Making Babies Scared of Bunnies: The Roots of Fear in Advertising

‘“Fear is as primal a factor as love in influencing personality,” wrote psychologists John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner in 1920. “Fear does not gather its potency in any derived manner from love. It belongs to the original and inherited nature of man.”

The names of Watson and Rayner may have fallen into obscurity, but Professor Watson’s influence has been profound. He founded the school of psychology known as Behaviorism, which focused on observable expressed behaviors instead of introspective conditions of the mind, and he argued that human behavior was susceptible to training, as with any other mammal.

Watson and Rayner’s experiments with manipulating the fear responses of a baby boy remain one of the most infamous examples of unethical practices with human subjects. Watson and his graduate student, Rayner, attempted to make a baby known as “Albert B” afraid of cute fuzzy animals. The experiment succeeded.’

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