Watson And Rayner Phobia

A phobia is defined as a persistent and irrational fear of a particular stimulus or situation. The development of phobias is often explained by associative learning where repeated pairing of an unconditioned stimulus (US) and conditioned stimulus (CS) produces a conditioned fear response. Classical conditioning became the foundation of behaviourism, an area which focuses on how the environment and experiences shape our behaviour. Behaviourist Ivan Pavlov (1927) discovered dogs began to salivate in anticipation for food, however when the sound of a bell was presented prior to the presence of food, they began to associate the sound of the bell with food producing a salvation response, known as Pavlovian conditioning. Watson and Rayner (1920)

Watson and Rayner paired the sound of a hammer with the presence of a white rat. Despite Little Albert showing no aversion to the rat initially, the repeated association between the rat and the sound of the hammer resulted in Albert becoming evidently distressed by the presence of the rat, later developing into him fearing anything resembling the rat. Watson and Rayners research indicated that classical conditioning, previously only demonstrated by dogs, could be applied to humans in the context of phobias. However, successive attempts to replicate the findings of Watson and Rayner proved largely unsuccessful, questioning the reliability of their findings. Furthermore, classical conditioning has been criticised for ignoring individuals free will and the ability for humans to resist conditioning, therefore although their experiment was successful on an infant, the results may not necessarily be applicable to

For example, Herbert (1994) reported that 50% of adults with present phobias could not be explained by past experiences, therefore factors other than conditioning must be responsible for the development of phobias. Moreover, behaviourism largely ignores the significance of genetic inheritance in relation to phobias, exemplified by contemporary studies such as Kendler et al (1999) which estimated agoraphobia has a heritability rate of 67%. However, family studies fail to control shared environments and how behaviour may be transmitted by modelling. Behaviourists would argue that by observing a family member with agoraphobia, a phobia of open public spaces, this behaviour may be acquired through imitation. The theory put forward by Watson and Rayner provides a plausible explanation of the development of phobias, however neglects the importance of genetic factors and how phobias may be