This document provides a concise summary of all required articles for the psychology course 1.2 Differences between People. Note that this document consists of all articles that were mandatory for the course exam of the academic year . This document might still be relevant for you, although some ar...
HYPOTHESES AND SET-UP
• At approximately nine months of age, a child named Albert B. was studied. He was run through the
emotional tests that have become part of the regular routine in determining whether fear reactions can be
called out by other stimuli than sharp noises and the sudden removal of support.
• In brief, the infant was confronted suddenly and for the first time successively with a white rat, a rabbit, a
dog, a monkey, with masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc.
• The sound stimulus at nine months of age gives the means of testing several important factors.
I. Can we condition fear of an animal, e.g. a white rat, by visually presenting it and simultaneously
striking a steel bar?
II. If such a conditioned emotional response can be established, will there be a transfer to other
animals or other objects?
III. What is the effect of time upon such conditioned emotional responses?
IV. If after a reasonable period such emotional responses have not died out, what laboratory methods
can be devised for their removal?
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
I. After several joint simulations, a convincing case was found in which the boy showed a completely
conditioned fear response as could have been theoretically pictured. “The instant the rat was
shown the baby began to cry. Almost instantly he turned sharply to the left, fell over on left side,
raised himself on all fours and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty
before reaching the edge of the table.”
II. A preliminary test showed that the conditioned response to the rat had carried over completely
for the five days in which no tests were given. The question as to whether or not there is a transfer
was next taken up. From the results, it would seem that emotional transfers do take place.
Furthermore, it would seem that the number of transfers resulting from an experimentally
produced conditioned emotional reaction may be very large.
III. The experiments would seem to show that directly conditioned emotional responses as well as
those conditioned by transfer persist, although with a certain loss in intensity of the reaction, for a
longer period than one month. The view is that they persist and modify personality throughout
life. It should be recalled again that Albert was of an extremely phlegmatic type (stable,
introverted). Had he been emotionally unstable probably both the directly conditioned response
and those transferred would have persisted throughout the month unchanged in form.
IV. Unfortunately, the researchers did not have the opportunity of building up an experimental
technique by means of which they could try to remove the conditioned emotional response.
However, had the opportunity be at hand, they would have tried (1) to constantly confronting the
child with those stimuli which called out the responses (habituation), (2) to “recondition” by
showing objects calling out fear responses and simultaneously stimulating the erogenous zones,
(3) to “recondition” by feeding the subject candy as the animal is shown, and (4) to build up
“constructive” activities around the object by imitation and manipulation.
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