John B Watson Research Paper

John B. Watson is unique especially to the time he lived in because he took a completely different approach in the psychology world. Instead of studying the impact of internal factors he concentrated on what he could see: behavior, or what people do. Watson studied the ways in which the environment places a role in human behavior. Watson came up with the process of classical conditioning which would explain all human psychology. Watson believed that individual behavior differences were based on different ways of learning. Classical conditioning theory was that two stimuli could be paired together to produce a newly learned response in a person or animal. Classical conditioning can be broke down into three stages: before conditioning, during conditioning, and after conditioning. In stage one: before conditioning, the stimulus in the environment has caused a reaction that was not taught or learned but was an instinct. At this point, there is no new behavior learned. Also within this stage, another stimulus is used that has no effect on the individual. In stage two: during conditioning,

Watson applied classical conditioning by demonstrating that he could create fear in an infant. He performed this conditioning on a nine-month-old infant known only as Little Albert. Like any other infant, Little Albert was frightened by loud noises. Watson had loud noises as an unconditioned stimulus and which would bring fear as an unconditioned response. When Little Albert was first shown a white rat, he was curious and unafraid. This made the white rat a neutral stimulus since there was no response. Watson would then make loud noises and show the white rat to Little Albert multiple times. Eventually, Watson stopped making the loud noise and would just show the white rat. Just bringing out the white rat made Little Albert fearful. This was a conditioned stimulus which was a learned response or