Little+Albert

= __** John B. Watson via Little Albert **__ =

[|Short video of Little Albert's Experiment]


 * Watson wanted to develop techniques to allow him to “‘condition and control them emotions of human subjects.’” His famous study for this was called the Little Albert Experiment in 1920 which he theorized that children have three basic emotional reactions: fear, rage, and love. He wanted to prove that these three reactions could be artificially conditioned in children (Watson, 1999).
 * Watson used a little boy named Albert who was nine months old to test his theory. At first when Little Albert saw the rat, he looked interested and unafraid. But then Watson repeatedly presented Little Albert a rat along with a sudden, loud noise to classically condition fear of the rat; which was successful in the end. The goal was to condition Albert to fear a white rat by paring the white rat with a loud bang (UCS). Initially, Albert showed no fear of rats, but once the rat was repeatedly paired with the loud noise (UCS), Albert developed a fear of rats. The noise (UCS) induced fear (UCR). After pairings between the loud noise (UCS) and the rat (CS), Albert started to fear the rat.  Watson’s experiment suggested that classical conditioning could cause some phobias (Bauer & Maracich, 2003).
 * Albert was conditioned fear of a white rat by being repeatedly presenting it paired with the loud "clanging" of a metal bar. Not only was Little Albert now scared of the rat but his conditioned fear lead to the fear of other white furry objects, including a Santa mask and Watson's own white hair (Tartakovsky, 2012).
 * Unfortunately there was a problem with Watson’s experiment with Little Albert. Go to “Major Objection” on the side menu for further information.