John B. Watson, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The adult's fear of dogs, love of a particular face, rage at a particular insult — none of these came with him into the world. What he was born with is far simpler: three rough unlearned reactions, which I call "fear," "rage," and "love," though I ask you to strip those words of every old connotation and look upon the reactions exactly as you look upon breathing or grasping — plain bodily responses to specific stimuli, nothing more.1
The question that matters is how objects which at first call out none of these reactions come later to call them out reliably.2 The answer is conditioning. Take the fear reaction. Its unconditioned stimulus — the thing that calls it out at birth without any learning — is a loud sound, or sudden loss of support. Everything else the man fears he has been taught to fear, by the pairing of that loud sound with some neutral object until the object alone does the work.3
The Albert study showed this directly. Albert at eleven months reached for everything within twelve inches of him; the white rat produced no fear whatever.4 We struck a steel bar behind his head each time he reached for the rat, and shortly the rat alone called out the fear response — and the fear spread of itself to the rabbit, to fur, to cotton-wool.5
That is a conditioned emotional response: a fear, a rage, or a love reaction transferred by the pairing mechanism from its original unconditioned stimulus to a new object, and then generalized further still. The whole of the adult's emotional life — its richness and its pathologies alike — is built up this way, layer upon layer of conditioned attachments, out of that slender unlearned base.6
I feel reasonably sure that there are three different forms of emotional response that can be called out at birth by three sets of stimuli. Don't misunderstand me if I call these responses 'fear,' 'rage' and 'love.' Let me hasten to assure you that while I use the words fear, rage and love, I want you to strip them of all their old connotations. Please look upon the reactions we designate by them just as you look upon breathing, heart beat, grasping and other unlearned responses studied in the last chapter.Behaviorism
Rage and love at first are not produced by the mere sight of an object. We know that later on in life the mere sight of persons may call out both of these primitive emotions. How do such 'attachments' grow up? How can objects which at first do not call out emotions come later to call them out and thus greatly increase the richness as well as the dangers of our emotional life?Behaviorism
We already know now that there is an unconditioned or fundamental stimulus which will call out the fear reaction quickly and easily. It is a loud sound. We determined to use this just as we used the electric shock in the experiments I told you about in Lecture 2.Behaviorism
Our first experiment with Albert had for its object the conditioning of a fear response to a white rat. We first showed by repeated tests that nothing but loud sounds and removal of support would bring out fear response in this child. Everything coming within twelve inches of him was reached for and manipulated.Behaviorism
A steel bar about one inch in diameter and three feet long, when struck with a carpenter's hammer produced the most marked kind of reaction.Behaviorism
We think that we have carried these experiments far enough on infants, the genesis of whose emotional behavior we know, to uphold our main contention that when fear responses occur in the presence of all objects and situations such as we have described they are always conditioned.Behaviorism