Watson and Rayner

• Aim: to investigate if a human child could learn to be afraid of a previously neutral stimulus through classical conditioning, which initially caused no fear response and whether this reaction can be generalised to similar objects.
• Albert started the study

  9 months
• Findings: albert showed the same fear response of crying to other white, furry objects.
• Albert began conditioning


  11 months
• Testing at 9 months

  1. Shown white rat

  2. Shown rabbit

  3. Shown cotton wool

  4. Shown other stimuli

  5. Checked for fear response
• Neutral stimuli showed no fear response
• Conclusion: as he showed a fear response to other white, furry objects, this suggests that there was a generalisation of responses.  The study confirmed that a phobia of an object that was not previously feared could be learned, which supported Watson and Rayner’s original aim. They also proposed that, because the fear response was evident a month after the initial conditioning took place, such conditioned emotional responses could last a long time.
• Testing at 9 months

  1. Shown iron rod

  2. Albert cried
• Unconditioned stimulus


  Iron rod
• One strength of this study is that various things in the study were carefully selected and controlled for. For example, Albert was selected due to his emotional stability, making it less likely that an anxious temperament could affect the results. Furthermore, the procedure always took place in a well-controlled room where other stimuli such as external noise could not affect the conditioning. This design makes it likely that the changes in Albert’s behaviour were due to the conditioning, rather than extraneous variables supporting this stimulus-response link.
• Conditioning at 11 months

  1. Shown rat (neutral stimulus)

  2. Paired with banging of iron bar (unconditioned stimulus)
• Neutral stimulus (rat) paired with unconditioned stimulus


  Rat became conditioned stimulus, crying became conditioned response
• A weakness of the study is that it only had a single participant. Little Albert may have been unusual compared to other children, as he was described as rarely being afraid or crying. The results may have been affected by his unique characteristics, as his identity is also confidential, we have no way of seeing how representative of a child’s learning he is. the results therefore may have been affected by his unique participant variables, and we cannot generalise the findings to adults or women.