The Upcoming of Conditioned Behaviorism In the 1920’s there was two psychologists who were trying to prove that your emotional response was a direct correlation to conditioning.These two psychologists were Watson and Raynor. Before they came up with the theory of conditioning everyone believed that humans emotional response (such as fear) was motivated by your unconscious instincts. W a t s o n m a d e h i s fi r s t statement about conditioning in 1913 but it wasn’t until the 1920’s when they conducted their experiment. At this time they went to observe an orphan that was raised from birth at a near by hospital. His name was Albert B. Watson, Raynor and the hospital staff then examined little nine month old Albert to be physically and emotionally heathy. The conditioning test did not begin until Albert was eleven months old because many thought it was not ethical to condition a child to fear. The testing began with presenting Albert with items of interest such as, a white rat, rabbit, monkey, dog, masks with and without hair, and cotton, which were then referred to as neutral stimuli because he didn’t show fear. For the second half of the experiment they decided to present the exact same items to Albert with a loud, abrupt noise, which is an
unconditioned stimulus known to cause fear. With this intent, Watson and Raynor placed the rat in front of Albert and as he leaned over to touch it, a load noise was made by the striking of a metal bar. This occurred for
several sessions until Albert eventually displayed fear as soon as the rat was presented to him. This study demonstrated that fear is a conditioned response. The next step was to see if this conditioned response of fear with the rat was then generalized to similar objects such as a white rabbit, a dog, cotton, a white fur coat, and Watsons own head of grey hair. Albert displayed the same emotional reaction with the rabbit as he did with these objects, without any added fear stimulus. To make sure this conditioned fear wasn’t due to the
experimental environment, they moved Albert to a brighter room with more people and the same reaction continued to be displayed by Albert with these objects. This idea of conditioned behavior works with any emotion such as happiness, anger, and sadness. With the goal of demonstrating that emotional responses are conditioned reactions, Watson and Raynor proved that Freudian’s concept that b e h a v i o r s t e m m e d f ro m unconscious reactions was wrong. This led to the beginning of behaviorism in psychology. Though this
would not be considered an ethical experiment in todays society, it was big step forward in the advancement of psychology and the understanding of conditioned behavior.