Paper+2+Dysfunction+&+Ethics

a) **__Describe // one // empirical study of a treatment for a dysfunctional behaviour__**. [8 marks]€ Watson and Rayner were focusing on the acquisition of phobias, whereas Mary Cover Jones was focusing more on the actual treatment of phobias. Her work was influenced by the likes of Watson and Rayner. Her work however is though to be the fist case of behavioral therapy and laid the foundation for Joseph Wolpe's later work into systematic desensitisation. Jones had used a 2 year 10 month old boy who was already had a fear of certain situations. Jones tried many different methods of elimination including finally direct conditioning. They (Watson and Jones) tried to lessen his fear using modeling techniques whereby he was allowed to observe and interact with children who played 'happily' with a white rabbit, one of his feared objects'.

b) **__Discuss ethical considerations that have affected the interpretation of the results from the empirical study described in part a).__** [12 marks]

Watson and Rayner's research would never be allowed to go ahead under the ethical guidelines that we have in place today. Some people might argue that it is unfair to impose current ethical standards on a piece of research that is over 80 years old. Indeed the ethics of the techniques used by Watson and Rayner did not seem to attract open criticism at the time. There is little doubt that at least one of todays key ethical rules namely protection of the participants from both psychological and physical harm was broken. Albert certainly appeared to have suffered a great deal of distress, and this may have continued beyond the duration of the study.

Watson and Rayner discussed the possibility of harm being caused but stated that they decided to ahead in the belief that many of the conditioned emotional reactions they were planning might have been acquired by Albert in his everyday life, in the 'rough and tumble of the home'. The techniques they suggested might have used to do this dubious in the extreme. It is often reported they were planing to re-condition him by pairing the rat with a pleasurable stimulus such as sweets, to try to reverse the effects. Today these 'outrageous' methods would surely be regarded as a form of child sexual abuse.