SCIENCE
John Watson and Little Emotional Albert
Wednesday 12 October 2005 11:00-11:30 (Radio 4 FM)
JB Watson, together with bell-ringing Ivan Pavlov of salivating dogs fame, spearheaded the movement which dominated American psychology for most of the 20th century: behaviourism. This proclaimed that all physical behaviour is learned or conditioned. But Watson went further: he claimed that emotional responses could also be conditioned: a view disputed by the general belief that emotions came from within.
He went on to prove his theory in a series of experiments involving a subject named Little Albert B, which would send today's ethics committees into the stratosphere! Albert B, an orphan left in a hospital since birth, was recruited for this study at the age of nine months. First, Watson established whether he had any innate fears by exposing him to different stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, a dog, masks, cotton wool. Albert showed interest in all of these, reaching to touch them; he displayed no fear, so they were deemed neutral stimuli.
Watson's aim was to generalise fear in the young child, so that neutral stimuli could engender a response of fear.
