The little Albert Experiment is a famous but unethical experiment
by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner. They demonstrated how phobias can be
created by classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is a process of
assigning learned response to unlearned stimulus (Prokasy & Kumpfer, 1973).
In this experiment, nine months old Albert was
made to play with a white rat. Albert showed no fear to this rat or any other
rodent. This rat was an unconditioned stimulus. Later, the experimenter made a
loud sound near the baby when the rat neared him. The baby cried to this loud
sound. The loud sound was a neutral stimulus and the crying was the conditioned
response. Watson paired the sound many times with the rat until the rat became
the source of his crying and little Albert developed a phobia of rats (Irons, Levinson, &
Beck, 2009).
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