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John B Watson's Theory Of Classical Conditioning

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Classical conditioning focuses on using a conditioned response to change behavioural reaction. I will start of by discussing the theory of behaviourism by elaborating more on the theory and how it came about, with evidence on how Watson applied Ivan Pavlov’s theory under his. It will be followed up by the experiment performed on a baby boy called little Albert and then I will finally state the ethical views about classical conditioning on humans. John. B, Watson led the development of behaviourism as a distinctive approach to psychology. As Watson was the President of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in 1915, he stopped studying about consciousness. He believed that consciousness could not be studied, instead he insisted …show more content…

Watson wanted to prove that children whenever they hear a loud noises because of fear, this was due to an unconditioned response. He therefore felt that usually wouldn’t be feared by a child. Watson and Rayner decided to carry this experiment on an emotionally sable child. That child was little Albert he was exposed to a white laboratory rat, dog, monkey, and other furry stimuli. As he was exposed to all these different stimuli, little Albert showed no symptoms of fear, instead he ended up reaching out to the rat that kept crawling around him, after several times of repetition, little Albert was very comfortable with the rat, as he was playing, Watson hit a steel bar with a hammer behind little Albert which made a very loud noise that scared little …show more content…

After they repeated this stimulus, little Albert was again presented with a rat, this stressed him a lot and he began to cry, trying fiercely to move away from the rat. This proves how little Albert has associated the rat with the loud noise and he’d respond to this motion by crying. Little Albert in the end has generalized furry objects to a loud sound. So basically Watson used a neutral stimulus which was the rat and little Albert didn’t show any fear towards it, then he used an unconditioned stimulus of the steel bar, that’s when little Albert responded with fear which is the unconditioned response. (University of Florida). This experiment was a controlled experiment showing evidence of classical conditioning in humans. Watson conditioned little Albert with furry

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