THE LITTLE ALBERT EXPERIMENT BY J.B WATSON

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One of the most famous psychological experiments carried out in the core of the behaviorism school of thought is THE LITTLE ALBERT EXPERIMENT by John B. Watson and his student Rosalie Rayner. Prior to this experiment Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov carried out an experiment to demonstrate the process of conditioning using dogs. J.B. Watson was interested in taking Ivan Pavlov research further to demonstrate that emotional reaction in humans could be classically condition.
                The little Albert experiment simply show case to us how the principle of classical conditioning can be used to condition an emotional response in humans by simply paring a neutral stimulus which is white rat in this case with  an unconditional stimulus which is in this case a loud noise that was created by striking a metal pipe.
                The participant in the little Albert experiment was a child that Watson and  called Albert B, whom the experiment was named after. At about the age of nine month Watson and Rayner exposed the child to various stimuli which include white rat, monkey, burning newspaper and mask. Albert did not exhibit any fear towards any of the object which he was shown by Watson and Rayner.      
                On the next presentation of the stimuli(white rat) to Albert, Watson made a loud noise by strucking a metal pipe  with a hammer. Naturally Albert began to cry on hearing the loud noise made by Watson. After Watson and Rayner has repeatedly associate the white rat with the loud noise, Albert simply began to cry after seeing the white rat. The instant the rat was shown to Albert, he began to cry almost instantaneously turn shortly to the left and fell on his left side raise himself with all force and began or crawl away.

Critiques of the little Albert experiment
                Although the little Albert experiment seems to be one of the most famous experiment in the field of psychology and is included in virtually all the introductory psychology courses, it has also widely receive critiques due to several reasons.
1.       Lack of objectivity: Watson and Rayner  rely on their subjective interpretation of  Albert reaction instead of developing an objective way of evaluating Albert reactions. Also the design of the experiment and the process were not carefully conducted.
2.       The experiment raised many ethical issues; if it was to be conducted in recent times it will be totally unethical to do so.


Author:  Awujoola  Olaoluwa

credits: credits goes to Kendra Cherry, psychology.about.com as a huge amount of quote use in this article was from her work.

photo credits: migna.ir
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