AO1 and AO2

• aim was to demonstrate that principle of classical conditioning can be used to explain phobic behaviours
• it is a case study with lab procedures
• albert was 9 months old and was given different stimuli
• he only showed fear to loud noises which is the unconditioned stimulus
• 2 months later he was given a white rat but when he went to touch it a steel bar was struck
• process of the steel bar was repeated 5 times and twice more 17 days later
• short time after he was shown the rat on its own and his response was recorded
• they found that by the third time Albert avoided the rat
• found that 7 weeks after the experiment they showed him an object that resembled a white rat and he showed fear
• this study concludes that it is possible to produce a fear response to previously unfeared objects in a human using classical conditioning
• also shows that it is possible for the fear to generalise to other objects that have a similarity to the conditioned stimulus