Little Emotional Albert Researchers and Methods In the early 1920’s, two psychologists named Watson and Rayner performed an experiment on a child who was nine months of age. The child’s name was Albert, and he was born and raised in the hospital as an orphan. The psychologists wanted to test their hypothesis, which was to find out if emotions could be experimentally conditioned. The first part of the test was performed by placing objects in front of Albert to see if any of the given objects made him feel a particular way. Some of the objects included were blocks, a rabbit, a rat, a dog, and a santa claus mask. Of the objects tested, the Santa Claus mask, ironically, caused a large amount of fear in the child. The rat also caused an amount of fear in the child as well. The second part of the test was performed by making a loud noise behind young Albert in hopes of scaring him. The loud noises were
compared with some of the objects to see if the reaction would change. When the noise was added to some of the objects, it did in fact cause another reaction in the child. The test was successful and Albert was scared to the point in which he cried. The third and final part of the test was to find out if the emotions that Albert had conditioned from the experiment would continue to stay with him for his upcoming years. This became a problem due to the fact that young Albert was adopted and taken from the hospital, and when tests were scheduled to take place, Albert was not present to take part in them. The testing had halted for a month, and the psychologists were not able to recondition Alberts previously conditioned emotions.
Findings When the test was finished, the psychologists had concluded that emotions can be conditioned. Over time, other psychologists were able to repeat the tests with other test subjects, and were able to come to the same conclusion as a community. After the tests were performed, Watson had soon come to realize that human behavior can, in fact, be conditioned.
A school of thought was formed based on the findings in Watson and Rayner's research, and ‘Behaviorism’ had started its role on the psychology community. The psychologists were able to come to the conclusion that too much fear from a particular thing can cause a phobia, which was not the intended result of the test. Many people who are exposed to a fear of the same thing or things turned it into a phobia when they became older.