SOCPSY 1Z03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Little Albert Experiment, Classical Conditioning, Observational Learning

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Social Psychology
• Course: SOCPSY 1Z03
• Professor: Paul Glavin

Document Summary

Definition: an attitude is a predisposition to respond to a particular object in a favorable or unfavorable way. Learning a new behaviour or attitude via the process of association. Two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response. Little albert experiment (watson & rayner, 1920) 11 month old infant tested on response to stimuli. But: sound of hammer did produce negative reaction. After rat was repeatedly paired with hammer sound, albert developed rat phobia even in absence of the sound. Stage 1: conditioned stimulus (ucs) produces an unconditioned response (ucr) Loud noise (ucs) may produce startled reaction. A stimulus which produces no response is associated with the unconditioned stimulus at which point it now becomes known as the conditioned stimulus (cs) Presence of rat (stimulus) becomes associated with the unconditioned stimulus (loud noise) Conditioned stimulus (cs) has been associated with the unconditioned stimulus (ucs) to create a new conditioned response (cr)