John B. Watson is known as one of the fathers of classical conditioning. His main intellectual reference was Pavlov, the Russian-born physiologist who made his first discoveries about packaging. Watson conducted a famous study, known as the Albert Small Experiment.
We’ll tell you the case in several parts. Ivan Pavlov conducted a famous experiment with dogs, it can be said that this was one of the most important paragraphs of the introductory chapter of what would be psychology as science, discovered the basics of the functioning of stimulus and response. and established the principles of what has been called “classic conditioning. “
- What Pavlov did with the dogs.
- Watson tried to replicate it in the experiment with little Albert.
- That is.
- He experimented with humans.
- In this case.
- He manipulated a baby to prove his theory.
Ivan Pavlov was a great researcher of nature. After studying various disciplines, he became interested in physiology, and it was precisely a physiological element that allowed him to discover conditioning from the pattern of stimulus and response.
Pavlov noticed the dogs salivating before they were given food. So you found out these animals, prepare,eating when the time comes. They tied him to the stimulus. This observation made him curious to begin his experiments. This is how he began to introduce different stimuli before serving food to the animals, in the form of a warning.
The most famous of these elements was a bell, even came to check that the dogs salivated when they heard the bell, they knew that this noise had preceded the arrival of their food, so they had conditioned the same. Situation. The sound, which was the stimulus, provoked an answer, a salivation.
John B. Watson was a radical positivist. He thought that human behavior should be studied exclusively from the behaviors learned, it made no sense for him to talk about genetic elements, unconsciousness or instincts, for him we only have to study observable behaviors.
Watson was a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. But it’s not the first time This is based on the idea that in every human being, most behaviors can be explained by our learning history, based on conditioning, so it seemed sensible to try to demonstrate that Pavlov’s conclusions could also be applied to humans.
Then, with her assistant, Rosalie Rayner, she went to an orphanage and chose an 8-month-old baby, was the son of one of the orphanage’s caregivers, even with this connection she lived in an environment where coldness dominated. it was completely quiet. That’s how Albert’s little experience was born.
In the first phase of little Albert’s experiment, several stimuli were presented to him, the goal was to observe which of them was scary. It has been proven that fear only manifests itself when it hears loud sounds, it was common to all children. Other than that, he showed no fear of animals or fire.
The test continued to induce fear of conditioning. The baby was presented with a white rat and wanted to play with it, however, in doing so, the researchers emitted a loud sound that frightened him, after repeating the same procedure several times, the baby was afraid of the rat. Animals were introduced, such as rabbits, dogs and even fur coats, in all cases the child was finally conditioned, I was afraid to see these elements.
The baby spent a long time being tested, Albert’s little experiment lasted almost a year, in the end the baby had gone from being very calm to practically living in a state of continuous anxiety, he was even afraid of a Santa mask. She forced him to touch the mask, which made him cry. Ultimately, the University expelled Watson for his controversial experience and also for starting an affair with his assistant.
The second phase of the experiment was to reverse conditioning; I mean, deconditioning, preconditioned fears. However, this has never been achieved, we do not know what happened to the baby after the famous experiment, however, a publication of the time reported that the child had died at the age of 6 from congenital hydrocephalus. the macabre experiment might be questioned.
However, little Albert’s experience is one of the most famous in the history of psychology, for the level of his assertions, for his conclusions, and mainly for having violated a set of rules of conduct that every researcher must respect today when conducting an investigation. Experience.