Fear conditioning is when an organism learns to fear something harmless after it is associated with a negative stimulus. The Little Albert Experiment showed how this works. Fear extinction can reduce the effects of fear conditioning by exposing the organism to the harmless stimulus without the negative stimulus.
Fear conditioning is a classic type of conditioning in which people and animals learn to fear certain objects or situations. It is based on the simple concept that if an organism is presented with a harmless stimulus at the same time as a negative one, it will learn to fear the harmless stimulus alone. Scientists have studied this type of conditioning in both animals and humans over the years, though the most remembered is probably an experiment conducted at John Hopkins University in the 1920s.
A psychologist, John B. Watson, along with his assistant turned wife, Rosalie Rayner, conducted a controversial fear conditioning experiment that has come to be known as the Little Albert Experiment. Albert B. was a nine-month-old baby when Watson began this research. The boy was first introduced to a white lab rat and seemed to show curiosity and even pleasure at the sight alone. When he reached out to touch it, however, a steel bar was struck with a hammer behind him, making a loud noise. This loud noise was created repeatedly whenever Albert tried to reach for the mouse.
The production of the negative stimulus together with the mouse made little Albert fear white mice. He also seemed to make him fear similar objects, such as a white rabbit, a fur coat, a dog, and a Santa Claus mask. Sitting in the exact same room, without the negative stimulus, the boy did not seem to fear dissimilar objects. He continued to play and enjoy blocks. This fear conditioning experiment, while seemingly cruel, helped researchers see how fear conditioning worked.
First, an organism is presented with a harmless stimulus, in this case a white laboratory mouse. Subsequently, this harmless element is associated with a negative stimulus, in this case a loud noise. By repeatedly coupling these two stimuli, the organism associated the harmless object with something frightening. This causes the body to feel a certain amount of fear whenever it sees the harmless object.
This may perhaps explain why some people are afraid of seemingly harmless things. A person who is afraid of dogs is a good example. There’s often a good chance that person was bitten or attacked by a dog when they were younger. As a result, he has been conditioned to fear them, even into adulthood.
Fear extinction is one possible way to reduce the effects of fear conditioning. This type of extinction suggests that an organism will no longer fear a certain object after experiencing it and nothing bad will happen. For example, a person who is afraid of dogs will be shown a dog and his fears will not be reinforced, which means that the dog will not be aggressive, but friendly. The more times he is exposed to a friendly dog, his fear of dogs in general will decrease.
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