john b. watson was the theorist in the little albert experiment.
john b. watson was the theorist in the little albert experiment.
in the little albert experiment who was the theorist?
john b. watson
one might consider the experiment watson and his assistant rosalie rayner carried out to be one of the most controversial in psychology in 1920. it has become immortalized in introductory psychology textbooks as the little albert experiment. the goal of the experiment was to show how principles of, at the time recently discovered, classical conditioning could be applied to condition fear of a white rat into "little albert", a 9-month-old boy. watson and rayner conditioned "little albert" by clanging an iron rod when a white rat was presented. first, they presented to the boy a white rat and observed that he was not afraid of it. second, they presented him with a white rat and then clanged an iron rod. "little albert" responded by crying. this second presentation was repeated several times. finally, watson and rayner presented the white rat by itself and the boy showed fear. later, in an attempt to see if the fear transferred to other objects, watson presented albert with a rabbit, a dog, and a fur coat. he cried at the sight of all of them. this study demonstrated how emotions could become conditioned responses. as the story of "little albert" has made the rounds, inaccuracies and inconsistencies have crept in, some of them even due to watson himself. analyses of watson's film footage of albert suggest that the infant was mentally and developmentally disabled. an ethical problem of this study is that watson and rayner did not uncondition "little albert". in 2009, beck and levinson found records of a child, douglas merritte, who seemed to have been little albert. they found that he had died from congenital hydrocephalus at the age of 6. thus, it cannot be concluded to what extent this study had an effect on "little albert"'s life. on 25 january 2012, tom bartlett of "the chronicle of higher education" published a report that questions whether john watson knew of cognitive abnormalities in little albert that would greatly skew the results of the experiment. in 2014, however, the journals that initially endorsed beck and fridlund's claims about albert and watson (the "american psychologist" and "history of psychology") published articles debunking those claims
john b. watson
it is difficult to be certain exactly what happened during the little albert experiment since concrete evidence and scientific records are lacking. though a film was shot during the experiment, textbooks interpret the movie differently. various sources give contradicting accounts of events that took place, and they raise questions about exactly what stimuli were used, which stimuli the baby came to fear, and what happened to the child after the experiment. it was said that most textbooks "suffer from inaccuracies of various degrees" while referring to watson and rayner's study. texts often misrepresent, exaggerate, or minimize the range of albert's post-conditioning fears.
little albert experiment