Summarize Watson’s views on emotion. What emotions did Watson think were innate? How do emotions become associated with various stimuli or events? What research did Watson perform to validate his views?
Watson has differing views on emotions. He believed that humans inherit some emotional feelings like fear, rage and love along with structure and some basic reflexes like sneezing, crying and crawling. He said after observing in infants, that fear gets evoked by loud noises and when one loses his or her balance like on falling, or in case of rage created on restriction of the freedom of movement of infant, and love by caressing the infant.
He stressed on the fact that emotions can be elicited from stimuli through the process of learning, other than the stimuli that originally elicited them. By this, he meant that other than those innate emotions, human acquire some other emotions with learning and experience. The derivation of adult emotions like shame, pain, jealousy and hate are derived from pre-existing emotions fear, love and rage.
He gave a demonstration to explain that emotions can be displaced to stimuli apart from those that had evoked the emotions in the first place. Watson along with Rosalie worked on an infant named Albert, who was 11 months old. A white rat was shown to Albert, upon whom he did not fear, instead tried to touch it.
While Albert was trying to touch the rat, Watson made a loud and unexpected sound by striking a steel bar with a hammer. As a response to this, Albert fell. The same event was repeated which made Albert cry. Sometime later, when he was again presented with the rat, Albert did not show enthusiasm to touch the rat.