As the founder of behaviorist psychology, Watson, a genius and conceited figure, was confident that all human behavior was produced by stimuli. However, Watson did not study the digestive mechanism as Bapulov did, and he directly chose human 9-month-old babies as experimental subjects.
The poor baby was Little Albert, who at 9 months he was picked out of the hospital by Watson and began to sound the shadow that accompanied him.
It is not known why his mother would agree to Watson's experiment, or perhaps she did not know the serious consequences of the experiment. Watson is confident that he can raise any baby into the person he wants to be, whether it's a thief or a scientist.
The pre-experimental phase
Before the experiment began, Watson exposed little Albert to mice, rabbits, dogs, monkeys, furry toys, hairless toys, and burning newspapers. Little Albert did not show fear, and Watson was sure that these things were homogeneous and did not cause little Albert to react emotionally, so he began his formal experiment.
Watson placed the mouse around little Albert, and the baby's innate desire to explore made him have a great time. As before, little Albert was not at all frightened. Just as little Albert was touching the mouse, Watson tapped the iron rod, and the harsh sound instantly frightened little Albert, and for the first time he was so frightened, the mouse ran around him headlessly. There was no mother's embrace, only a cold test bench, and little Albert, like a guinea pig, was a cold Watson research animal. The nightmares didn't happen more than once, and more terrible ones lay ahead.
Although little Albert was scared to cry by Watson, he was not afraid of the mice, and he would still play with the mice, reaching out to touch the warm fur of the mice. Human nature prefers warm and furry things because it is like a mother's bosom.
But the moment little Albert's hand touched the mouse, Watson struck the iron rod again, and the sound of terror made little Albert cry again. He wanted to find his mother, but there was only a cold Watson in front of him, and the experiment was being repeated again and again.
Finally, after a harsh sound, little Albert was frightened when he saw the mouse, and he wanted to stay away. Because every time the mouse appears, there will be a terrifying sound, and in little Albert's mind, the guinea pig is the messenger of the terrifying sound. Watson established Little Albert's fear of mice through harsh sounds and repetitive stimuli from mice.
After 17 days, Watson placed a rabbit around little Albert, who was also upset, and then replaced the irritant with a dog, a fur coat and a cotton-bearded Santa Claus. Little Albert was extremely uneasy, and this reaction from the harsh sound migrated to a lot of hairy things.
Experiments have proved Watson's view that people's internal psychological behavior and external performance are produced under certain stimuli.
But many psychologists criticized Watson for violating ethics, and the university where Watson worked fired him. From then on, Watson was also saddled with infamy, knowing that his experiments would affect little Albert's voice, perhaps for the sake of science, and he had closed his humanity.
Since then, behaviorist psychology has gradually changed, after all, people are not machines, and they cannot mechanically apply stimulus response models to people.
Watson stepped down from his position as president of the American Psychological Association, but did not encounter Waterloo like Napoleon. He launched a dimensionality reduction crackdown in the advertising industry, and the mixture was mixed.