LRG - Classical Conditioning and People Lesson

 

Classical Conditioning and People

In 1920, an American psychologist named John Watson took classical conditioning to a new level by relating it to emotional responses. He conducted a learning experiment on a nine-month-old baby named Albert whose mother was paid one dollar for Albert's participation in the study.

In the study, Watson exposed baby Albert to a small white rat and some other furry objects to determine his response to them. Albert reacted positively, reaching toward the rat and the other objects and playing happily. After finding the baby's natural reaction to the furry objects, Watson reintroduced the rat, and as soon as the baby reached toward it, Watson hit a steel bar with a hammer right behind Albert's head, scaring him badly. Once the baby calmed down and reached to play with the rat again, Watson made the loud noise behind the baby again. After several trials, the baby screamed whenever he saw the white rat. And when Watson introduced any similar objects, including a teddy bear or a Santa mask, the baby also screamed and cried.

The same terms apply here. The rat was a neutral stimulus at first. Babies cry in response to loud noises naturally, so those were the unconditioned stimulus and unconditioned response. And after conditioning, when acquisition has occurred, the rat was a conditioned stimulus and Albert's crying was a conditioned response.

No one knows if the baby ever got over his fear of white fuzzy objects. Watson made no effort to de-condition him.

Watson's research, while not something most of us would want done to our own children, made a big impact on psychology. If our emotional responses can be conditioned, so we aren't even aware of why we have those reactions, then maybe humans can be conditioned to have different reactions. Behaviorists believe that psychologists need to spend less time analyzing thought processes and more time focusing on how to retrain these types of reactions to stimuli.

Later, in the psychological disorders and treatment unit, you'll learn about how classical conditioning is used today to help people overcome phobias. Psychologists use Pavlov and Watson's techniques to train people to have calm or neutral reactions to stimuli that used to scare them.

 

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