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CLASSIC STUDY - Learning - Watson and Rayner (1920) 'Little Albert:…
CLASSIC STUDY - Learning - Watson and Rayner (1920) 'Little Albert: Conditional emotional reactions'
AIM
To see whether Little Albert could be classically conditioned to be afraid of a stimulus he was originally unafraid of.
PROCEDURE
At 9 months old, he was tested to see whether he was afraid of a variety of stimuli. He was unafraid of a white rat but was afraid of the sound of a metal bar being banged.
When Albert was 11 months old, the researchers decided to classically condition him to be afraid of a white rat. Albert was shown the rat and when he reached out to it, a loud noise was made with a metal bar behind his head. This was repeated several times.
Little Albert was chosen for the study because he was an emotionally stable child who was not frightened. He was also familiar with the hospital environment as his mother worked there.
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Originally the rat is a neutral stimulus (NS) but once it begins to cause fear, it becomes a conditional stimulus (CS)
RESULTS
Little Albert showed a fear response to the rat on its own after a number of pairings of the rat and the banging bar over a period of a week.
At 11 months 15 days old, Little Albert was happy to play with some toy blocks but showed fear towards the rat. He also showed a negative response to a rabbit and a fur coat suggesting he had transferred his fear of the white rat onto similar objects.
CONCLUSION
This study showed that a Little Albert was classically conditioned to be afraid of a stimulus he was originally unafraid of. It also showed that conditional responses can be generalised to other similar objects.
EVALUATION
Generalisability: The study was carried out on only one boy so it is hard to generalise it to the wider population.
Reliability: This lab experiment had good controls and a procedure that would be easy to replicate. The researchers carefully observed and recorded Little Albert's responses to the stimuli, which makes it reliable.
Application to real life: This study can explain how humans learn phobias through association e.g. a child may be initially afraid of spiders but unafraid of going into a shed. However, they may become afraid of the shed after they see a spider in side the shed.
Validity: The study lacks ecological validity because it was an artificial situation. In real life, stimuli are not carefully paired together under controlled conditions as the white rat and banging bar were in this study.
Ethics: Little Albert was not protected from psychological harm. He was only 11 months old when he took part in the experiments and he was caused distress. E.g. he showed fear and cried when shown the white rat. They also did not extinguish his fear.
They also made sure Little Albert was not afraid of furry things and rats before the study. However, if the study was repeated with other children, it may be difficult to replicate the findings as other children might be afraid of a white rat but unafraid of a banging metal bar.