Why What You Fear May Not Be Real
Researchers Watson and Raynor wanted to test the idea that fear could be acquired through classical conditioning. Their subject was Little Albert, an eleven-month-old son of a female employee at the clinic. The child's mother knew nothing about the experiment. Watson and Raynor presented Albert with a white laboratory rat while sounding a loud noise. Little Albert soon associated the loud noise with the white rat and was conditioned to fear the rat. This fear was then generalised to other fluffy white objects such a Santa's beard and a sealskin coat.