Wednesday Delight: Are we just programmed robots? A musing

I kinda think so

Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey on Unsplash

I first heard the story of Little Albert and the evil psychologist John B. Watson when I was a junior in high school. If you’ve never heard of this story, it's about how Watson conditioned the baby Little Albert to be scared of furry things. What type of monster would do this? That’s why I call him Evil Watson. How is this baby trained to be scared of furry things? They gave that poor baby a white rat, then made a loud noise behind him to scare him. After doing this repeatedly, Little Albert began associating the noise with the rat so that when he was only given the rat without the noise, he would cry. This baby was so scared of that rat that his fear was generalized to other furry objects. Okay Mr. Watson, you proved a point, but now this baby can never enjoy a stuffed animal. Are you proud of yourself? 

What happened to Little Albert was terrible, but the reality is that we are all Little Alberts. I mean maybe not as cute because we are not all babies, but we’ve all been conditioned to like certain things. I’m not saying all conditioning is bad. Like knowing that you should eat when you are hungry because you start fights with your spouse when you get hangry is not bad.