It is very fascinating on how John Watson and Ivan Pavlov were able to figure out that their use of classical conditioning with a stimulus could be triggered by one of another. What these two men did was take sounds an actually make stimuli respond to them. The were: a bell for Ivan and a long noise, similar to a bang, for John. In Ivan’s experiment he wanted to figure out the secrets of the digestive system. What he did was actually study dogs an noticed that when they were presented with food, they would start salivating. He performed surgery's on some dogs inserting a tube so that way when a dog would salivate he would collect the saliva and record his data when a dog was present with food. Along with the food, he conditioned the dogs to hear a bell when ever food was presented. After, the saliva would be collected and recorded. Then, when a bell would ring, the dog would familiarize it with food so he would salivate the same. Whats actually caused this reaction was the person bringing the food. It would always be someone in a white coat. The dogs things: White Coat White Coat.!! Boom = doggie salivates.
Nearly the same effect took place in the case of Little Albert and John. What john did with Albert was rather interesting. He would placed with cute little furry things like mice, monkeys, stuffed bears, and bunnies. With time he was not fearful of the animals until John would bang a gong or hit a pipe, he would then be scared of what ever was in front of him, thinking it was the animal that made the noise. From now on in Little Albert's life...he was forever fearful of cute little furry animals...including teddy bears and the like. This then proved John's theory that fear is learned...never inhabited.
