in the early part of the 20th century psychologists John Watson and Rosalie rer set out to teach a baby boy called little Albert to fear white rats using the principle of classical conditioning this is a film of their work the film shows several phases of their study first as you see here the investigators demonstrated that prior to conditioning little albertt had no fears of any animals including of course white rats e Watson and Rainer then sought to teach Albert to fear white rats through classical conditioning in the conditioning phase of the study which was not filmed the investigator struck a steel bar with a hammer whenever Albert reached for a rat making a very loud noise that greatly upset and frightened Albert after six such pairings of the loud noise in the rat it was believed that the boy had been conditioned to fear white rats that is Albert was now expected to react fearfully to white rats whether the rats were paired with loud noises or not in this next film sequence we see Albert interacting with a white rat after the conditioning process the investigators believed that the child's reaction during this trial demonstrated his newly acquired fear of white rats finally the investigators expected that little Albert's conditioned fear of white rats would generalize to stimuli that was similar in key ways to a white rat in this film segment they were trying to demonstrate that the child now also reacted fearfully to similar objects such as a rabbit a dog a furry object and a white mask worn by Watson himself e