Watson and Rayner

• Aim : to investigate if simple emotional responses such as fear can be acquired by classical conditioning.
• Procedure

  1. Single healthy 9 month old boy

  2. Little Albert emotional baseline test measured
• Session 1


  • Presented with NS - white rat, monkey, wooden blocks, dog, rabbit
  • Showed no fear response - reached out towards rat
  • Exposed to loud noise UCS= UCR of crying every time he reached for rat
• Session 2

  1. Exposed 5 times to loud noise and rat

  2. Tested with wooden blocks - no fear

  3. Repeated a week later
• Session 3


  Showed similar objects of rabbit and Santa mask - feared them stimulus generalisation
• Session 4


  Moved room to test if environmental affected- still afraid
• Session 5


  Tested month later - still feared objects
• Conclusion - easy to condition emotional response to NS generalisation
• Strengths of W and R

  • high levels of internal validity - wooden blocks used as control - show alberts responses were to the phobia, tested in different environments - show chance in Albert behaviour is due to conditioning
  • COUNTERPOINT - not all aspects controlled - dog pushed towards Albert, rabbit suddenly placed = startling
  • understand how phobias + sympitons are acquired- delevelpment of systemic designations and flooding = therapies
• Weaknesses of W and R

  • low population validity - only one healthy 9 month old boy - findings may not be generalisable to other cultures/ ages / gender