Watson And Rayner Conditioning Emotional Response

The article, that I will be discussing throughout this reaction paper is the famous research experiment done by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner in 1920, titled “Conditioned Emotional Reactions”. From what I have gathered, the main focus of this experiment was to identify whether or not conditioned emotional responses could occur in human subjects. Therefore, the participant in the experiment was a nine-month-old infant who was identified as “Albert B”. In their research, Watson and Rayner objective was to find out if they could indeed condition an emotional response like a phobia in a stable child. Thus, in the initial stage of the experiment, Watson and Rayner exposed Albert to a number of stimuli in a conditioned environment and observed his reactions to those stimuli. The stimuli included a rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair, and cotton wool. In this stage of the experiment,

Albert didn’t seem to show any signs of fear to the stimuli he was presented with. In the next stage of the experiment, Watson and Rayner now presented the stimuli along with a loud noise and observed Albert’s reactions. After repeated pairings of the stimuli and the loud noise Albert B. began to show emotional conditioned responses, such as crying and falling over to his left side.
As with most research experiments, there were definitely strengths and weaknesses that I identify throughout the study.

Particularly, one of the strengths that I found in this research experiment was how thorough and detailed they were at recording their findings. For instance, the researchers and the witnesses thoroughly documented the experiment from beginning to end. However, as I was reading through the study I began to identify areas that seemed to be very unethical. For instance, Albert was obviously showing signs of distress and fear. Yet, the experimenters continued on even though he was clearly distressed and unhappy. Another weakness that I gathered from reading this article was the fact that they did not extinguish or remove the conditioned emotional responses of. Therefore, as they also recognized in the article the possibility of these fears remaining throughout Albert’s life is a high possibility. However, it is easy to recognize that had this experiment been an ethical practice it would definitely be something that could be replicated

overtime.
This particular experiment is a perfect example of real life classical conditioning, and in many ways can possibly help explain fears and phobias in humans as well. Classical conditioning, in this experiment was used to condition an emotional response to a stimulus. There are obviously certain components to classical conditioning, which are the neutral stimulus, the unconditioned stimulus, the unconditioned response, the conditioned stimulus, and the conditioned response, which can be identified. Initially in this experiment the NS was the rat, the US was the loud noise, the Ur was the fear, the CS was the rat, and the CR was the fear that Albert showed. However, what was also evident from the experiment is that generalization occurred. James Mazur (2013) in his book “Learning and Behavior” defines generalization as the transfer of the effects of conditioning to similar stimuli (p. 60). Not only was Albert exhibiting fear and distress with the rat but he had also transferred this fear to the rabbit, the dog, the Santa Clause mask, and the wool, which were all stimuli that were similar in size and color.
In my opinion, this particular experiment in some ways might explain the phenomenon of the different phobias people have in society. As I was reading through the article, I instantly thought about my cousin who is tremendously afraid of big dogs and my brother who truly has an extreme phobia of spiders. Now that I understand the fundamental characteristics of classical conditioning, I could better understand the reasons in which they may have obtained such phobias as these. In the past, I thought that there obsessive fear and distress was a bit outrageous and extreme, but now with my emerging view on the process of learning I have come to have a better understanding of why this might take place. In some cases emotional responses such as fear and distress are inevitable, because our minds have been conditioned to react in such away because of some outside reinforcer.