Behavioral psychology is one of the modern perspectives of psychology and as defined by our class; has a focus on operant conditioning, punishment and reinforcement. Anybody that has a pet can easily relate a basic concept of behavioral conditioning to their life. Say your dog likes to beg for food. If you cave and decide to appease your dog, the dog will continue to beg as now it knows that it will get what it wants. You don’t typically want to reinforce bad behavior, or else the unfavorable behavior will continue due. As I stated, this is basic conditioning that just about anybody can witness and attest to. The concept of conditioning brought a more unethical question though; can a phobia be conditioned into a young child?
John Watson performed an experiment in 1920 that would be known as the “Little Albert” experiment. He along with his assistant Rosalie Rayner set out to answer the question. They would take a 9-month baby and have him play with a white rat. By default, Albert had no problem with the rat and showed no fear of it, even enjoying his time with it. They would then make a loud, unexpected noise behind the child, scaring the life out of him. After repeating this multiple times, the child grew terrified of the rat, even when no noise was made. The repeated trials held during this experiment conditioned “Albert” to associate rats with loud scary noises, and caused him to be terrified by them as a result. This experiment, though quite useful to the progression of psychology as a science, has been deemed horribly unethical. The fact that Watson never de-conditioned the child only serves to make it worse.
Sources used:
DeAngelis, T. “’Little Albert’ Regains His Identity.” Monitor on Psychology, American Psychological Association, Jan. 2010, www.apa.org/monitor/2010/01/little-albert.