who conducted the little albert study on conditioned fear
John B. Watson
title: Little Albert experiment text: Little Albert experiment The Little Albert experiment was a controlled experiment showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. The study also provides an example of stimulus generalization. It was carried out by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at Johns Hopkins University. The results were first published in the February 1920 issue of the "Journal of Experimental Psychology". After observing children in the field, Watson hypothesized that the fearful response of children to loud noises is an innate unconditioned response. He wanted to test the notion that by following the principles of the procedure now known title: Little Albert experiment text: article which states that the child was actually William (called Albert by his family) Barger, and that the child was, in fact, healthy. Little Albert experiment The Little Albert experiment was a controlled experiment showing empirical evidence of classical conditioning in humans. The study also provides an example of stimulus generalization. It was carried out by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, at Johns Hopkins University. The results were first published in the February 1920 issue of the "Journal of Experimental Psychology". After observing children in the field, Watson hypothesized that the fearful response of children to title: Little Albert experiment text: as "classical conditioning", he could use this unconditioned response to condition a child to fear a distinctive stimulus that normally would not be feared by a child (in this case, furry objects). The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child. For this study they chose a nine-month old infant from a hospital referred to as "Albert" for the experiment. Watson followed the procedures which Pavlov had used in his experiments with dogs. Before the experiment, Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exposed, briefly and for the title: Little Albert experiment text: experiment, and he reportedly left the hospital shortly thereafter. Though Watson had discussed what might be done to remove Albert's conditioned fears, he had no time to attempt such desensitization with Albert, and it is likely that the infant's fear of furry things continued post-experimentally. Watson later gave a series of weekend lectures describing the Little Albert study. One of these lectures was attended by Mary Cover Jones, which sparked her interest in pursuing graduate work in psychology. Jones conducted an experiment to figure out how to eliminate fear responses in children and studied a boy named Peter, who was title: Rosalie Rayner text: reflect an empirical environment, based on the belief that behaviors were not hardwired at birth, but instead were acquired through conditioning. Rayner and Watson claimed to have studied over 500 children, with the Little Albert experiment being their only attempt at a psychological experiment (it would not be categorised as an experiment today). The basis of their study was conditioning a 9-month old baby, referred to as "Albert", to fear a white rat, which had previously been a neutral stimulus. The fear was generalized to other white, furry stimuli, such as fur coats, rabbits, and a Santa Claus mask. The