Watson & Rayner Paper - work PDF

Preview

Summary

work...

Description

Watson and Rayner Paper John Watson lead a study known as “Little Albert” with the help of an infant named Albert. Watson’s purpose of this study was to test conditioned emotional reactions and that emotion can be taught and learned. Classical Conditioning is when two stimuli are joined together resulting in new learned behavior. Watsons goal was to teach Albert to fear rats. However, Alberts did not fear the rat instead he tried to reach for it. In order to achieve his goal, Watson tried various amounts of things and kept record of them. He figured out that Albert was afraid of loud noises by hanging up a bar from the ceiling and hitting it, which lead to Albert crying. Watson would trick Albert into being afraid of the rat by interacting the rat with the loud noise. Therefore, whenever Watson revealed the rat to Albert, he made a loud noise by hitting the bar and caused Albert to cry. As a result, every time Albert saw the rat he would start to cry even without hearing a loud noise. Generalization is the reaction to different yet similar stimuli in the same way. Little Alberts case was a great example for this. Due to the fact that Watson lead Albert to be afraid of white rats, Albert was instantly afraid of anything white or furry like the Santa Claus mask or the fur coat. The fur coat and Santa Claus mask were different from the rat however it was similar so when Albert would see these items his reaction would be the same as if he were seeing a white rat. Many people were against Watson for using Albert for his study because he guided Albert to be frightened. To avoid this criticism Watson could’ve tried other methods such as associating the rat with things besides fear. For example, instead of hitting a bar and creating a loud noise, Watson could’ve associated the rat with a small chime. This wouldn’t of cause an obnoxious

noise yet still would’ve gotten Alberts attention. By doing this Albert wouldn’t be afraid of such things as Santa Clause or a fur coat because of their similarity to rats....