Month: April 2020

This is not another blog post on a psychology experiment devoid of morals and ethics, rather it is a genuinely interesting one that explores wether or not social behaviors can be acquired through observation and imitation. This experiment specifically focused on aggression, and how seeing an adult interact with toys would impact the children’s interactions in a controlled environment. In 1961, three psychologists selected 36 boys and 36 girls aged 3-6 to participate in this study. The children were individually placed in a nursery and given various toys to play with while the three men conducting the experiment observed them and judged their aggressive behavior on a 1-5 scale. To insure their judging was correct, researchers independent of the experiment also judged the children on a 1-5 scale and the mean of the two scores was taken. The men then split the 72 children into 3 different categories. 24 children would be shown an aggressive role model, 24 would be shown a non-aggressive role model and the final 24 would serve as a control.

To begin the experiment, the first group of 24 kids watched either a male or female adult exhibit aggressive behavior towards a Bodo doll. The adults yelled at, punched and threw the doll while the children observed through a one way mirror. The second group of kids watched either a male or female adult exhibit non-aggressive behavior. These adults played in a calm and quiet manner, ignoring the Bodo doll in the room and instead choosing to fiddle with a tinker toy set. The third group of kids, as mentioned previously watched no adults and served as the control. After viewing either the aggressive or non-aggressive adults, the children were taken individually to the same room to play with a multitude of toys. After 1o minutes of playing, the men conducting the experiment entered the room and stated that they were saving the best toys for other children. This was meant to induce mild aggression arousal, and the children were taken to another room with aggressive toys, such as a Bodo Doll and a dart gun, as well as non-aggressive toys such as crayons and plastic farm animals.

After observing the children’s actions, the researchers found that the first group, who had witnessed the aggressive adults, engaged in much more aggressive behavior than the second and third group. They also found that the boys were more likely to express aggression physically, while the girls expressed aggression verbally. These results confirmed the psychologists’ hypothesis, and supported the notion of Social Learning Theory. Social Learning Theory states that children learn social behaviors, such as aggression, through observation of another person’s behavior. This experiment is commonly cited in debates on the effects that violent video games have on children. Supporters will say this experiment proves violent video games make children more violent, while those against this would say that effects vary on a case by case basis, and many other factors need to be taken into account before definitively stating violent video games make children more violent.

After writing multiple blog posts about famous psychology experiments, I have noticed an interesting trend. It seems that only unethical and  damaging experiments become famous and noteworthy due to their bizarreness and cruelty. The Little Albert experiment is no exception. Created by John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov, this experiment was meant to examine classical conditioning, meaning  wether or not the repeated effects of 2 different stimuli could trigger a conditioned response from humans similar to how they do with dogs. Oddly, they decided to use a 9 month old child, referred to as Albert, to test these effects. If the term classical conditioning or conditioned response sounds confusing, it essentially means that by repeatedly combining two different stimuli together, the brain will begin to no longer discern between the two stimuli, rather it will interpret them together even if experienced interchangeably.

The premise of the experiment was rather simple, the test subject, Albert, would be exposed to a variety of stimuli including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, scary masks and burning news papers. His initial reactions were recorded as, “Having no fear towards any of the objects.” The next time Albert was exposed to the white rat, and it is unclear why the men conducting the experiment specifically chose this object over others, Watson made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer. After hearing such a loud noise, Albert began to cry in the presence of the rat. After repeating this process many times, Albert started to cry as soon as he saw the white rat. Even if there was no loud sound from the hammer, Albert would cry whenever the rat was in his sight. This was because Albert associated the white rat and the loud noise interchangeably. Him crying was a conditioned response based on a neutral stimulus being altered by an unconditioned stimulus.

This experiment concluded that similar to the way we train dogs, humans can be classically conditioned to associate one thing with another so much so, that a response can achieved from multiple similar stimuli. For example, Albert was terrified of the white rat because he associated it with a loud noise, but he was also scared of furry white objects in general. Watson wearing a Santa Clause beard and wearing a white furry coat reaped the same reaction from Albert as the white rat did. This experiment was criticized for its lack of ethics and lasting damage it inflicted upon the test subject Albert, although it present new research on how humans react to stimuli that is still be used by workers in various fields today.