John B. Watson's Little Albert Study

Ivan Pavlov was a russian scientist interested in studying how digestion works in mammals. Pavlov recorded and watched the dogs digestive process and how it works. While he conducted his studies watched and studied on how and why dogs create saliva, in other words “drool”. The mammals he observed, he recorded the information about dogs and their digestive process. While he was conducting studies to find what triggers dogs to salivate. It has been said that mammals produce saliva to help them break down food, so the conducting his studies while he was observing the dogs is that the dogs have a more far reaching drooling effect that he ever thought. With that being said it paved the way for a new theory about behavior and a new way to study humans.

Watson was an American psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism. He conducted the "Little Albert" experiment was a famous psychology experiment. Pavlov’s previous years works provided a basis for Watson’s (1913) idea that human emotions and behaviors, though biologically influenced, are mainly a bundle of conditioned responses. When Watson conducted the “Little Albert” study he and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner began to show how certain fears might be conditioned and the effect on people and how they react to them. “Little Albert” feared loud noises but not white rats that were presented at the time. When Watson and Rayner presented rat to Little Albert reached to touch it as any other kid at that age would because they are simply curious. Next they struck a hammer against a steel bar just behind his head and after several times of seeing the rat and hearing the loud noise, Albert burst into tears and began to cry as he saw the rat. Five days later, he had generalized this startled fear reaction to the sight of a rabbit, a dog, and a sealskin coat. For years people wondered whatever happened came about of Little Albert. In today’s society the treatment of Little Albert would be unacceptable in today’s ethical

Skinner was one of the most influential of American psychologists. A behaviorist, he developed the theory of operant conditioning. His idea of operant conditioning is that behavior is determined by its consequences, be they reinforcements or punishments, which make it more or less likely that the behavior will occur again. B.F. Skinner “I am sometimes asked, ‘Do you think of yourself as you think of the organisms you study?’ The answer is yes. So far as I know, my behavior at any given moment has been nothing more than the product of my genetic endowment, my personal history, and the current setting” (1983) page 263. dogs should have simply began drooling when presented with