Little Albert and Classical Conditioning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Little Albert and Classical Conditioning - Essay Example Conditioned emotional responses as defined by Coon and Mitterer (2010) are learned emotional reactions to previously neutral stimuli (p. 232). An example of this are phobias, which psychologists believe began as conditioned emotional responses. During the time of Watson and Rayner (1920) who conducted the study entitled, Conditioned Emotional Reactions, different assumptions have been proposed in concerning the likelihood of conditioning diverse types of emotional response; however, exact experimental evidence in aid of such view is missing. It was recommended previously that in infancy the fundamental emotional reaction models are not many, comprising so far as perceived of fear, rage and love, then there must be several uncomplicated ways by means of which the range of stimuli which can bring forth these emotions and their compounds are highly amplified, or else, intricacy in adult response could not be accounted for (Watson & Rayner, 1920). Watson and Rayner (1920) though without adequate experimental evidence, enhanced the perspective that this variety was augmented by means of trained impulse aspects. It was recommended that the first home life of the child endows a laboratory setting for creating conditioned emotiona l responses. With this premise, Watson and Rayner (1920) put the whole matter into an experimental test. Watson and Rayner (1920) used the subject named Albert who was reared almost from birth in a hospital environment; his mother was a wet nurse in the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid Children. Alberts life was typical, he was fit from birth and one of the best developed youngsters ever brought to the hospital, weighing twenty-one pounds at nine months of age. He was impassive and inexpressive. His stability was one of the major reasons for utilizing him as a subject in their test as emphasized by Watson and Rayner (1920) for they felt that they could cause him reasonably little harm in performing such experiments. Watson