Little albert

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'What is your reaction to the Story of Little Albert?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert

Contents 1 caitlyn ross 2 Greg Szewczyk 3 kyle tucker 4 jen dawson 5 darrell bennett 6 Janeane Menaldino 7 kristen kramer 8 shubham mukherjee 9 Joe Pileri 10 matt sanchez 11 Steven Abt 12 Mitchell Griffith 13 Todd Huntley 14 Debbie Rosenbaum 15 Maliha Hashmi 16 Caroline Lents 17 david gross 18 Justin Pines 19 Isaac Kriegman 20 jeremy goldberg 21 Paul Bozzello 22 Nnamdi Okike 23 robyn morris 24 Brittany Blueitt 25 jennifer schanes 26 Steve Feldman 27 kira stanfield 28 Nicole D. Jackson 29 calida motley 30 michelle berger 31 Farah Tariq

caitlyn ross

In evolutionary terms, the idea that fear is an innate or unconditioned response makes sense to me. Fear as an emotional response to certain stimuli is advantageous. If you don’t instinctively react to certain noises or events with a fight or flight response, you and your potential progeny could be rapidly making your way down the throat of a large predator.

What I find interesting about the Little Albert experiment is that fear can be a conditioned response at such a young age, even when the stimulus is only indirectly associated with the object of the conditioning. The rat itself was not causing the noise, but at eleven months of age a child can still connect the noise with the visible object. The failure of the researchers to complete the experiment by attempting to recondition little Albert was both irresponsible and unfortunate. Beyond the problems of letting an infant leave the hospital with a conditioned fear response to a wide range of stimuli, it would have been interesting to determine whether fear can be overcome through reconditioning.

The quote from Dune that “fear is the mindkiller” does not actually capture Herbert’s meaning. The full quote:

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

Herbert’s litany is that fear as a conditioned response can be overcome. I would have liked to see if little Albert demonstrated this even as an infant. Because of the ethical problems with such research, I don’t know that if anyone has determined the answer to this.

Greg Szewczyk

The Little Albert experiment involved conditioning an infant to respond to the stimulus of a rat with the same response that the infant innately responded to a loud noise (the response of fear). However, this does not show that the child was actually fearful of the rat, but only that it has been conditioned with a fearful response. In relating this to social conditioned responses, does this distinction hold a meaningful difference? If we assume that the conditioned response to social situations is different from an actual, innate fear, does this mean that the conditioned response can be reversed or overcome by logical reasoning?

kyle tucker

The Little Albert experiment is an example of how innate fear can be brought out and zoned in on a particular object. Further, the experiment shows just how easily and adeptly we adopt fearful attitudes, and how hard they are to lose. I think the experiment rings true with social life in general. People are constantly combatted and conditioned with various things to fear (criminals for example) through mainstream media, popular perceptions, and their own imperfect results in dealing with a competitive world. And just as fear virtually incapacitated Little Albert around white furry things, so to it seems that people everywhere are incapacitated by one fear or another that they’ve learned and held through modern life.

jen dawson

I agree that the Little Albert story has applications to learning and teaching, in that fear is one large block in the learning process and that education is not something of which students are naturally fearful. Does modern education for teachers include references to psychological concepts like this? One would hope so. Perhaps such conditioning could be used in an analogous, yet positive way. To the extent that associations with fear are learned, one would expect that happiness or reward could be associated with learning as well. The baby's generalizing tendencies are also troubling – if fear is harder to uncondition than to condition, and conditioning leads to fear of a wide variety of stimuli, then it seems important (if one wishes to avoid fear) not to allow fear responses to be initiated to begin with.

darrell bennett

I certainly believe in the validity of the Little Albert experiment. Being a young, black man in America, I see the effects of learned behavior (and learned fear) each day. We have been taught to fear anything that is not white or Western-acting. The conditioning comes from the media as well as personal influences. The conditioning is so pervasive and subtle, that it is nearly impossible to grow up in this country and not play into the stereotypes. The Willie Lynch laws are a perfect example; they not only convinced whites that blacks were inferior, but they also convinced many blacks of the same. Little Albert is symbolic of the American public and we are being trained to behave a certain way—even when we do not know it. It is our collective responsibility to recognize negative conditioning when we see it and root it out from the foundations of our society.

Janeane Menaldino

Maybe the outcome of the experiment depends on what the stimulus is. After this experiment the child was fearful of a bunny as well as a Santa-like mask but perhaps it wasn't that the child feared these things because he associated them with the loud noise per se, but rather that, in general, he was just more fearful of everything, and not necessarily just things that were animal-like/living. This experiment could have conditioned him at birth to be more wary of everything in general.

On another note, perhaps the fear is innate and possibly these responses can be found occurring in the womb as well? Maybe it provides some sort of protection to the baby while it is in the womb in order to survive? And if so, is it possible that these reactions aren't necessarily an innate reaction but rather something taught in the womb?

kristen kramer

I know this study says a lot about fear and conditioning, but it mainly fills me with disgust. To me, it’s not a novel concept that people, particularly young children who are so impressionable and pliable, can learn to associate fear with traumatic or frightening events. Why traumatize an individual to prove a point that is readily observable in the world around us? I think that it is a morally reprehensible thing to do, particularly since Albert was never re-conditioned to eliminate his fear of fuzzy animals and white objects. And why didn’t they re-condition him? You said the study ended – which I take to mean that the plug was pulled and funding ran out – but why couldn’t someone have volunteered their time and scientific expertise to remedy the situation? And is the erasure of this deep-seated trauma even possible? I doubt that it would ever be entirely forgotten by Albert. And in the end, I wonder what was learned and if it was worth and if there wouldn’t be a better way to find and analyze the results of the Little Albert experiment. And who volunteered their child for this experiment? Talk about terrible parenting.

shubham mukherjee

To me, Little Albert showed that we can instill fear in someone by operating at the level of the irrational and non-deliberative parts of the human psyche. To get rid of the fear, we have to tap into the rationale and deliberative part of the human psyche. This shows that instilling fear is easier then getting rid of it.

Little Albert showed that fear could be conditioned into someone. But I think we are mistaken to say that the experiment shows that fear can be “taught;” I don’t think “taught” is the correct word to describe what happened. “Teaching,” to me, means explaining something in a logical way such that the person being taught can deliberate, comprehend, and understand. In contrast, fear is a primitive and instinctive response. The experiment showed that fear can become ingrained in a person through conditioning. I don’t think this is “teaching,” but instead, something that operates at a lower level; at the level of the irrational and non-deliberative.

In contrast, I think “teaching” is what would be required to get rid of Albert’s fear. His fear of all things that are white and fuzzy is irrational. It will require rationale deliberation for him to overcome the fear. This is where “teaching” plays a role.

Joe Pileri

It had always seemed to me that many, if not most, fears that people have were rational and probably even served some survival purpose. People are afraid of heights because they're dangerous, afraid of rats because they carry disease, etc. But, the Little Albert experiment challenges that idea. In the experiment, the child initially shows no signs of fear whatsoever when he first encounters the rat- apparently, fearing rats is not something that is programmed into us. Even more surprising was that once the child was conditioned to fear the rat, he also began to fear similar things, even if their only relation to the rat was that they were small and white. Perhaps many of the things that people are afraid of are based on some sort of social conditioning rather than instinct. Or, we could be afraid of things that are only remotely related to the things that we have been conditioned to be afraid of. The Little Albert experiment allows us to question the very rationale behind

matt sanchez

It makes sense to me that fear is a basic instinct – present in all humans – but that it can be shaped by external forces. Fear is natural; we are fascinated by its power over us, to the extent that there is a thriving industry around creative works that force us to feel fear in the absence of danger. Think of horror films, ghost stories, and the incredible popularity of Stephen King. Our culture takes for granted that a person can learn to fear something through experience, particularly when the person is young. Think of the cliché about children being scared of clowns, even though the purpose of clowns is to delight children.

To me, the intriguing aspect of the Little Albert experiment is how easily and effectively our innate fear-response can be manipulated. I was not surprised to learn that Albert learned to fear a white rat. I was surprised to hear of the pervasive affect this fear had on Albert. It caused his mind to find fear in a host of objects, some of which had little relation to the original fear stimulus. Various forms of fur and white objects, though clearly not rats, activated his fear response. He found himself in a very real horror story, where otherwise-innocuous objects became ghostly hints of his original lesson in fear. Like a person spooked by shadows after watching a movie about a gruesome killer, Little Albert saw little white rats wherever he went. Thus this simple experiment, by preying on his natural instincts, changed the world for Little Albert. Such is the power of fear.

Steven Abt

The Little Albert experiment shows that fear can be conditioned, at least in some cases and for some amount of time. Fear is clearly innate; Little Albert instinctively feared the loud noise that was created to condition him to fear the rat. This innate fear can, and did, lead to a conditioned fear. However, I am not sure if Little Albert’s conditioned fear of rats/associated animals and things persisted throughout his life, or if this fear was a temporary one that only lasted as long as the experiment. If Little Albert did not develop or maintain a rat phobia, it suggests that perhaps there are real differences between innate fear and conditioned fear, or perhaps that conditioned fear is something altogether different than innate fear. We know from similar Pavlov’s dog-type experiments that certain reactions can be conditioned based on stimuli, but it is not altogether clear that this such reaction was truly fear, in the Moro Reflex sense, but rather a fleeting, weaker kind of fear. If, however, Little Albert did maintain his fear of rats and other small or white animals, the experiment would provide very powerful evidence that fear can be largely or wholly a conditioned response. As such, this would have both encouraging and discouraging ramifications. Encouraging would be that perhaps people could be conditioned similarly away from (needless) fear. However, the ability of society and people to actively condition others to fear things that are not innately fearsome raises is concerning.

Mitchell Griffith

The Little Albert experiment seems to corroborate the idea that humans can be easily conditioned to fear certain things simply because of the manner in which they are exposed to them rather than the fact that the item itself actually inspires fear. While the result of the experiment seems logical in retrospect, the experiment was likely the first of its kind and probably quite revolutionary. Today it seems that we are all too often fearful of things that we are either told to fear or fear because of the things we associate with the object itself. Trying to “unlearn” these fears seems nearly impossible because every time we fear something, rightfully or not, we are simply reinforcing that fear within ourselves and actually getting to the point where the object inspires true fear within us. It seems the only way to actually recondition our minds to not fear something would be to subject ourselves to a carefully orchestrated program of reconditioning that slowly teaches us to that the object we are afraid of is actually harmless or perhaps even benevolent. However, virtually no one has access to or could actually participate in such a program. This helps to explain why people often have irrational fears of other races, religions, certain animals, etc., that should not truly inspire fear. While we can and probably should judge people who have such irrational fears and we call them bigots, we must also understand that it is very likely they were raised in an environment that continually taught them to have a true fear of the object that we do not find frightful.

Todd Huntley

While a natural response to fear can certainly serve a function in helping an individual avoid dangerous situations, the ability to condition this response to other stimuli can also be used to evoke responses in a way that could be manipulated. This conditioned response may be based on societal norms, or to help form a group of individuals who can be manipulated by those in power. Whether such a response if truly natural or has been conditioned by society may be unknown by those affected by it. Tools to reach our across societal lines, such as cyberspace, may provide the capability to overcome such conditioned responses.

Debbie Rosenbaum

As a psychology major in college, one of my favorite classes was “the Psychology of Learning.” It was here that I first was exposed to classical conditioning and other theories about learning, but what remains burned into my consciousness is the notion of “learned helplessness.” For me, the notion of learning fear is best demonstrated by the juxtaposition between the Little Albert experiment and the video of Nico crawling. Just as we learn that fire is hot and that being potty trained is appropriate, so too are we taught what – and whom – to fear by the environment around us. The video about the 6th Juror demonstrates the influence of media on this learning. We are taught that being familiar and up-to-date on the news is critical to success in an educated society. But if that is the case, than the medium by which we learn of the news fundamentally influences how we perceive it. The case of Little Albert was striking and informative and has made me excited about this class.

Maliha Hashmi

The little Albert experiment is a classical example of how the human psyche plays a major role in the human development. Humans can be conditioned to fear and love various things in life by mere association to pleasant to unpleasant things. This experiment showed how humans can counter any fear in their life by mere conditioning. The mind plays a great role in this whole experiment as the mind associates various experiences with various emotions. If the mind is conditioned to associate things it fears with pleasant emotions, this could serve as key in helping children overcome their fears and phobias. This also plays a role in healthy development of relationships as well. If we learn how to counter our fears with love, strategy and assistance, we will be able to try new things without hesitation and succeed in them.

Caroline Lents

My first reaction to the Little Albert story was that it was cruel to do that to the child. I was surprised though that his fear lasted so long and passed on to other furry animals as well. At first, it makes sense that he would be scared of the rat because he was right to think that if he touched it, the loud noise would come back. However, after a time, once he got older and realized that the noise couldn’t be associated with the animals, one would think his fear would disappear. The irrationality of fear is frightening when one thinks of the infinite number of ways one could develop such an irrational phobia of any number of things, people, or ideas. It of course is directly applicable to racism created by the perpetuation of harmful and often scary stereotypes. If one watches the news, feels frightened by the violence they see, and the perpetrator is consistently a person of one race, they will associate the fear they feel with that race. The really alarming part is that even if they become aware of the irrationality of their fear, they might not be able to erase it.

david gross

My first reaction is that we are more innately afraid of loud noises than little animals. We have comfort with animals before we are (sometimes) conditioned by society to view them differently. Why is the noise scarier than the animal? Maybe the noise signifies that a larger beast is around the corner, and little Albert only fears animals of a certain physical magnitude as those can harm him. I'm then, however, curious as to why little Albert associated the loud noise with the small animal. If the loud noise signifies a larger beast, then why develop fear to the smaller one.

Justin Pines

The Little Albert experiment shows that fear can be irrational, and artificially created. It also shows that sometimes, this fear can not be undone. This made me think first of how some children are scared of clowns, despite good intentions of the clowns. I also thought about the current political state of America, and the amount of fear so many Americans feel, particularly when it comes to national security. Many have said that the Republican Party has intentionally used fear to win votes. Finally, I definitely associate fear with students at our law school, myself included. There is not only the fear of failure created by the difficulty of 1L year, as you mentioned yesterday. I believe there is also a fear of trying new things and failing. Students who have spent much time honing skills in certain areas are afraid to try unfamiliar terrain, for fear of failing.

Isaac Kriegman

My immediate reaction was that it was mean. It was not a surprising result to me; perhaps because experiments like that and their implications are already well known in our culture. Although it is interesting that the fear response didn't diminish when the provocative action wasn't followed up with anything particularly painful. Perhaps the baby feels that provocative action itself as painful. I guess that is the idea. That is a pretty defective design for humans, but perhaps, not really, from an evolutionary perspective it was important to learn fear and let it be self reinforcing. An organism cannot afford to experiment with whether fear is justified, if finding that it is justified mean death or some kind of severe harm, and finding that it is not only confers a small benefit. In a world were death is a common consequence of scary things, perhaps it makes sense to be able to learn fears easily, and for those fears to be very resilient. This also makes sense when it is difficult to analyze fears to determine if they are justified, because we don't know enough about how the physical world works. However, in our world, were the dangers are frequently small, and where we have an amazing capacity to analyze dangers rationally, it makes far less sense for fears to be so resilient.

jeremy goldberg

The Little Albert experiment demonstrates both elements of the bi-modal nature of human behavior.

I can think of numerous examples of fears that appear to be innate rather than learned. In my experience, spiders and bugs both create a reaction of fear even though most people have never had a negative experience with such creatures. Similarly, garbage, feces, and other unsanitary material look and smell unpleasant to people even though most have not had a tangibly negative experience with either. My inclination is that these are clearly not learned behaviors, but rather innate fears that have been inculcated into most of humanity through evolution. These fears are not mindkillers, rather they are extremely useful because they keep people from acting out behaviors that would have a negative effect on their health. Even if spiders or garbage might not be particularly dangerous to people in the contemporary western world, it seems extremely likely to me that they would have been very dangerous even a few centuries ago and that consequently, having such innate fears would have been very advantageous.

As for the other aspect, that people can be taught to fear, this is not surprising. We observe and experience the world and our behavior changes as a result. The only shock seems to be the extent to which and the ease with which people can be made to fear. The Little Albert study specifically shows that infants are evidently more susceptible than older individuals to being inculcated with positive and negative responses to stimuli. I would say that this is because young children's minds are less developed and because they have a lesser body of prior experiences to draw on. By this, I mean that they haven't previously built up a large reservoir of feelings about rodents, or most other things.

Paul Bozzello

My first reaction was discomfort at the thought of a baby and a rat being placed in a cage together. Beyond this initial discomfort, and with respect to the experiment itself, I wonder if the loud noise which repelled the baby from approaching the rat induced the moro reflex rather than fear itself. Though fear might be said to be both emotional and physiological, I wonder if the same can be said of the moro reflex. Although I only have a limited understanding of the moro reflex, my guess is that this reflex, as all reflexes, would be physiological rather than psychological. The experiment might therefore not be the most accurate reflection of the baby&#8217s fear as much as it demonstrates a properly functioning moro reflex. If it does reflect fear, and the noise induced the fear, then fear is, at least in that case, merely an illusion. In a situation such as the baby&#8217s, the fear can be overcome so long as that situational fear-inducing factor is recognized and re-appropriated as something harmless.

Nnamdi Okike

Idea: Fear is innate, but can also be conditioned

Fear is indeed an emotion which can be conditioned. Fear is relative to our prior experiences and how we view those experiences. People who have been conditioned through experience often fear objects or individuals which a normal person would not generally fear. For example, an individual who has been locked in a room, or been a hostage for a long period of time, might have a great fear of entering enclosed spaces, even when there are multiple points of exit. A person who has experienced a difficult relationship might fear entering into a new one, even with someone who intends only the best for that person. Soldiers returning from war, who suffer Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, often fear slight movements by strangers, or become agitated when they hear unfamiliar sounds. These are all examples of the same type of experiential conditioning that was evidenced in the Little Albert experiment. The key component of the Little Albert experiment was combining an experience that was itself generally innocuous (e.g., interacting with a white rat) with an experience that aroused fear (e.g., striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer). By associating the latter experience with the former, Little Albert’s fear increased significantly.

robyn morris

Little Albert didn’t like the loud noise. He associated the rat with the loud noise immediately. When he saw anything resembling the rat even if it didn’t look exactly like the rat he associated it with the loud noise and displayed the fear response. Since Albert was a baby, this could have been his first experience with fear so the connection between fear, the loud noise and the rat was strong. This might have made it more difficult for him to be desensitized. If this experiment had been performed when he was older after he had more experiences with fear and desensitization, he might not have associated fear and the load noise with everything white and small looking animals for the rest of his life.

Brittany Blueitt

The Little Albert experiment demonstrated that although fear is an innate response, the association with an external stimulus can be conditioned. In addition the Little Albert experiment and the experiment with the dog and the electric grid both demonstrate that it is much more difficult to de-condition a fear that has already been established. I think that this fact can have a remarkable impact on people's every day lives, especially within the criminal justice system. In the film Juror Number Six, it was shown that jurors have a learned fear of African American men which can and has lead to greater conviction and incarceration rates within that community. The solution to this phenomenon, in light of the Little Albert experiment is not an easy one. Even if the positive images of black men in society today somehow double those that are negatively portrayed in the media, it will be close to impossible to wipe away the existing fear that has already been established. This same fear is what leads women to clutch their purses when passed in the street by an African American male and for shopping clerks to follow those same subjects through the aisles of a department store. This phenomenon has caused and will continue to cause great disparity in the treatment of this feared segment of society.

jennifer schanes

The little Albert story demonstrates that not only is fear a real emotion and obstacle, but also how powerful conditioning can be. There is a difference between a natural and conditioned response to fear but regardless it can be debilitating. My initial reaction was concern that the project was discontinued and the result the conditioning probably had on the child long term.

Steve Feldman

The story struck in me the core of fear that people have and must overcome. It struck me further that we could overcome these things. The question the story also raises is one of nurture v. nature. Are we born with fear? Do we learn fear? Is it natural? Is it a good thing? How can it help us in a broad evolutionary way? The story brings lots of these questions to the forefront, and answers a few. It is instructive and thought-provoking. Overall it leaves the big-picture question: what is the role of fear in human life?

kira stanfield

The Little Albert Experiment conducted by John Watson illustrates that human beings can be conditioned to fear certain objects and things. In an experimental setting, it is easy to understand where fears stem from. Yet, real world experiences that inspire behavioral reactions of fear to certain things are less precise. In order to face certain fears, human beings must understand where the fear originates. I think studying the association between fear and the real world counterpart will contribute to academia. However, experimenting on children can raise ethical issues. Moreover, the dog experiment with the loud noise and flashing lights and thereafter electrocuting the dog definitely crosses the line of ethics in order to understand behavioral responses. I think that Mr. Watson greatly contributed to science but more ethical means should be used.

Nicole D. Jackson

The Little Albert experience does not strike me as unusual. It seems easy enough to accept the fact that people can be trained or conditioned to fear objects that they do not naturally fear. People often learn, through experience or controlled conditions, to associate particular emotions with certain stimuli. It seems to me that it would be harder to condition a person to stop fearing something that he or she naturally fear (a loud noise, for example). The possibility of conditioning people to fear certain things can be useful to society by, for example, teaching children to fear the approach of an unfamiliar adult. I think that this tactic is used rather frequently, particularly in the parenting context.

calida motley

My first reaction to the Little Albert Experiment was outrage that it was conducted in the first place. Further, the results were unsurprising in my opinion. I believe that humans can be programmed to fear anything if it is coupled with something else they fear. For example, if a rose is shown in conjunction with a zombie, a child will begin to fear roses. I’m a strong believer in human conditioning.

michelle berger

It's unsurprising that fear is a learned response. Yet, at the same time, it's is surprising. It reminds me of the same problems tackled by Chomsky in linguistic acquisition -- is there some innate element to language? Chomsky leads us to believe yes there is. Similarly, Little Albert leads us to believe that there must be some innate element to fear. Yet, just as in linguistics, while there is some innate element to language, much of language is learned from our surroundings, experiences, and immersion. In the same way, while the natural instinct to fear loud noises may be innate, learning to fear beyond that (say white rabbits) is learned. It raises further interesting questions and implications about the human condition -- if innate fear can be transformed into something bigger, how much of other emotions undergo the same process?

Farah Tariq

My first thought was that it sounded like a horrible experiment - scaring babies and creating fear for the sake of demonstrating conditioning. It is only worse that the experiment was not able to be completed, because the child then grew up afraid of the things that he had been taught to fear. It was also very uncomfortable to think about the baby and the rat to be placed together in a small space (in a cage!). I was first concerned for the safety of the baby, as well as for how the baby would react and treat the rat. In some ways, it seems similar to a Pavlov's experiment with children instead of dogs. (which again sounds a little disturbing). However, I would instinctively expect that babies could be conditioned as anyone else. It is very interesting though to see that before any consciousness is really formed, the mind can still be conditioned. This becomes clear in many other aspects of human behavior that habit and conditioning can have a stronger effect than other learned or deliberate behaviors.