Watson and Rayner (1920) began by arguing that experimental evidence that supported the prospect of conditioning certain variations of emotional responses was lacking. However, if Watson and Morgan’s (1917) theory that infants’ emotional reactions are few (i.e., fear, rage, and love), then there should be a good chance that stimuli could evoke these emotions (Watson & Rayner, 1920). If the theory is untrue, then Watson and Rayner (1920) argued that the intricacy involved in adult emotional responses could not be accounted for. Therefore, Watson and Rayner (1920) created an experiment to determine whether or not Watson and Morgan’s (1917) theory is true. Watson and Rayner (1920) first provide a background for the only child who had undergone experimental work of this kind, Albert B. Watson and Rayner (1920) purported that, at nine months of age, Albert was healthy and stable, which is why he was chosen for the experiment. At nine months, Albert underwent emotional tests to determine whether or not …show more content…
Specifically, Albert was forced to look at a moving hand that sharply struck a steel bar with a hammer. Upon seeing this three times, Albert began crying. Although a reaction was evoked using loud sounds, Watson and Rayner (1920) stated that the removal of support (i.e., quickly taking away the blanket he was laying on) did not evoke a fear response in Albert, but stated that this action usually evokes fear responses in younger children. Finally, since the sound stimulus was effective in eliciting a fear response, Watson and Rayner (1920) developed four subsequent hypotheses to test: a) can the fear of an animal (e.g. white rat) be classically conditioned, b) if so, will there be a transfer to other animals or objects, c) how does time effect the conditioned responses, and d) if the conditioned responses do not subside, how can they be
John B.Watson, R Rayner, (February, 1920), Journal of Experimental Psychology, Conditioned Emotional Reactions, Vol. lll, No. i.
Kurayama, Matsuzawa, Komiya, Nakazawa, Yoshida, Shimizu, (2012) confirmed that these neutral stimuluses deed indeed has an effect and played a role in fear conditioning in people. The case showed that Treena had indeed learned to be scared of the incident and it proceeded to become a cue for to get anxious and get panic attacks. It has been claimed that patients with panic disorder exhibited fear potentiated startle responses to safety cues and therefore reduced discrimination between safety and danger signals during acquisition, indicating that the safety signal was processed as the aversive event in contrast to the danger signal (Nees, Heinrich, Flor, 2015). It also showed that the her failing to answer the question had affected her in other classes when she would not participate in other classes hence, this showed that the neutral stimulus has developed and grew into a conditioned stimulus which evoked feelings of fear and anxiety in her, in other words it had become a cue for her to be scared and
Watson, J. B. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. The American Psychologist, 55(3), 313-317. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.southuniversity.libproxy.edmc.edu/
Plutchik, Robert (2002), Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology, Biology, and Evolution, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
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.
‘An adequate hypothesis of fear must utilize physiological concepts of cerebral action in addition to psychological terminology. The hypothesis proposes that "fear originates in the disruption of temporally and spatially organized cerebral activities; that fear are distinct from other emotions by the nature of the processes tending to restore equilibrium." The sources of fear involve conflict, sensory deficit, or constitutional change. ‘
Bergmann, G. (1956). The contribution of John B. Watson. Psychological Review, 63(4), 265-276. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/614292167?accountid=458
In his influential paper “Feeling and Thinking. Preferences need no Inferences” (Zajonc, 1980), he argued for the idea that affect is “precedent to the intellective qualities and elements of experience” (para. 1), and in line with this he put forward several hypothesis to exhibit the supremacy of affect in information processing - in its independence, primacy and automaticity - over cognition. He collected and presented a host of empirical findings to support his argument. Among those, the mere-exposure effect - the experimental evidence for subject’s preferences, or liking, by merely being exposed to certain stimuli without the subjects’ conscious (and thus assumedly cognitive) processing of them, was cited as the supporting evidence for preferential processing of affect before cognition (or “feeling without knowing” as described by Zajonc) (Zajonc, 1980). He also based his argument on the biological assumption that distinctive brain area, specifically the locus coeruleus, was responsible for the processing of affective information, and thus to complete his argument for the independence of the emotion apart from
After a number of repeated this procedures, Pavlov tried to ring his bell by its own... ... middle of paper ... ... classical conditioning, and conditioned emotional responses, 2014. http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/pavlov.html 8. Strengths and weakness, 2014.
To conclude, researches propose a number of theories that experience human emotions. The James-Lange theory of emotion and the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion belong to one physiological category of theories. However, chosen theories differ greatly from each other. While the James-Lange theory affirms that different physiological states respond to various experiences of emotion, the Cannon-Bard theory claims that humans react to an inducement and experience that is related to the emotion at that time. Both theories have individuals that criticize them and it is up to the individual to decide which one to
The first experiment is the “Monster Study” it is about stuttering. This took place in 1939...
Discuss the "cognition versus biology" debate in the study of emotion. Outline first the cognitive position and then the biological position. Discuss one possible, satisfying resolution to the cognition versus biology debate, using an original example to illustrate this
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...
...first started out with cats being exposed to mild shocks accompanied by specific sounds and visual stimuli. The cats connected the shocks with the sounds or visual stimuli that produced fear in them. When the cats were exposed to the same sounds or visual stimuli plus receiving food instead of shocks, they eventually unlearned their fears. Eventually this behavior therapy would be applied to humans.
Dignity promotes value and respect for an individual’s esteem and is personalized because it correlates with cultural and societal norms; “Dignity is a fundamental human right. It is about feeling and/or being treated and regarded as important and valuable in relation to others. Dignity is a subjective, multi-dimensional concept, but also has shared meaning among humanity” (Clark, 2010, para. 16).