Classic study - Watson & Rayner 1920

Who was ‘Little Albert’ and why was he recruited for the study?

• A baby boy aged 9 months at the start of the study and 11 months when the conditioning began.

• Albert’s mother was a wet nurse at the hospital.

• Albert was chosen because he seemed healthy and quite fearless - unemotional demeanour.

What kind o study is this?

• This is a case experiment as one individual was used.

• It was conducted in an artificial environment with a clear standardised procedure.

What did they aim to investigate?

• To investigate if classical conditioning works on humans.

• Specifically to investigate if a fear response can be conditioned into a 9 month old baby boy.

• Also to investigate if the fear response will be generalised to other animals and objects, and how long the conditioning lasts.

What was the IV?

• Before conditioning compared to after conditioning.

• Being presented with the white rat compared to being presented with other white, fluffy animals or objects.

What was the DV?

• The number of fearful behaviours Albert shows when presented with the stimuli.

How was a baseline for Albert’s responses established?

• At 9 months, Albert was tested with a white rat, rabbit, cotton wool and other stimuli to see if he had a fear reaction - he didn’t.

• This shows these were neutral stimuli/NS.

• The researchers also checked his fear response by banging an iron bar.

• Albert cried at the loud noise - shows the noise was an unconditioned stimulus/UCS, and the4 crying was the unconditioned response/UCR.

What was the conditioning process, describe it?

• At 11 months Albert was conditioned.

• He was shown the white rat 3 times, each time the rat was paired with the striking iron bar - Albert started to whimper.

• A week later, Albert was conditioned again, the rat was presented 3 times with the noise.

What were the results of the study, including what the UCS, UCR, NS, CS AND CR were?

• The noise of the iron bar (UCS) resulted in fear (UCR) in little Albert - expressed as crying.

• When this was paired with the white rat repeatedly (NS), little Albert showed fear (CR) even when presented with the white rat (CS) even in the absence of the noise

What generalisation occurred?

• The fear had been generalised to other white objects including a rabbit, a dog and Santa mask.

How did they check that the behaviour had truly been conditioned?

• They tested Albert in a different room to remove the setting as an extraneous variable.

What did Watson and Rayner conclude about the conditioning of responses in humans?

• W&R concluded that they had successfully conditioned Albert to fear the white rat, and that his fear response generalised to other white furry things (with a stronger response the more closely the resembled the rat) and transferred to other situations.

What are the A03 points for Generalisability?

• The experiment was done on a single child - Albert.

• Usually a sample of one would be considered very unrepresentative because the baby might be unusual in all sorts of ways.

• However this isn’t a case study of an off individual - Albert was deliberately selected for his normalcy.

• He seemed fearless and emotionally stable - his reactions would seem to be the normal reactions of any baby to these experiences that are quite commonplace, (furry animals and loud noises) not a unique personal response to unusual phenomenon.

• There is some question over the exact identity of Albert, however researchers in 2012 suggested that Albert was in fact Douglas Merritie who died of hydrocephalus at the age of 6.

• If this is true, then we wouldn’t be able to generalise the results to other infants due to his illness.

• Researchers in 2014 however said that Douglas was not Albert.

What are the A03 points for Reliability?

• This is a great example of a reliable study because it has standardised procedures, and it was carefully documented - right down to the number of days and time of day, and it was filmed.

• Therefore the internal reliability is good.

• For ethical reasons the study hasn’t been replicated, but it could be replicated quite easily due to the set procedures used.

• As the experiment was also video recorded, it can be checked by others - which can also give the study a good level of inter-rater reliability.

What are the A03 points for Application?

• The main application of this study has been for other learning psychologists who have built on Watson and Rayners research and investigated phobias in greater depth.

• This has led to techniques like flooding and systematic desensitisation.

• Useful research.

What are the A03 points for Validity?

• The study has careful controls.

• For example, Watson hid behind a curtain when striking the iron bar so that Albert would associate the noise with the rat, not with him or the bar or the hammer.

• This therefore improved the internal validity of the results by limiting extraneous variables.

• He also tested Alberts reactions before the conditioning to make sure he didn’t have any pre-existing fears white, furry things.

• These baseline tests allowed Watson and Rayner to establish cause and effect due to seeing empirical changes - objective, scientific.

• The setting for the experiment lacks ecological validity because Albert was away from his playroom and familiar nurses.

• This may have made him nervous.

• However he didn’t seem nervous and he was with his mother the whole time.

What are the A03 points for Ethics?

• The study is clearly unethical. Watson & Rayner deliberately caused distress to an infant and continued even though he was upset.

• They didn’t extinguish his fear reaction, possibly leaving Albert with long-term phobias.

• This is ignoring the principle of reducing harm/protection of Pp.

• However, Watson & Rayner chose Albert because he wasn’t easily frightened.

• An important definition of harm is that it should not be greater than what the Pp would experience in their ‘normal lifestyle’.

• W&R argued that Albert would go onto have distressing experiences when he started nursery and there was nothing excessive or unusual about what they had put the child through.

• After a month, his conditioned fear response had dropped, so it’s possible that the effects of the conditioning would completely wear off in time.

• Moreover, Alberts mother gave consent and was present the whole time, so this was clearly valid gatekeeper/presumptive consent.

• She was able to withdraw Albert and did in fact do so (though not for ethical reason - she merely moved to another job.)