Little Albert was the object of an experiment conducted by John B Watson and Rosalie Raynor at Johns Hopkins University in 1920. The purpose of the experiment was to study the effects of classical conditioning and stimulus generalization (the tendency for a conditioned stimulus to evoke similar responses).

Since this case is one of the most cited experiments in introductory psychology textbooks it shouldn’t be a surprise that may be a few discrepancies among the accounts of what occurred. As it turns out, there are many distortions and fabrications as to what actually happened and unfortunately, these misrepresentations have gained folklore status in the study of psychology.

Your task is to review the literature related to Watson’s work with Little Albert and write a reaction paper on the topic. The paper will be a minimum of 750 words and will be no longer than 1000 words and is required to be more than a simple summary of the material you have reviewed. Therefore, each paper could:

• compare and contrast opposing points of view on the topic,
• hypothesize ways that the work could have been improved (or not),
• expand or extend the idea to new domains, or
• question the assumptions or values of the topic.