In 1920, behaviorist John B. Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner wanted to study classical conditioning in people. Classical conditioning is when two stimuli are paired and produce an effect off of the second stimulus, but eventually produce the same effect with the first stimulus individually. Watson believed they were capable of furthering psychologist Ivan Pavlov’s research on conditioning dogs to conditioning humans. Watson was a professor at John Hopkins University and of course, that was Rayner’s alma mater. Watson wanted to justify that emotions were something learned and not inherently placed in the human mind. According to Alexander Burgemeester, Watson hypothesized that although it was uncommon for a baby to have a phobia of animals, “if one animal succeeds in arousing fear, any moving furry animal thereafter may arouse it” (Burgemeester). Both, Watson and Rayner fed off of scientist Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment. On the one hand, I do not support the Little Albert experiment because in my opinion, it was unethical and unreliable. The scientists were focused on proving their point and they paid little attention into unconditioning the baby.
Ivan Pavlov was a Russian scientist who is famously known for his classical conditioning
experiment on dogs, better known as Pavlov’s Dogs. Pavlov originated
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I, personally, did not support the experiment for that specific reason, but in my opinion, I believe the fault lies partially in Watson and Rayner’s hands and partially in Little Albert’s mother’s hands. His mother allowed Watson and Rayner to perform their experiment on her son, Little Albert, so it was the least he could have done. However, that part was excluded from the experiment; Little Albert’s mother did not enforce it and therefore, received the consequences of her
...nhuman experiments (Jones pg. 11) should never be tolerated. As public administrators, we should continue to keep balance within the organization so there will never be an unbalance of power that is associated with the day and age of the Tuskegee Study. Medical scientists were rarely asked to justify their methods of experimentation (Jones pg. 97), and therefore was the main reason these experiments were allowed to continue. In addition to great sales tactics, and the uninformed subjects, this experiment was bound to continue until one man began to ask, "Why?" As I see it, Mr. Peter Buxton, a venereal disease interviewer and investigator of the PHS in San Francisco, started the process of questioning the Tuskegee Study. Mr. Buxton can be accredited for starting the closing of this experiment, and Jones for bringing these lessons learned to the public's attention.
The effects of this experience, although unethical in its approach to conduct experiment without knowledge to the parents it does not rise to the level of harm. It can, however, be argued that it has had an effect on them emotionally and perhaps they may experience further complications, but far greater atrocities have occurred in the name of science and in this particular case, no credible data ever developed from this experiment due to it being
Scientist tell people they are doing a test on the effects of punishment on learning, but the real
During the twentieth century, Harry Harlow performed one of the most controversial experiments that led to a scientific breakthrough concerning the parent-child relationship. It paved the way for understanding terms such as secure, insecure, ambivalent, and disorganized relationships (Bernstein, 2014, 364). During the course of this study, Harlow separated baby monkeys from their birth mothers and isolated them in frightening environments. According to the video “H.H. Overview”, this proved the monkey’s preference for a comforting mother versus a nutritional one. However, this raises the question: can his experiments be deemed ethical, or did his scientific inquiry overstep boundaries?
In the following essay I will be looking into the study conducted by Watson and Rayner (1920) on a small child known as ‘Little Albert’. The experiment was an adaptation of earlier studies on classical conditioning of stimulus response, one most common by Ivan Pavlov, depicting the conditioning of stimulus response in dogs. Watson and Rayner aimed to teach Albert to become fearful of a placid white rat, via the use of stimulus associations, testing Pavlov’s earlier theory of classical conditioning.
society so these experiments are not seen as heinous or inhumane. This Information is all revealed in the introduction. The author tells this from a moral standpoint. The social construct determines if a particular event is seen as good or bad. Experiment back then on people were seen as okay but if they were performed on they would be extremely tabooed. The government even participated in human experiments to show how okay it was back then. In Conclusion, I am convinced that these bias among the scientific community is what caused black people to still be afraid of the doctors to this day.
One of the other ways that psychological conditioning is misused is when the babies are shocked to be made to not like flowers and books. “They’ll grow up with what the psychologists ...
Watson and his team opened the experiment by questioning if a loud noise would cause a fear reaction. A hammer struck against a steel bar was an abrupt sound causing Albert to throw his hands in the air. By the third and last strike, the child was crying; this was the first time an emotive state (in the lab) produced fear, causing Albert to cry. The sound conditioning led to Watson and his team questioning whether they could condition an emotion while presenting a white rat to the child at the same time they strike the steel bar.
The Milgram experiment of the 1960s was designed to ascertain why so many Germans decided to support the Nazi cause. It sought to determine if people would be willing to contradict their conscience if they were commanded to do so by someone in authority. This was done with a psychologist commanding a teacher to administer an electric shock to a student each time a question was answered incorrectly. The results of the Milgram experiment help to explain why so many men in Nazi Germany were recruited to support the Nazi cause and serve as a warning against the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques by the United States government.
In observational learning, a child takes note of what his or her mother or father considers to be threatening. On the other hand, children can also be conditioned by their own life experiences through a process called operant conditioning (SOURCE). In some instances, children tend to generalize their fears, subsequently forming a phobia. For example, a young girl who became increasingly cautious of flying insects after an unpleasant encounter with a nest of agitated yellow jackets. After being assaulted by these creatures, she associated all flying bugs with the painful sting of a yellow jacket. Of course, children can also be classically conditioned to display a fearful response; that is, they learn to associate an unconditioned fear-relevant stimulus with a conditioned stimulus, provoking a conditioned, fearful response. One of the most well-known examples of this is an experiment involving a young boy, famously dubbed Little Albert. Little Albert learned to fear small furry animals in a laboratory setting when the presence of these creatures was paired with loud banging noises (SOURCE). From the aforementioned experiments and studies, it is undeniable that external circumstances and experiences assist in the configuration of fear in
Watson did not debrief either Albert or his parents about the nature of the study. The study’s purpose was to induce an emotional response of fear into this young child. Watson both physically and mentally harmed the child, possibly leaving Albert emotionally traumatized by the experiment. To add,
Classical conditioning refers to a type of learning in which a previously neutral stimuli took on the ability to stimulate a conditioned response in an individual (Gormezano & Moore, 1966). To prove that environment was more impactful than genetics, Watson conducted an experiment on an infant, little Albert. Initially, Albert showed little fear towards rats. When Watson repeatedly exposed Albert to the rat accompanied by a loud noise, the latter began to develop fear towards not just the rat but also other furry animals. Watson successfully showed that the acquisition of a phobia can be explained by classical conditioning (Watson & Watson, 1921). Regardless of their genes, the associations of the right stimuli can result in the development of a new behaviour in any individual.
The world of ethics and moral understanding of medicine was turned inside out as human rights were disregarded in an attempt to understand the anatomy of the human body, as well as its various responses to different drugs and environments. Human experimentation and subject research were of little interest to society before the 20th century (“Human Experimentation, Plutonium, and Colonel Stafford Warren”). The onset of the Holocaust heightened the popularity of that medical field. Experimentation using human subjects has drastically changed from the 20th to 21st century regarding the consent and state of the subject, the intent of the experiments, and the laws and policies passed.
Baumrind speculated that Stanley Milgram provided no post-experiment psychological aid to those subjects who were emotionally traumatized by the effects of their own actions; in addition, there were serious clinical complications that ailed multiple subjects after the experiment, one of which included a minor heart attack(Baumrind 90-92). In essence, Baumrind believes that the same experiment should have been executed in a less threatening environment, lacking the emotionally damaging consequences resulting from the dire situation(Baumrind 92). Parker agrees that Milgram should have implemented cautionary measures to insure that the experiment was not emotionally taxing on its subject or biased and inaccurate(Parker 99). Parker believes Milgram should have placed a giant, red, and accessible button in the middle of the room for the subjects to push and automatically eject themselves from the situation, as a substitute to the vague door placed inside every test room(Parker 103). Parker supposes the addition of the red button most likely would have caused an increase in the amount of subjects that chose to remove themselves from the situation; as a result, less emotional damage would be inflicted upon the subject, and the overall result of the experiment may have changed(Parker 103). Additionally, Saul McLeod, the author of "The Milgram Experiment", agrees with Parker and Baumrind, believing the Milgram experiment to be extremely biased and unethical(McLeod). McLeod speculates Milgram 's use of deception and lack of emotional protection for the subjects was abominable. He also questioned the authenticity of the experiment after Milgram placed only men in the learner 's position(McLeod). Because of this seemingly biased choice, McLeod automatically deemed the entire experiment unviable(McLeod). Although many psychologists,
Jhon B Watson, a behaviorist, conducted an experiment inspired by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov to determinate the classical condition in humans. Little Albert experiment was conducted in a 9 month old baby whom a rat is showed to see his r...