"Experimental work had been done so far on only one child, Albert B. This infant 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 one of the best developed youngsters ever brought to the hospital, weighing twenty-one pounds at nine months of age. He was on the whole stolid and unemotional. His stability was one of the principal reasons for using him as a subject in this test. We felt that we could do him relatively little harm by carrying out such experiments as those outlined below.
...The sound stimulus, thus, at nine months of age, gives us 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?
...These experiments would seem to show conclusively that directly conditioned emotional responses as well as those conditioned by transfer persist, although with a: certain loss in the intensity of the reaction, for a longer period than one month. Our view is that they persist and modify personality throughout life. It should be recalled again that Albert was of an extremely phlegmatic type. Had he been emotionally unstable probably both the directly conditioned response and those transferred would have persisted throughout the month unchanged in form.
...Unfortunately Albert was taken from the hospital the day the above tests were made. Hence the opportunity of building up an experimental technique by means of which we could remove the conditioned emotional responses was denied us. (...) Had the opportunity been at hand we should have tried out several methods, some of which we may mention:
(I) Constantly confronting the child with those stimuli which called out the responses in the hopes that habituation would come in corresponding to "fatigue" of reflex when differential reactions are to be set up. (2) By trying to "recondition" by showing objects celling out fear responses (visual) and simultaneously stimulating the erogenous zones (tactual). We should try first the lips, then the nipples and as a final resort the sex organs. (!)
(3) By trying to "recondition" by feeding the subject candy or other food justas.the animal is shown. This method calls for the food control of the subject.
(4) By building up "constructive" activities around the object by imitation and by putting the hand through the motions of manipulation.
...According to proper Freudians sex (or in our terminology, love) is the principal emotion in which conditioned responses arise which later limit and distort personality. (...) Fear is as primal a factor as
love in influencing personality. Fear does not gather its potency in any derived manner from love. It belongs to the original and inherited nature of man. Probably the same maybe true of rage although at present we are not so sure of this. (...) It is probable that many of the phobias in psychopathology are true conditioned emotional reactions either of the direct or the transferred type. (...) Emotional disturbances in adults cannot be traced back to sex alone.They must be retraced along at least three collateral lines - to conditioned and transferred responses set up in infancy and early youth in all three of the fundamental human emotions."
© John B. Watson, Rosalie Rayner
"Conditioned Emotional Reactions" (1920)
...The sound stimulus, thus, at nine months of age, gives us 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?
...These experiments would seem to show conclusively that directly conditioned emotional responses as well as those conditioned by transfer persist, although with a: certain loss in the intensity of the reaction, for a longer period than one month. Our view is that they persist and modify personality throughout life. It should be recalled again that Albert was of an extremely phlegmatic type. Had he been emotionally unstable probably both the directly conditioned response and those transferred would have persisted throughout the month unchanged in form.
...Unfortunately Albert was taken from the hospital the day the above tests were made. Hence the opportunity of building up an experimental technique by means of which we could remove the conditioned emotional responses was denied us. (...) Had the opportunity been at hand we should have tried out several methods, some of which we may mention:
(I) Constantly confronting the child with those stimuli which called out the responses in the hopes that habituation would come in corresponding to "fatigue" of reflex when differential reactions are to be set up. (2) By trying to "recondition" by showing objects celling out fear responses (visual) and simultaneously stimulating the erogenous zones (tactual). We should try first the lips, then the nipples and as a final resort the sex organs. (!)
(3) By trying to "recondition" by feeding the subject candy or other food justas.the animal is shown. This method calls for the food control of the subject.
(4) By building up "constructive" activities around the object by imitation and by putting the hand through the motions of manipulation.
...According to proper Freudians sex (or in our terminology, love) is the principal emotion in which conditioned responses arise which later limit and distort personality. (...) Fear is as primal a factor as
love in influencing personality. Fear does not gather its potency in any derived manner from love. It belongs to the original and inherited nature of man. Probably the same maybe true of rage although at present we are not so sure of this. (...) It is probable that many of the phobias in psychopathology are true conditioned emotional reactions either of the direct or the transferred type. (...) Emotional disturbances in adults cannot be traced back to sex alone.They must be retraced along at least three collateral lines - to conditioned and transferred responses set up in infancy and early youth in all three of the fundamental human emotions."
© John B. Watson, Rosalie Rayner
"Conditioned Emotional Reactions" (1920)
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