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Classical Conditioning: John B. Watson And Rosalie Rayner

925 Words4 Pages

Little Albert was the fabricated name given to an unknown 9-month-old infant who was subjected to an experiment in classical conditioning by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner at John Hopkins University, in 1920. The objective of the experiment conducted by Watson was to induce phobias in an emotionally stable child, through the process of conditioning. The experiment could not be conducted by today’s standards in psychology because it broke the ethical rules for psychological research those being the lack of informed consent from the subject or his mother and the prime principle of “do no harm”. According to the American Psychological Association (APA) code of conduct, subjects have to be given as much information about the study as possible …show more content…

The experiment uses basic research for the simple fact that it doesn’t do anything with the real world; you can’t conduct such an experiment in real life. Also, one of the definitions of basic research is that it aims to explain, predict, and describe fundamental bases of behavior, which is exactly what Watson wanted to do. Surely Watson and Rayner knew of the risks they were taking, conducting an experiment on such an infant. They knew it would have future, negative consequences, but still they went on with it just for the sake of proving a point of view. However, was proving a hypothesis worth hurting the psychological well-being of an innocent child, one that had absolutely no choice on what was conducted on him? I don’t think so! The American Psychological Association (APA) has well developed codes of ethics which any practicing psychologists have to adhere to. The core concern is to focus on the quality of research, the professional competence of the researcher and of the greatest importance, the welfare of human and animal subjects. At the time of Watson and Rayner’s experiment, there were no such guidelines or

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This is something that the subject is going through they are being deceived on a emotional level, as they were not informed about the study directly, in this case it is unethical as the subjects privacy and rights have been violated as the experiment denies that on part of the subject , lacking in consideration for the subjects welfare and emotional well being from the experimenter. Action and Competence of researchers:when one is conducting a test ,they must conduct themselves in an ethical behavioural manner,eg when working with others they should not be biased. They should be able to justify themselves in a justifiable manner as well as be able to conduct themselves with sufficient knowledge about what they were researching. Although the Behavioural Study of obedience in my opinion was not ethical in many ways the results were proven to be precise and concluded with the desired

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Alex was conditioned to react in a passive manner when confronted with any action that could be considered ultra-violence. Classical conditioning experiments have been performed on humans with a large degree of success. One of the most notable and most controversial classical conditioning experiments done on humans was Watson’s “Little Albert” experiment. This experiment was conducted to test the fear response in humans. The experiment started off by introducing Albert to several animals, a white rat, monkey, bunny and a dog (Creelan).

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A lot of research is considered “ethically questionable” in the world of psychology. In order to get answers scholars have gone to extreme measures to gather information. Many of which are very controversial but where do we draw the line? The main concern is the safety and well being of participants. Stanley Milgram (1963) is infamous for his methods of study, he is known for his obedience experiments.

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Little Albert Experiment: A Case Study Of The Little Albert Experiment

2094 Words | 9 Pages

He wanted to test the notion that by following the principles of the procedure now known as "classical conditioning", he could use this unconditioned response to condition a child to fear a distinctive stimulus that normally would not be feared by a child (in this case, furry objects). Method Edit The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child.[1] For this study they chose a nine-month old infant from a hospital referred to as "Albert" for the experiment.[2] Watson followed the procedures which Pavlov had used in his experiments with dogs.[3] Before the experiment, Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks (with and without hair), cotton, wool, burning newspapers, and other stimuli.

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. . If a human being is being experimented upon, he is likely to know it. Therefore, his attitudes toward the experiment and toward the experimenters become very important factors in determining his responses to the situation"(cf. also Dickson and Roethlisberger, 1966, and Bishop and Hall, 1971). This concept of influence upon an experiment through the experiment itself was found either erroneous or misleading by Cook and Campbell (1976), Katz and Kahn(1966),Parsons(1974),and Rubeck (1975).

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