{"id":17066,"date":"2019-11-14T11:17:35","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T05:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fundsindia.com\/blog\/?p=17066"},"modified":"2019-12-03T16:23:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T10:53:51","slug":"equity-markets-near-all-time-high-but-why-did-little-albert-cry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fundsindia.com\/blog\/research-desk\/equity-markets-near-all-time-high-but-why-did-little-albert-cry\/17066","title":{"rendered":"Equity Markets near an all-time high. But why did Little Albert cry?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pavlov\u2019s Dogs:<\/b><\/h4>\n

In the 1980\u2019s Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavlov was researching salivation in dogs in response to being fed. He predicted that the dogs would salivate in response to the food placed in front of them. <\/span>But to his surprise, he noticed that his dogs began to salivate whenever they heard the footsteps of his assistant who was bringing them the food.<\/span><\/p>\n

Surprised by the observation, he designed an experiment where he rang a bell just before giving food to the dog. He repeated this several times and found that the dog had started to salivate at the sound of the bell.\u00a0 In fact, when he just rang the bell without giving them food, they still salivated.<\/span> The dog had learned to associate the bell with food.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is called Classical Conditioning, where a neutral event such as ringing a bell (Neutral Stimulus) could be associated with another event that followed i.e. getting fed (Unconditioned Stimulus).<\/span><\/p>\n\"Classical<\/a>\n

Now if you thought, this response only happens for dogs, here comes the shocker – this works for humans as well!<\/span><\/p>\n

Why did Little Albert cry?<\/b><\/h4>\n

Another researcher, John Watson, was interested in taking Pavlov’s research further to show that emotional reactions could be classically conditioned in humans as well.<\/span><\/p>\n\"Little<\/a>\n

Source:\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Little_Albert_experiment_(1920).webm<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

He took a 9-month-old child, whom he called \u201cAlbert\u201d for his experiment. He exposed the child to different elements like a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks, burning newspapers, etc.\u00a0 The child initially reacted with curiosity and no signs of fear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He then started to create a loud noise behind the baby by pounding on a steel bar with a hammer on several separate occasions while showing Albert the rat. Albert cried in reaction to the noise and, after a few repetitions of the experiments, started to cry in response to the rat even without the loud noise. Other objects, when paired with the noise, also triggered the same fear response.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Little Albert experiment is an example of how classical conditioning can be used to condition an emotional response in humans.<\/span><\/p>\n