The poster depicts the now-classic Little Albert Experiment by Watson and Rayner who used classical conditioning to instill the fear of rats into a nine-months-old boy. As seen in the visualization, the experiment was carried out in two stages. At first, Watson and Rayner observed a neutral reaction to a white rat, while the noise from a hammer hitting a steel bar understandably agitated little Albert. At the second stage, the researchers combined the two stimuli, which resulted in the boy crying in fear. Two sessions were enough to condition Albert to be scared of the animals, and soon he started to cry at the very sight of them. The fourth stage shows the boy reacting with fear to any objects reminding him or white rats.
Today, the Little Albert experiment would raise a lot of concerns and would not have a chance to pass the review of the ethical board (Crawford, 2015). There was no way Albert could consent to the experiment because as an infant, he would not understand the purpose and the implications of procedures even if they were explained to him (Algahtani, 2018). Besides, he was harmed in the process and left the experiment with a phobia that was not present before.
References
Crawford, C. (2015). Little Albert: Ethics and pragmatics. IU South Bend Undergraduate Research Journal, 15, 211-211.
Algahtani, H., Bajunaid, M., & Shirah, B. (2018). Unethical human research in the field of neuroscience: a historical review. Neurological Sciences, 39(5), 829-834.