classical conditioning otherwise known as pavlovian conditioning is learning through association this was first perfectly demonstrated by russian physiologist ivan pavlov in the 1890s in simple terms two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or an animal the experiment pavlov conducted which is well known today and referred to as pavlov's dog serves as a backbone for modern psychology and is one of the seeds of behaviorism pavlov knew dogs would automatically salivate whenever food was presented to them this was a natural response not learned as this reflex is hardwired into the dog when pavlov realized that any object which the dog learned to associate with food such as the lab assistant's footsteps would trigger the same response he realized he had made an important scientific discovery however this needed to be demonstrated in a lab through a series of experiments he demonstrated that a dog could be conditioned to salivate in response to any stimulus in the absence of the original stimulus food he rang a bell every time the dog was about to be fed and after a short period of time the dog would salivate just to the sound of the bell whether the food was there or not initially an unconditioned stimulus the food produced an unconditioned response the neutral stimulus the bell initially produced no conditioned or a neutral response however when you present the unconditioned stimulus at the same time as the neutral stimulus the dog associated them together thus the neutral stimulus was now conditioned and now produced a conditioned response this is classical conditioning in a nutshell you can make a dog think that a bell means food now on to the crying baby john watson and soon-to-be wife rosalie rayner of the john hopkins university theorized that if a stimulus automatically produces a certain emotion reaction or fear in you like a loud noise and that stimulus is constantly repeated at the same time as something else like a rat the rat would become associated with the fear you initially felt watson maintained that we are not born to fear things like rats but that such fears are learned through conditioning this helped him create his most famous experiment it involved a single participant a cute little baby called albert b however he is commonly referred to as little albert albert was nine months old the boy was reared almost from birth in a hospital environment his mother was a wet nurse in the harriet lane home for invalid children albert's life was normal he was healthy from birth and on the whole solid and unemotional his stability was one of the principal reasons for using him in the first place they felt that they could do him relatively little harm the idea was firstly to subject him to a series of baseline tests and thereafter experiment with conditioning him watson started by introducing albert to a number of stimulus like masks newspaper furry animals including a dog a rabbit and most importantly a white rat initially little albert showed no fear or negative response to any of the objects not even a tear but then watson made what every baby wouldn't like to hear loud unpleasant noises by clanging a metal bar with a hammer knowing this noise would distress the baby the most basic universal genetically hard-wired fears are the fears of sudden loud noises and things that surprise us loud noises they cause an involuntary startle response in humans and in many other species as well you can sneak up behind a person and yell at them and the reaction would be similar to your own if someone sneaks up behind you and yells at you fear you can also try this with a dog or a squirrel or a giraffe it's guaranteed to work every time the startle reflex is primitive and very effective in orienting the organism toward and preparing it for danger horror films and games in particular exploit this innate fear when they resort to jump scares it's this innate hard-wired reaction which caused little albert to cry watson then paired the loud noise with the presentation of the white rat to little albert he repeated this many times very quickly albert was conditioned to expect the frightening noise whenever the white rat was presented to him very soon the white rat alone could induce a fear response in albert the rat initially was a neutral stimulus with a neutral response no sign of fear from the child the loud noise was the unconditioned stimulus and the crying the unconditioned response to that the pairing of them both together turned a rat into a conditioned stimulus and resulted in the same but now conditioned response what was interesting was that without the need for further conditioning the fear was generalized to other animals in situations including a dog rabbit and a white mask worn by watson himself watson and rayner who knew all along that they had to return little albert gave him back without informing the mother of the activities and conditioning that they'd inflicted on him and most worryingly not taking the time to counter condition or cure him of the phobia that they created this is only one of the problems with the way this study was done both the american psychological association and the british psychological society have well developed codes of ethics which any practicing psychologists have to adhere to in addition all places of higher learning and research have ethical committees to which research proposals have to be submitted for consideration the core concern is to focus on the quality of research the professional competence of the researchers and of greatest importance the welfare of human and animal subjects in 1920 not so much this experiment is almost a perfect representation of the wrong way to do research breaking the cardinal ethical rules for psychological studies do no harm little albert was clearly harmed during the experiment and would have potentially suffered lifelong harm as a result he may have grown up as a 70 year old man with an irrational fear of white fluffy things and that would have been thanks to what he experienced here as a baby the principle of informed consent subjects have to be given as much information about the study as possible before the study begins so that they can make a decision on whether they want to take part or not if the research is such that giving information before the study may affect the outcome then the other alternative is a thorough debrief at the conclusion neither of these conditions were satisfied by watson poor little albert wouldn't have understood anything he was being told and had no idea what he was going through the participants right to withdraw a participant should be informed to clarity they have a right to withdraw a nine-month-old baby can't say it's hungry let alone formulate the words necessary to withdraw from the experiment moreover the mother had no idea the child was being experimented on so couldn't even consent or be informed of this on the baby's behalf professional competence of the researcher now while it may seem tentative to question one of the fathers of behavioral psychology it wasn't exactly a good experiment there was only one subject and the experiment lacks any form of control criticizing this however is a little void since research in psychology at that time was in its infancy besides these ethical issues and the fact you physically feel for this child the environment was not controlled the animals changed and several appeared themselves to be in distress the final act of watson applying a mask was presented very closely to albert something that potentially would cause any child distress i mean let's be honest that mask is definitely enough to strike fear into the strongest of men watson had originally planned to decondition albert to the stimulus using systematic desensitization a therapy well known in psychology demonstrating that conditioned fears could be eliminated however albert was removed from the experiment before this could happen and thus watson created a child with a previously non-existent fear watson rationalized his treatment of little albert by stating we decided finally to make the attempt comforting ourselves that such attachments would arise anyway as soon as the child left the sheltered environment of the nursery for the rough and tumble of the home now we have to understand like i mentioned earlier this was the 1920s psychology was a child itself and the principles ethics and structure had barely started to form so we must allow for that this study has succeeded to a large extent in convincing many in the psychological community that emotional behavior could be conditioned through simple stimulus response techniques this finding helped to launch one of the major complex schools of thoughts in psychology behaviorism this helps us to figure out other emotions while using them in the same manner as watson and rayner did in therapy for example we can begin to deduce the experiences and conditioning that may have resulted in personality traits reactions or even disorders within a person thanks to the experiment that made a baby cry little albert was presumed the son of a wet nurse by the name of avila mariet who worked in the harriet lane home for invalid children his mother received one dollar for her son's part in the experiment which would be equivalent to around 13 today some sources state he may have been a different child named william barger who lived a long life however most sources agree that albert's real name was douglas mariet nobody knows whether his fear of rats persisted into adulthood as sadly he died just age six from hydrocephalus which is a buildup of fluid in the brain if you enjoyed this video i plan to make a whole lot more so please like share and subscribe so you don't miss out thank you for your attention