Learning approach - Classic study Little Albert

Who performed the Little Albert study?

Watson and Raynor (1920)

What was the aim of the Little Albert study?

- See how principals of CC could be used to explain phobic behaviours

- To see if fear could be generalised to other similar stimuli

- To see if fear could be generalised to different environments

- To show that fear can be created within a young child to a stimulus which does not naturally produce fear

Why was Albert chosen?

- Easy access to child who's mun worked in hospital where study was held

- He was an unemotional child. This is because they didn't want a naturally fearful child as they wanted to condition it

Describe the Little Albert conditioning stage procedure.

- Rat is paired with loud noise causing him to fall forward and cry

- Repeated till he would cry when he saw the rat

Describe the Little Albert preconditioning procedure.

- Tested to see what caused him fear (loud noise)

- Tested reaction to stimuli including dog, rat and fire (liked rat most)

Describe the Little Albert generalising the conditioning stage.

- He was exposed to some objects similar to the rat like a rabbit, fur coat and santa mask

- He would cry and move away from these stimuli

Describe how they tested the longevity of Little Albert's phobia.

A few days later they exposed him to same stimuli, at first he had a lesser response but then it increased

Also took him to lecture theatre to see if the reaction would decrease but was same

Give the CC stages of the Little Albert study.

UCS → UCR

Loud noise → fear

UCS + NS → UCR

Loud noise + animals → fear

CS → CR

Animals → fear

What was the conclusion of the Little Albert study?

That is was possible to create a phobia due to CC

What happened to Little Albert in the end?

His mother moved away before Watson and Raynor had a chance to desensitise him and remove his phobia

Evaluate the ethics of the Little Albert study.

- Unclear how much Albert's mother knew about the experiment when she consented for his participation

- W&R had no chance to return him back to his pre-phobic state so he was left with a phobia

- Albert was deliberately made afraid (caused psychological harm)

Evaluate the reliability of the Little Albert study.

+ Same location each time to make a controlled environment (small room in a hospital)

+ Same tools to create fear and associate fear with

+ Picked child that was not naturally afraid to ensure all fear was from the conditioning

+ Moved him to a lecture theatre to ensure fear was not a result of confined environment

+ Preconditioning phase measured all his ordinary reactions to highlight changes as a result of conditioning

Describe the validity of the Little Albert study.

- Ecological validity - study set in a lab so not normal environment where learning occurs

+ Internal validity - strict controls (see reliability)

Describe the generalisability of the Little Albert study.

- Only 1 pp so small sample (could be due to indiv diff)

- Albert also baby boy so findings may not be applicable to adults or older people

Describe the applications of the Little Albert study.

+ Demonstrated how phobias are learned by CC

+ Knowing how phobias develop helps us know how to treat them (systematic desensitisation)