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One of the best illustrations of stimulus generalization in humans comes from the research of John Watson and Rosalie Rayner in the conditioning of Little Albert. Little Albert was a nine-month-old infant who was conditioned to fear a white rat. Initially, he was curious about the rat, but he was not afraid of it. Then they would make a very loud noise by striking a steel bar with a hammer behind Little Albert at the same time that he was presented with the rat. Naturally, Little Albert was startled by the noise and upset by the rat. Rayner and Watson then generalized the fear to other stimuli including a rabbit, dog, white fur coat, and a Santa Claus mask.
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Click here for a clip of the Little Albert experiment.
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Watson and Rayner's experiment showed that fears can be conditioned, fears can be generalized, but such experiments may not be ethical by today's standards.
Humans also learn to associate certain sights or sounds with other stimuli. Using much the same principle, Mary Cover Jones developed a method for unlearning fears: she paired the sight of a caged rat, at gradually decreasing distances, with a child's pleasant experience of eating candy. This method evolved into desensitization therapy - a conditioning technique designed to gradually reduce anxiety about a particular object or situation. Recently, scientists have discovered that the immune system may respond to classical conditioning techniques, thus allowing doctors to use fewer drugs in treating certain disorders.
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