John B Watson & Rosalie Rayner 1920
AIMS: Watson, the founding father of Behaviourism, after observing children in the field, was interested in finding support for his notion that the reaction of children, whenever they heard loud noises, was prompted by fear. Furthermore, he reasoned that this fear was innate or due to an unconditioned response. He felt that following the principles of Classical Conditioning, he could condition a child to fear another distinctive stimulus which normally would not be feared by a child.
Watson and his graduate student assistant, Rayner, aimed to find out:-
PROCEDURE (METHOD): The experimenters chose ‘Albert B’ aged 9 months as their participant.
Effectively Albert had been reared from birth in a hospital environment -
Before the commencement of the experiment, Albert was given a battery of baseline
emotional tests; the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white
rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning
newspapers, etc. During the baseline, Little Albert showed no fear toward any of
these items. Albert’s mother and some of the hospital staff witnessed some of these
events -
The experimenters also banged a hammer against a suspended steel bar to make a loud
noise. Albert reacted fearfully -
Watson & Rayner did not begin to condition Albert until approximately two months later, when he was just over 11 months old. The experiment began by placing Albert on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, the child showed no fear of the rat. He began to reach out to the rat and groan as it roamed around him. In later trials, Watson & Rayner had the suspended steel bar with a hammer behind Albert's back by striking the suspended steel bar with a hammer when the baby touched the rat. Not surprisingly in these occasions, Little Albert cried and showed fear as he heard the noise. After seven such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was again presented with only the rat. Now, however, he became very distressed as the rat appeared in the room. He cried, turned away from the rat, and tried to move away.
Albert was allowed to play with blocks in between the trials; he appeared to have no problem playing happily with the blocks.
5 days after the first exposure to the rat and loud noise together, Watson & Rayner concluded that the conditioned response was weakening and, therefore, renewed it. They did the same again on the 20th day.
17 days after the original pairing of the stimuli, Watson took a (non-
In the very last stages, the experiment was transferred to a lecture room and conducted in the presence of 4 people. This was to study the effects of different surroundings.
After 31 days of the experiment, Albert was taken from the hospital by his mother.
Watson & Rayner appeared baffled by her rash action. A number of commentators have
suggested that the mother was never allowed fully-
Watson & Rayner claimed they had planned to attempt to desensitise Albert and eliminate
his fearful reactions (pair the white rat with warm milk which babies love) -

FINDINGS (RESULTS): This experiment lead to the following progression of results:
Albert also seemed to have generalised his response to several other stimuli (animals and objects) which bore some kind of similarity to the white rat.
After 31 days the conditioned response was still present if a little weaker than it had been
CONCLUSIONS: Watson & Rayner concluded that they had succeeded in conditioning in an infant fear of an animal the child would not ordinarily be frightened of. Stimulus generalisation also was claimed in that Albert transferred the fear to other similar stimuli.
From the fact that the conditioned response was still present after 31 days, Watson & Rayner concluded it might last a lifetime.
CRITICISMS (EVALUATION):-
An extract from a documentary featuring commentary on Watson’s theory and footage from the Little Albert experiment