Little Albert

• Aim:

  • provide experimental evidence for classical conditioning of emotional responses in infants
  • To see if an infant could be conditioned to fear an animal that appears simultaneously with a loud, fear arousing sound
  • To see if fear could transfer to other animals and inanimate objects
  • To see how long these fears persist
• Findings

  • Albert’s fear generalised to other stimuli that were similar to the rat, including a fur coat, some cotton wool and a Santa mask
• Methodological limitations: The study is often cited as evidence that phobias can develop through classical conditioning. How ever crits have questioned whether conditioning actually occurred due to a methodological flaws
• The study didn't have control for pseudoconditioning the loud noise may have simply sensitised Albert to be fearful of every novel stimulus
• It didn't have control for maturation- Albert was 11 months old initially but the test was at 12 months, fears emerge naturally overtime in infants so maturation could account for Albert’s actions
• • Albert’s reactions were inconsistent and the conditioned fear was weakHe showed little distress to the rat in later tests suggesting that the conditioning was not very effective or durable
• Other limitations included no control subject and no objective measurement for the fear response in Little Albert
• As this was an experiment of one individual, the findings cannot be generalised to others. Albert had been reared in a hospital environment from birth and he was unusual as he had never been seen to show fear or rage by staff. Therefore, Little Albert may have responded differently in this experiment to how other young children may have, these findings therefore will be unique to him.
• There was no informed consent obtained from Albert’s parents. They were misled about the true aims of the research and did not know that their child would be intentionally frightened. This represents the lack of transparency and a violation of personal autonomy
• Intentionally inducing a fear response in an infant is concerning from a non-maleficience perspective , as it involved deliberate psychological harm.
• Watson and Rayner did not attempt to decondition or desensitise Albert to the fear response before the study ended abruptly. this meant that they did not remove psychological harm they had induced, violating the principal of beneficence
• Albert was left in a state of fear, which could have long-lasting developmental effects. Watson also published no follow up data on Albert’s later emotional development
• The little Albert experiment demonstrated that classical conditioning works in human beings. In this experiment, previously unafraid baby was conditioned to become afraid of a rat
• Classical conditioning plays a central role in the development of fear and associations. Some phobias may be due at least in part to classical conditioning