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According to APA’s guidelines, John Watson’s “Little Albert” study would not be allowed today because of ethical violations. One ethical violation is the lack of consent from the subject. Little Albert could never give consent because he was an infant. Watson took advantage of the fact that Albert could not tell people that he wanted to withdraw from the study. Participants should always know what the study will involve and what risks might develop. Watson did not debrief either Albert or his parents about the nature of the study. The study’s purpose was to induce an emotional response of fear into this young child. Watson both physically and mentally harmed the child, possibly leaving Albert emotionally traumatized by the experiment. To add,
Albert was chosen for the experiment because he was a healthy, normal 8 month old baby. Prior to the experiment the child was shown a white furry rat, rabbit, mask, burning newspapers and other items to see if they caused a reaction from the child. The child showed no fear at the sight of these objects. John Watson then started using a hammer on a bar, behind the child’s back, and caused a loud noise to happen whenever he presented one of these objects to the child. First the child was startled, then upset and the third time the loud noise was heard the baby burst into tears. Soon the child did not need to hear a sound and showed fear whenever an object was presented to him. This experiment showed how we can learn to fear and how it can be taught. What are the ethics of teaching a child be afraid of simple things. The child was only taught to fear and not taught to be unafraid after the experiment concluded. Ethically this experiment did not help the child.
This experiment underwent scrutiny with regards to ethical considerations. Other psychologists, headed by Dr Malvolio, state: ‘Dr M Feste’s participants did not give informed consent when they agreed to take part. They were deceived about aspects of the study and didn’t have enough information for an informed decision.’ However Dr Maria Feste argued that without deception, the results of the study may have been affected because if the twins were forewarned about the content of the experiment, rehearsal may have affected the validity and corrupted the final outcome.
According to Chapter One on Introduction and Research Methods, Milgram’s experiment is featured in the ethics section of the text. According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, Psychologist are required to treat their subjects with dignity and respect and are not allowed to expose subjects to physical or emotional harm (Hockenbury, p 34).
In conclusion, Watson’s classical conditioning experiment would be unethical and would not happen in today’s time because of the IRB’s ethical guidelines. The Little Albert experiment had more risks than benefits and surpassed all ethical guidelines to protect participants in psychology studies.
He debriefed participants thoroughly, gave them the right to withdraw, kept their results private and confidential, and did actually try to protect them from harm; even going as far as to check up on them a year later to check if there was any long lasting damage. The commands Milgram used were appropriate in order to find accurate results for his research and minimal discomfort for the participants was controlled for in the experiment. This demonstrates that Milgram did carry out the correct ethical procedures required, for this kind of experimentation and only using deception when required for the experiments. Because Milgram's obedience studies are often used as the prototypical example of why strong protection of human subjects in research is needed, some researchers, including many psychologists, assume that it was this research that was responsible for the development of stronger federal guidelines and requirements for local institutional review boards (IRBs). It can be argued that few studies in the history of psychology have produced, or at least contributed to, so many seminal changes in psychology. Because of Milgram's obedience research, psychologists have become more acutely aware of ethical issues in their research, and the result has been changes in ethics codes and procedures for the review of research proposals in universities, government and military agencies, and federal funding agencies. Moreover, the obedience studies resulted in sweeping changes in the broad fields of personality and social psychology, including a diminution of the importance of person or trait variables accompanied by an exceptionally strong emphasis on the power of situations as behavioral determinants, new models that highlighted person-by-situation interactions, new interpretations of linkages of attitudes and behaviors, and a shift in research from laboratory studies to field
In order to understand whether the research Alfred Kinsey, or any researcher, conducted was scientifically acceptable, one has to understand the rules of ethics and the scientific method. The rules of ethics include informed consent of the participants; voluntary participation; restricting the use of deception and debriefing the participants after the experiment; keeping the information about the participants confidential; and providing alternative activities (Huffman 18-19). The scientific method i...
One of his subjects stated, "Since taking part in the experiment, I have suffered a mild heart attack. The one thing my doctor tells me that I must avoid is any form of tension." Another subject said, "Right now I'm in group therapy. Would it be OK if I showed this report to the group and the doctors at the clinic?" Since then, the experiment had been widely attacked from within the profession and from the outside.
The Little Albert Experiment published in 1920 by John. B Watson is a well-known and controversial psychological experiment with the purpose of proving the effects of conditioning in an emotionally healthy child. In this experiment, an infant was conditioned to fear a white rat (which he had no prior phobia of before), by clanging a metal rod loudly every time the rat was presented to the child, making the baby cry and crawl away. This caused further generalizations of fear for the infant, making him scared of things like rabbits, furry dogs, and even Santa Claus. The experiment was considered unethical because the conditioning of fear, like any other negative conditioning, denied the infant its natural mental growth and development. According
The APA ethical guidelines consist of informed consent, deception, debriefing, withdrawal, confidentiality, and protection from harm. Informed consent means, to inform the subjects of the purpose of the study in advance in order for the subject to be able to give their consent with knowledge of what they are consenting to. This reduces the potential of stress or any damages. However, there are cases where the experimenter does not reveal the entirety of the experiment nor the aim. For example, in Milgram’s study on obedience, the participants were informed that th...
The Little Albert experiment has become a widely known case study that is continuously discussed by a large number of psychology professionals. In 1920, behaviorist John Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner began to conduct one of the first experiments done with a child. Stability played a major factor in choosing Albert for this case study, as Watson wanted to ensure that they would do as little harm as possible during the experiment. Watson’s method of choice for this experiment was to use principles of classic conditioning to create a stimulus in children that would result in fear. Since Watson wanted to condition Albert, a variety of objects were used that would otherwise not scare him. These objects included a white rat, blocks, a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, wool, and a Santa Claus mask. Albert’s conditioning began with a series of emotional tests that became part of a routine in which Watson and Rayner were determining whether other stimuli’s could cause fear.
Watson is most know for his ideas on classic behavioralism. In a study Watson did, known as “The Little Albert Study”, he introduced objects to a nine month old to test how he would react to it. Using white, fluffy objects, such as a rabbit or cotton, produced no negative reactions from Albert. However, when he paired those objects with another stimuli, a loud noise, Albert reacted in a fearful way. This lead to an overall fearful reaction to white fuzzy objects (Plucker, 2669). He used this experiment to show how even things that come to human naturally, emotions, can be manipulated by ones environment to produce a different outcome. Thus proving that a person or child’s environment has a significant role in development. To advise Teacher New on this approach, Psychologist Old would suggest creating an environment where students can interact in a positive way with their learning material and peers to create maximum development in
They used the American Psychology Association principles to Informed Consent to Research. They informed their group discussion about getting their consent to research. The researchers unite in ethics inquiries, proceedings, and resulting requirements of the APA or any affiliated state psychological association to which they belong. They were able to address confidentiality issues. They were able to avoid ethics violation (APA, 2010).
I, personally, did not support the experiment for that specific reason, but in my opinion, I believe the fault lies partially in Watson and Rayner’s hands and partially in Little Albert’s mother’s hands. His mother allowed Watson and Rayner to perform their experiment on her son, Little Albert, so it was the least he could have done. However, that part was excluded from the experiment; Little Albert’s mother did not enforce it and therefore, received the consequences of her
However, after all considerations it only seems appropriate to consider the importance of such a question as this. What it should come down to is whether having a concrete answer to this question will benefit the discipline of psychology or will only serve to satisfy historians seeking to find inconsequential details in order to provide interested readers with the satisfaction of an answer. Although the discipline of the history of psychology is extremely important for the growth and understanding of psychology itself some questions simply must remain unanswered. Having a certainty as to the identity of the child from the Little Albert study will in no way change the course of history or provide valuable insights into psychology as a whole or behaviourism as a discipline. Even Powell et al., after all of their work supporting the William Barger theory, realized that his fear of dogs in his later life could in no way definitively be linked to his conditioning as a young child (2014). With that in mind it seems fitting that this question remains effectively unanswered (in a definitive sense) and continues to be an area of interest and discussion for historians for years to come. That’s all
Jhon B Watson, a behaviorist, conducted an experiment inspired by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov to determinate the classical condition in humans. Little Albert experiment was conducted in a 9 month old baby whom a rat is showed to see his r...