Psychology4u
The Case of Little Albert – Watson and Rayner 1920
Aims:
- Is it possible to classically condition humans with a steel bar
- The effect of time on conditioning
- Fear being transferred – can it be generalized?
Procedure and Method:
Watson and Rayner chose Albert to take part in their study. He had been reared from birth in a hospital because his mother was a wet nurse.
Albert was a health child and was unemotional, so they believed their study could do him little harm.
(This would affect the conclusions as Little Albert was relatively fearless)
Rather than this being seen as a case study, it is an experiment, it was well controlled and there was careful manipulation of the IV.
Watson and Rayner started to see fear reactions when he was around 9 months, they introduced him to a rabbit, white rat, and cotton wool and there was no fear.
However, when the researchers banged a steel bar with a hammer, they found a fear response; Little Albert was startled in to a crying fit. This was the first time the baby had cried in the Labs.
The researcher knew that it was unethical but they knew Albert would face worrying situations in nursery and they waited until he was 11 months old before proceeding.
The researchers re-presented the objects and as he reached for the white rat, on the third time the hammer and steel bar sounded and Albert violently shook. This was repeated several times, this made Albert scared of the white rat.
Also when re-faced with the other objects, Albert acted in a negative manor to the rabbit, cotton wool, Santa mask, etc…
At 11 months and 20 days the researchers reintroduced the rat and Albert’s response was less negative than previously marked, they realized the association had weakened so they renewed it.
When Albert was 1 year and 21 days the final part of the experiment took place, the researchers concluded that the conditioned emotional reactions lasted longer than one month, though they did become a little bit weaker.
On the day when he was 1year and 21 days old Albert was taken from the hospital and the researchers couldn’t remove the conditioned emotional responses, they felt the responses would last a lifetime.
However, overtime they managed to weaken the feelings towards these objects.
Conclusions: A conditioned emotional response can occur in humans after only a few pairings of stimuli, the pairings might have to be repeated. The conditioned response can be transferred to other similar objects.
Evaluation of the little Albert study by Watson and Rayner 1920
The experiment was well designed and controlled, e.g. the IV each time was clear and the DV was measures and recorded carefully.
The study showed that Pavlov’s ideas about classical conditioning could be said to be true.
It was not ethical because Albert was distressed throughout and even though he was distressed the study lasted weeks.
The settings was a lab and therefore artificial, it lacked ecological validity and perhaps validity of the task altogether.