The experiment was conducted by John Watson and Rosalie Rayner. Watson`s little Albert experiment is one of the most controversial psychology experiments ever undertaken. Watson held the perception that psychology was meant to deal with the features viewed from human behavior. The experiment was done thoroughly and over an extended duration of time with an intention of obtaining viable results. Also, the hypothesis made for this study was that “through a series of pairings, they could condition an eleven month old child to develop some irrational form of fear” (Patrick, Gittens & Katchabaw, 2015). In this test, the independent variable is little Albert who was listening to the noises being made (Patrick, Gittens & Katchabaw, 2015). Concurrently, the fear experienced by the young boy which he went through as a result of seeing the animals presented before him stands for the dependent variable in this experiment (Patrick, Gittens & Katchabaw, 2015).
In regards to the experiment, the statistical measures the authors used was the collection of data seven times for a duration of seven weeks (Patrick, Gittens & Katchabaw, 2015). This was based on the idea of observing Albert`s reaction to his encounter with animals. Also, the authors were keen to ensure that the person selected for the experiment was a young child since they are too young to display any form of emotion. The results of this experiment support the hypothesis since at the end, Watson was able to prove that conditioning is capable of allowing individuals to react to a certain environment. Whenever a person is exposed to the same stimuli repeatedly, it is expected that fear will be induced in them as it occurred to Albert.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Initially the little boy was not afraid of the animals presented before him but the noise created each time the animals were brought to his attention, made him aware of their presence and thus making him fear every time they were placed in his presence. There have been attempts to redo the experiment though this has not been successful owing to the ethical concerns expressed as a result of using a young child to perform the test. It is, therefore, likely that in future, no developments are likely to develop based on the research conducted.
Reference
Patrick, A., Gittens, C., & Katchabaw, M. (2015). The virtual little Albert experiment: Creating conditioned emotion response in virtual agents. In Games Entertainment Media Conference (GEM), 2015 IEEE (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
