Born in the early winter of 1878, in South Carolina, Johnny Boy’s mother gave birth to a miniscule, pink infant. She dubbed him with the name of a Baptist preacher, hoping he would grow up to adhere to her religious beliefs. Little did she know that not only would he grace the stage of modern psychology with his research, but also completely reject any and all forms of religion. Despite this, he may most certainly be one of the most influential psychologists in history due to his groundbreaking experiments and articles that shaped behaviorism to perform how it does today. Generally speaking, psychology prior to his breakthroughs was sparsely decorated with evidence supporting his claims. When Watson published his views on psychology, most of his peers laughed it off. For some reason, people were having a hard time believing his “observable traits” perspective. Given psychology was always seen as inside the brain, he really had to think outside of the box for this one. However, he pursued. It wasn’t until this son of a gun decided to conduct the Little Albert Experiment that people’s heads started turning. …show more content…
For nine month old Douglas Merritte, it sure was. Watson gave him a small, white rat to play with, and then repeatedly made loud clanging noises. Merritte soon learned that white and cute meant “scary” and “awful.” This experiment was considerably controversial—mainly because Watson never deconditioned the poor kid. However, if he never experimented with this, psychologists today would be stuck trying to figure out if instinctive fears carry on for generations. He did the unthinkable with little to no thought to criticism, and made a name for