Classics study Little Albert

Generalisability

AO1 – 1 boy, 9 months old, white, American 
AO3 – Poor generalisability as single participant, therefore not representative limits the ability to draw conclusions. Little Albert may also have had hydrocephalus at the time of the study, and this affected his reactions and development 

Reliability

AO1 – Procedure. Watson and Rayner used the unconditioned stimulus of banging a metal bar behind albert's head to elicit the unconditioned response of fear and crying. over several learning trials, they paired a neutral stimulus of a white mouse (which albert had no prior reaction to) with the unconditioned stimulus of banging the metal bar. over time, albert began to associate his fear response with the white mouse - establishing the mouse as a conditioned stimulus eliciting a conditioned fear response to what had previously been a neutral stimulus.
AO3 – Standardised procedure, allows repeatability as there is a clear description of methodology and order. The experiment was not finished, and extinction of the fear was not reached (as Albert’s mother drew him out of the experiment). However, vagueness surrounding the ‘fear response’ definition, as the amount Albert was crying is subjective, results could be open to researcher bias and therefore lack standardisation

Application

AO1 – Results. Albert exhibited a conditioned response of fear and crying when coming into contact with the white mouse (now a conditioned stimulus but previously unconditioned). Did establish a new phobia in a human child, as Little Albert exhibited a fear response in reaction to the white mouse 
AO3 – Positive application to society, as suggests that we can treat phobias. Systematic desensitisation and flooding treatments can be successful 

Validity

AO1 – Conclusion is that fear is a learned behaviour, and that anything that can be learned can also be unlearned 
AO3 – Lacks ecological validity as artificial task that is not representative of real-life experiences. Except, Albert lived in the hospital, so for him this was a normal environment, and he was familiar with the surroundings 
(to check - could be high internal validity as hospital/lab setting may have allowed good control over extraneous variables that may impact the validity of the results)

Ethics

AO1 – No protection from harm, no informed consent, no confidentiality, no debrief, no right to withdraw  
No evidence of extinction of Albert’s phobia, which could have had negative impacts on him later in life. No informed consent, as Albert’s mother was not made aware of his participation in the study by Watson and Rayner - however once she found out she withdrew him
AO3 – However, none of these ethical guidelines existed in 1920, so technically no rules were broken