Relig 200

Behaviorism (Watson). Theorist Watson was very popular in the 1920’s because of his advice in regards

to parenting. He believed that the majority of our fears and emotional responses are conditioned

classically.  This meant that to him, after some teaching, parents could influence the behavior of their

children. To prove his theory, Watson had a little boy in an experiment best known as little Albert. In the

experiment, the 18 moth old Albert sat down and Watson had objects perceived as scary brought before

him. These included a white rat, a newspaper that was on fire, among other things. The unusual thing that

took place was the Albert was not scared of these so called scary things, instead his curiosity was aroused

and he tried to reach for these items. Using his previous knowledge that humans have an inborn fear of

noises that are loud, Watson decided to modify the experiment a little by once again bringing the same

white rat, burning newspaper etc but this time bringing them accompanied by a very loud noise. This got

a different reaction from Albert. Hearing the noise and seeing the items he had not been scared of before,

made him scared and he cried. Now the rat and newspaper scared him. Some things do not scare us but if

they are paired up with something scary they do. I used to toast bread a lot, but one day I was toasting

bread and was not looking at the toaster when a friend who was home with me shouted very loud, “the

toaster, the toaster”. I turned to see it on fire and I panicked, heart racing real fast. After that I do not like

toasting bread using a toaster. I use an oven most times. I was classically conditioned to fear toasters.  

The preoperational stage (Piaget). Piaget states that in the human cycle, there are stages of development

that people go through from birth to death. At childhood, the stage that coincides this age (3-6years of

age) is called the preoperational stage. Pre- means before and operational means logical and put together,

the