How did Watson establish a conditioned emotional response in Albert? Did that response generalize to other stimuli? If so, to what kind of stimuli?
The young, pretty graduate student had picked up the baby, whereas, the distinguished, handsome psychologist had picked up the hammer. She moved her hand to catch the attention of the baby such that he would fix on it and would not move head.
Therefore distracted, the child would not notice the rod, hung at the ceiling. He could not see the man raising the hammer and swiftly struck the bar. The research asserted, “the child began aggressively, his breathe was examined and the arms were elevated.”
The lips of the child started to tremble and pucker when the bar was struck again by the psychologist and at the third time, the child started crying. The psychologist here is Watson, the pioneer for behaviorism.
Albert had been displaying an array of stimuli before being experimented by strikes of hammer. He did not show any reaction of fear against those stimuli. After the bar was struck by Watson, Albert responded fearfully, giving Watson a response of emotion which was unconditioned to work upon.
In order to develop a response of emotion and condition in Albert, like fear of a rat (for which he was not afraid of earlier), he combined the rat with startling and loud noise. By continuous number of trials, the child eventually developed this conditioned response of fear.