The Little Albert experiment was a famous psychology experiment conducted by behaviorist John B. Watson and graduate student Rosalie Rayner.
Psychologist John Watson conducted the Little Albert experiment. Watson is known for his seminal research on behaviorism, or the idea that behavior occurs primarily in the context of conditioning. He was a professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, and much of his research revolved around animal behavior.
This Albert was not brain-damaged and was easy-going, though (likely coincidentally, given how Albert's fears would diminish between sessions) he had an aversion to dogs! Albert died in 2007, without ever knowing of his early life in a hospital residence, or of his apparent part in psychology's history.
The outcome of John Watson's Little Albert experiment was that classical conditioning is possible in humans, since the boy learned to associate a neutral stimulus (white rat) with a fearful stimulus (loud bang) to be scared of the white rat.
In his most famous and controversial experiment, known today as the "Little Albert" experiment, John Watson and a graduate assistant named Rosalie Rayner conditioned a small child to fear a white rat. They accomplished this by repeatedly pairing the white rat with a loud, frightening clanging noise.
The Behavioral Psychologist B. F. Skinner's learning theory states that a person is exposed to a stimulus, which evokes a response, and then the response is reinforced (stimulus creates response, and then reinforcement). This finally leads to the human behavior conditioning.
Skinner developed behavior analysis, especially the philosophy of radical behaviorism, and founded the experimental analysis of behavior, a school of experimental research psychology.
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.
Watson had originally planned to decondition Albert out of his fear of rats, in order to demonstrate that conditioned fears could be eliminated. Albert was removed from the experiment by his mother prior to this happening, which means that the experiment left a child with a fear that he did not previously had.
Answer and Explanation: The Little Albert Experiment demonstrates a violation of the principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence in American Psychological Association Ethical Principles and Code of Conduct. This principle states that psychologists strive to benefit others in their work, and to do no harm.
After gaining permission from Albert's mother, the researchers decided to test the process of classical conditioning on a human subject – by inducing a further phobia in the child! Little Albert was a 9-month-old baby who was tested on his reactions to various neutral stimuli.
His real name was Douglas Merritte, and he was the son of Arvilla Merritte, who worked as a wet nurse at a campus hospital. After the experiment, Douglas was not deconditioned and it is unknown whether he ever overcame his fears. He died at age six from hydrocephalus, or water in the brain.
Because of his immediate and sudden departure, Watson and Rayner were never able to reverse the effects of Albert's fear conditioning through a process known as desensitization [1].
Our findings concur with the view that Watson and Rayner's conditioning procedure was largely ineffective, and that the relatively weak signs of distress that Albert does display in the film can be readily accounted for by such factors as sensitization and maturational influences.
“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 ...
He also started his own research and, in 2012, published his conclusions. According to him, little Albert was actually William Albert Barger, a normal child who lived a healthy life and died at the age of 88. He also disliked animals.
They verify that Merritte indeed had congenital hydrocephalus, and recounted in disturbing detail treatments the child was subjected to during his first year of life, including repeated cranial and lumbar punctures to reduce fluid buildup in the brain.
To test his theory, Pavlov set up an experiment in which he rang a bell shortly before presenting food to the dogs. At first, the dogs elicited no response to the bells. However, eventually, the dogs began to salivate at the sound of the bell alone.
What happened after "Little Albert" was classically conditioned to fear a tame, white rat? Stimulus generalization occurred; Albert responded with fear to other furry animals and fuzzy objects.
Abstract. John Watson was fascinated by the discoveries of psychoanalysis, but he rejected Freud's central concept of the unconscious as incompatible with behaviorism.
B.F Skinner, a leading 20th century psychologist who hypothesized that behavior was caused only by external factors, not by thoughts or emotions, was a controversial figure in a field that tends to attract controversial figures.
Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt (1832–1920) is known to posterity as the “father of experimental psychology” and the founder of the first psychology laboratory (Boring 1950: 317, 322, 344–5), whence he exerted enormous influence on the development of psychology as a discipline, especially in the United States.
The most famous of Skinner's inventions is commonly known as the “Skinner box,” a device designed to employ “operant conditioning”—the manipulation of behaviors through reinforcement.
For example, if students perform well on an assignment, they'll get an A. Or if they behave pleasantly to their peers, they're more likely to be included in social activities in the future.
According to Skinner, a child does not behave a certain way out of fear, obligation, respect, or even a sense of right and wrong. All behavior is a direct result of conditioning. Simply, people behave the way they do because they have been trained to do so. It sounds like house-breaking the family dog doesn't it?