Editing Little Albert experiment (section)

==Method==
The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition a [[phobia]] in an emotionally stable child.<ref>Hill, G. (2009). ''AS & A Level Psychology Through Diagrams'', p. 27.</ref> For this study, they chose a nine-month-old infant from a hospital. The child was referred to as "Albert" for the experiment.<ref>Watson & Rayner, 1920, p. 1</ref> Watson followed the procedures which [[Ivan Pavlov]] had used in his experiments with dogs.<ref name="Watson" />

Before 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, and other [[Stimulus (psychology)|stimuli]]. Albert showed no fear of any of these items during the baseline tests.

For the experiment proper, by which point Albert was 11 months old, he was put 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, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer each time the baby touched the rat. Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was presented with only the rat. Upon seeing the rat, Albert became very distressed, crying and crawling away. Apparently, the infant associated the white rat with the noise. The rat, originally a [[neutral stimulus]], had become a conditioned stimulus and was eliciting an emotional (conditional) response similar to the distress (unconditioned response) originally given to the noise (unconditioned stimulus).<ref name="Schwartz" />

In further experiments, Little Albert seemed to [[generalize]] his response to the white rat. He became distressed at the sight of several other furry objects, such as a rabbit, a furry dog, a seal-skin coat, and even a [[Santa Claus]] mask with white cotton balls in the beard. However, this stimulus generalization did not extend to everything with hair.<ref name="Schwartz" />

Watson's experiment had many failings by modern standards.<ref name="Harris, B" /> For example, it had only a single subject and no [[control variable|control subjects]]. Furthermore, such an experiment could be hard to conduct in compliance with current laws and regulations, given the expected risks to the subject.