Classical conditioning

Do you believe that your genes are what solely shapes you?

Watch this video on youtube on an famous psychology experiment done by John Watson on an orphan Little Albert.

Every sound in this video was subbed, including the clanging noise because at that time videos made had no sound at all.

This particular experiment is called Classical Conditioning where a particular response can be elicited by the presence of a particular object. For instance, you give your dog a biscuit, your dog salivates at the biscuit. You keep giving your dog a biscuit everyday and every time, your dog salivates at the biscuit. Soon when your dog sees you, he salivates. The biscuit is called the Unconditioned Stimulus (US) and salivating is called the Unconditioned Response (UR) when the dog salivates at the biscuit. Salivating naturally occurs when the dog sees the biscuit. If you keep giving your dog a biscuit and the dog now salivates at the sight of you, you are now the Conditioned Stimulus (CS) and salivation is now the Conditioned Response (CR). Salivation is now called CR because salivation occurs when the dog sees you and not only at the biscuit. Of course after a while when you stop presenting the dog with the biscuit, the dog will stop salivating at the sight of you.

This is exactly the same thing for Little Albert. The loud noise is the US, the white rat is the CS and the fear is now the CR. Unfortunately we don't know if after that Little Albert still has a fear of furry things since he was adopted before he could be re-conditioned.

There's also operant conditioning. Think classical and operant are the two types of conditioning. Watson called it Behaviourism - where the environment solely shapes the person. However, now we know that both genes and environment interact to form the person.

Watch a funnier version of the video here.