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. The child was referred to as "Albert" for the experiment. Watson followed the procedures which Ivan 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 first time, to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks (with and without hair). Albert showed no fear of any of these items during the baseline tests.
Afterwards, he was put on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer each time the baby touched the rat.
After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was presented with only the rat. Upon seeing the rat, Albert became very distressed, crying and crawling away. Apparently, the infant associated the white rat with the noise. The rat, originally a neutral stimulus, had become a conditioned stimulus, and was eliciting an emotional response (conditioned response) similar to the distress (unconditioned response) originally given to the noise (unconditioned stimulus).
In further experiments, Little Albert seemed to generalize his response to the white rat. He became distressed at the sight of several other furry objects, such as a rabbit, a furry dog, and a seal-skin coat, and even a Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls in the beard. However, this stimulus generalization did not extend to everything with hair.
Rayner unexpectedly died in 1935, after contracting dysentery from eating tainted fruit. Watson never remarried. In later years, their two sons reflected on their childhood as they both developed depression and one committed suicide.
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