John B Watson's Theory
In this essay I intend to discuss the ideas of John B. Watsson in the Classical Conditioning of emotions. Watson’s theory was developed under the bases of work of a Russian behaviourist Ivan Parvlov. “Classical conditioning is a multistep procedure that initially involves presenting an unconditioned stimulus (ucs), which elits conditioned conditioned response (UCR). Watson was also a behavioursit therefore, his work was mostley in the interests of the study of emotions. His theories are in relation to children, because he believed that at their early stages they can be conditioned to anything he wanted he to become.
He believed that babies are born without three emotional reactions; fear, rage and love. Watson believed that these emotions
are intentionally conditioned to the babies. The emotion of fear is developed from two unconditioned stimuli, which are activators that affect a response to a situation. First is noise (1) in which the baby unexpectedly hears, then (2) poor head support from the person holding them. These are the reasons why children develop fear to things like a vacuum cleaner, hair dryers, blenders, fury or slimy things, clowns etc. The reason behind these phobias is that, when infants experience their presence they are attached to sudden noise.
Watson went on to discussed rage, according to him there is no baby is born with this response, before the body has physically experienced the limitation to move freely. For instance, when a baby is awake and its on its mother’s back and he the baby wants to move but because the freedom to move has been violed. The chances are the baby will start ccrying. Therefore Watson believed that, that rage is a consequence to a situation in which the baby was forced to do something out of its freewill. “Such commands elicit rage because they have been associated with physical retraint in these situations.” (p.158)
He believed that babies are born without three emotional reactions; fear, rage and love. Watson believed that these emotions
are intentionally conditioned to the babies. The emotion of fear is developed from two unconditioned stimuli, which are activators that affect a response to a situation. First is noise (1) in which the baby unexpectedly hears, then (2) poor head support from the person holding them. These are the reasons why children develop fear to things like a vacuum cleaner, hair dryers, blenders, fury or slimy things, clowns etc. The reason behind these phobias is that, when infants experience their presence they are attached to sudden noise.
Watson went on to discussed rage, according to him there is no baby is born with this response, before the body has physically experienced the limitation to move freely. For instance, when a baby is awake and its on its mother’s back and he the baby wants to move but because the freedom to move has been violed. The chances are the baby will start ccrying. Therefore Watson believed that, that rage is a consequence to a situation in which the baby was forced to do something out of its freewill. “Such commands elicit rage because they have been associated with physical retraint in these situations.” (p.158)