between advertising and science, and the subsequent 15 years of Watson’s career included some notable scientific contributions. This study shows that though these outcomes may not have provided many measurable positive results, they set into motion industry-wide change that continued to develop until the present. The study also argues that though behavioristic principles may not have found solid footing in a mass media environment, the current networked communication state provides much more fertile ground for analysing message receivers …show more content…
The researchers and the hospital staff stated that he was very healthy, emotionally and physically. 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. The next phase of the experiment involved determining if a fear reaction could be produced in Albert by exposing him to a loud noise. All humans, and especially all infants, will exhibit fear reactions to loud, sudden noises. Since no learning is necessary for this response to occur, the loud noise is called an unconditioned stimulus. In this study, a steel bar four feet in length was struck with a hammer behind Albert. This noise startled and frightened him and made him
INTRODUCTION
In the 1920s, a new movement in psychology known as behaviorism, spearheaded by Pavlov and Watson, began to take hold. The behaviorist viewpoint was radically opposed to the psychoanalytic school and proposed that behavior is generated outside the person through various environmental or situational stimuli. Therefore, Watson theorized, emotional responses exist in us because we have been conditioned to respond emotionally to certain stimuli in the environment. In other words, we learn our emotional reactions. Watson believed that all human behavior was a product of learning and conditioning, as he proclaimed in his famous statement of 1913:
Give me a dozen healthy infants, …show more content…
Watson was a science that used repeated, observable human activity to develop hypotheses that would eventually predict and control responses. He 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 would 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." Through repeated experiments, Watson developed a thorough knowledge of what he defined as base human reactions. Stanley Resor, then president of J. Walter Thompson Agency, hired Watson to promote a partnership between advertising and science, and the subsequent 15 years of Watson’s career included some notable scientific contributions. This study shows that though these outcomes may not have provided many measurable positive results, they set into motion industry-wide change that continued to develop until the present. The study also argues that though behavioristic principles may not have found solid footing in a mass media environment, the current networked communication state provides much more fertile ground for analysing message receivers …show more content…
The researchers and the hospital staff stated that he was very healthy, emotionally and physically. 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. The next phase of the experiment involved determining if a fear reaction could be produced in Albert by exposing him to a loud noise. All humans, and especially all infants, will exhibit fear reactions to loud, sudden noises. Since no learning is necessary for this response to occur, the loud noise is called an unconditioned stimulus. In this study, a steel bar four feet in length was struck with a hammer behind Albert. This noise startled and frightened him and made him