Psychology is riddled with so many interesting and controversial experiments, in January's article we talked about the infamous Prison Experiment and in this article, I'll try to articulate all I know about The Little Albert experiment conducted by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner. The Little Albert Experiment is based on Ivan Pavlov's theory known as classical conditioning.
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Classical conditioning works on the principle of learning by association. It invokes responses towards a stimulus that previously had a neutral effect just by pairing it with a stimulus that invokes automated response. Now even in the absence of this stimulus, the neutral stimulus gets the same response because of association.
Here's a video explaining Pavlov's study with footage from the original study.
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Pavlov studied conditioning by experimenting on dogs, Watson was interested in taking this a step further by demonstrating that emotional responses can be classically conditioned in emotionally stable people.
Watson and Rayner, using classical conditioning studied the impact of conditioning on the formation of Phobias. For this purpose, they conducted a study on a 9-month-old baby, who was reported as emotionally stable by Watson.
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