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John B Watson's Little Albert Experiment

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As Ivan Pavlov once stated, “Don’t become a mere recorder of facts but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin.” This quote captures the principal of the scientific method. To understand the “mysteries” going on around you, can help keep your brain and mind in top condition. There have been many compelling and groundbreaking experiments throughout the history of Psychology and I consider the “Little Albert” experiment to be the most captivating psychological experiments.
Accordingly, the classic case study of “Little Albert” experiment is interesting because the theory applied to humans emotional response during the experiment. The experiment was focused on furthering classical conditioning in humans like dogs could. Also, the experiment …show more content…

Watson (1878-1958). Previously, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov had conducted experiments to show the conditioning process in dogs. Watson was interested in taking Pavlov’s research forward to show that emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in humans. Moreover, John B. Watson was an American Psychologist who established the psychological school of behaviorism after doing research on animal behavior. Again, he was the conductor of the “Little Albert” experiment (“Early Life”). Watson grew up in Travelers Rest, South Carolina and attended Furman University in Greenville. He entered college at the age of 16 and graduated with a masters degree at the age of 21. Watson put the emphasis on the external behavior of humans and their reactions on given situations, rather than the internal, mental state of those people. In his opinion, the analysis of behaviors and reactions was the only objective method to get insight in the human actions. This outlook, combined with complementary ideas of determinism, evolutionary continuism, and empiricism has provided to what is now radical behaviorism. Watson’s most famous quote states, “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors

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Behavior therapy was studied by Ivan Pavlov and his famous dog study in which dogs were conditioned to salivate upon hearing a bell. It was later continued to be studied by John Watson who has the famous “Little Albert” study in which an 11-month old infant was conditioned to be scared of fuzzy white things because a rat was paired with a loud noise. The conclusion of the two conditioning experiences was that, behaviors followed by satisfying experiences tend to increase in frequency and behaviors followed by aversive experiences tend to decrease in frequency” (Thoma, 2015). Watson’s assistant Mary Jones, used this principle to clinical applications reasoning that, “if conditioning could be used to induce a phobia, perhaps it could be used to undo a phobia as well” (Thoma, 2015). Thus, behavior therapy was developed and began being used for

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Watson’s theory has four key principles that are affected by her ten carative factors and caritas processes. These principles are human being, health, environment and society, and nursing. Human being “is a valued person to be cared for, respected, nurtured, understood, and assisted; in general a philosophical view of a person as a fully functional integrated self. Human is viewed as greater than and different from the sum of his or her parts.” (Wayne, 2016)

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John B. Watson was an american psychologist who studied behavioralism and conditioning in the early 20th century. He is credited with the creation of Behaviorism, which is now a very prominent branch of psychology ("John Watson"). Watson is well known for his various published works and experiments. Watson achieved many things in his lifetime, most noticeably a gold medal from the American Psychological Association for his contributions to Psychology (Weiland). He overcame many personal issues in his life, which led him to be a better psychologist.

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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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John B. Watson, a behavioral psychologist, believed love was a natural emotion that grew

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This experiment will change the way Psychologist’s work. It will be as guidelines regarding the treatment of research participants. Present and future psychological experiments should not use deception to attract the people to participate in it and they should not bring harm to the

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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

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The Little Albert experiment was a case study showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. The study also provides an example of stimulus generalization. It was carried out by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at Johns Hopkins University. The results were first published in the February 1920 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. After observing children in the field, Watson hypothesized that the fearful response of children to loud noises is an innate unconditioned response.

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Introduction Learning enables you as an individual, to gain more knowledge about something which you have never learned about. Learning also has to do with past experiences which are influenced by behavioural changes (Weiten, 2016). There are different types of ways to learn; through, classical conditioning, operant conditioning and observational learning which will be discussed and analysed in the essay.   Behaviourism Behaviourism is considered one of the main subjects in psychology and the two main people who founded behaviourism were, Burrhus Frederic Skinner, also known as B.F Skinner and Ivan Pavlov who were famous for the work they did on classical and operant conditioning (Moderato & Presti, 2006). According to Moderato and Presti

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In 1920, Watson and Rayner used infant Albert B. “Little Albert” in an unprecedented experiment of conditioned fear (Watson & Rayner, 1920). Little Albert was discharged from the experiment as an infant and his real identity and welfare remained a mystery until Beck, Levinson & Irons published their identity findings in 2009 (Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009). According to Beck et al. (2009) , Little Albert (Douglas Merritte), had developed hydrocephalus after the study and died.

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For this paper, I chose to write about the Little Albert experiment The overall importance of this study was to discover if a human could be conditioned to develop a bias, fear, or generalized fear of an animal, object, or person based the stimuli placed around the involved person, animal or object. Watson & Rayner (1920) suggested that “in infancy the original emotional reaction patterns are few, consisting so far as observed of fear, rage and love, then there must be some simple method by means of which the range of stimuli which can call out these emotions and their compounds is greatly increased.” This means that before any conditioning occurs, the subject should have a pure response, but after minor and simple experimentation and conditioning,

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‘John Watson was one of the early American psychologists to break the Freudian notions that our unconscious mind was behind most of our behavior’ - Gary Gilles. John Watson was considered the ‘father’ of behaviourism, behaviorism is the scientific study of human behaviour (Schatzie, 2016). Watson was responsible for making Ivan Pavlov’s ideas and principles into part of a psychological norm by applying it to humans. He was impressed with Pavlov’s accurate measurement of observable behaviours and believed that Pavlov’s model could be extended towards diverse forms of learning and personality characteristics. Watson believed that the goal of psychology should be ‘the prediction and control of behavior’, meaning that one should be able to assume an upcoming behavioral action and ultimately learn how

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Link to reality: Both Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning and Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning can be used every day in an ECCE setting. Today many school systems and childhood authorities follow Skinner’s and Pavlov’s theory by using the approach of positive reinforcement. This encourages good behaviour in the child making the behaviour more likely to be repeated again as they are rewarded and praised for their efforts in reading, writing and general learning. It is important that children’s efforts in a learning setting are rewarded as this will encourage the child to perform to the best of their ability.

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John B. Watson Theory of behaviorism: The term behaviorism refers to the school of psychology founded by John B. Watson based on the belief that behaviors can be measured, trained, and changed. Behaviorism was established with the publication of Watson 's classic paper, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It (1913). Behaviorism, also known as behavioral psychology, is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment.

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In 1913, the behaviorist movement began with the studies of John Broadus Watson (1878-1958), a pioneering figure in the development of the psychological school of behaviorism. He published an article entitled ' 'Psychology as the behaviorist views it ' ' in which he had the impression that psychology shouldn 't deal with what the people say that they think or feel, in other words, he reduced and dehumanized the human mind and its consciousness. To put it differently, he asserted a claim that the study of the human mind would be concerned only with people 's actions and behavior. Watson 's work relied upon the experiments of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936), a Russian Nobel laureate psychologist who had worked on animals ' responses to conditioning. For instance, in his best-known experiment, Pavlov rang a bell and then gave a dog some food.

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