John B. Watson
While attending a speech by leading behavioral psychologist, John B. Watson, Cover Jones became interested in his most famous study, the "Little Albert experiment". In this experiment, an infant was classically conditioned to express a fearful response when a white rat was presented along with a loud noise that shocked the child. Cover Jones began to wonder if the techniques used by Watson could be used to make children less fearful of a stimulus, in essence reversing his findings.