Psychologist John B. Watson had a theory that humans are not afraid of anything until something causes us to fear. To test that theory, in 1920 he went through the process of teaching an infant (known as "Little Albert") to be afraid.
Of course, the poor child began to show high anxiety when the objects were presented. Dr. Watson had intended to "undo" the phobias by giving Little Albert a pleasant stimulus in the presence of those objects. But he dropped that part of the experiment due to lack of time! No one knows what happened to Albert afterward. Dr. Watson's research was received with fascination by other psychologists, and no one at the time questioned the ethics of the experiment. Read the whole story at Damn Interesting. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=970
The researchers' first order of business was to establish a psychological baseline. They tried exposing the infant to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, and a monkey, and Albert reached for each animal with cheerful curiosity. The researchers brought him items such as masks and clumps of cotton, and he manipulated the objects with interest. They placed a long steel rod behind Albert's head and struck the metal sharply with a claw hammer, and he flinched with evident distress. The infant's baseline reactions to these stimuli were duly noted, and two months later the peculiar series of "joint stimulation" experiments was underway.
Of course, the poor child began to show high anxiety when the objects were presented. Dr. Watson had intended to "undo" the phobias by giving Little Albert a pleasant stimulus in the presence of those objects. But he dropped that part of the experiment due to lack of time! No one knows what happened to Albert afterward. Dr. Watson's research was received with fascination by other psychologists, and no one at the time questioned the ethics of the experiment. Read the whole story at Damn Interesting. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=970
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4-1JbAEs0M
"Little Albert left the hospital before they had a chance to see whether they could decondition his response to furry objects"
He got adopted and the new parents withdrew Albert from the hospital.
right, because the good christian Adolph Hitler didn't have Dr. Mengela running disgusting experiments on children...
Moral behavior and religious belief are not strongly correlated in people.
It's people like you who have no religious or racial tolerance that make many people angry.
Yawn.
A terrible study, sure, but they did find out some interesting data on phobias. Too bad it could have been done differently.
I am a high school student and in History class we learned about Christianity and their beliefs, Islam and their beliefs, Hinduism and their beliefs, and Buddism and thier beliefs, and Atheism and their beliefs
We were not "force fed" the religion. We learned about it and had to write about what we belived.
So, it may not be in science class, we do learn about religion.
(And its public school)