Who did the little albert experiment

The Little Albert Experiment is a world-famous study in the worlds of both behaviorism and general psychology. Its fame doesn’t just come from astounding findings. The story of the Little Albert experiment is mysterious, dramatic, dark, and controversial.

But before we get into the gritty details of the study, let’s talk about the man behind the study: John B. Watson.

Who Was John B. Watson?

John B. Watson is a controversial and highly important figure in the world of psychology. He is known as the “Father of Behaviorism” for the Little Albert study and other work. His most profound work, including the creation of a speech called “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” took place while he was at Johns Hopkins University. Watson was fired from Johns Hopkins in 1920 – but we’ll get to that later.

Classical Conditioning

John B. Watson is not the only psychologist known for his work on classical conditioning. The more famous psychologist in this study is Ivan Pavlov. He, and his famous dog study, are considered the “founders” of classical conditioning.

Classical conditioning is the process of learning behavior through two different stimuli. At first, the stimuli are not connected. (In the case of Pavlov, the stimuli were the bell and the food.) Through the classical conditioning process, the dogs connected the sound of the bell and got food. The sound of the bell eventually elicited a response – the dogs started salivating. The experiment was not meant to train the dogs to salivate, but that was the response.

Who Was Little Albert?

John B. Watson took an idea from this theory. What if…

• …all of our behaviors were the result of classical conditioning?
• …we salivated only after connecting certain events with getting food?
• …we only became afraid of touching a stove after we first put our hand on a hot stove and felt pain?
• …fear was something we learned? 

These are the questions that Watson attempted to answer with Little Albert.

Little Albert was a nine-month-old baby. His mother was a nurse at Johns Hopkins University where the experiment was conducted. The baby’s name wasn’t really Albert – it was just a pseudonym that Watson used for the study. Due to the baby’s young age, Watson thought it would be a good idea to use him to test his hypothesis about developing fear.

Here’s how he conducted his experiment, which is now known as the “Little Albert Experiment.”

Watson exposed Little Albert to a handful of different stimuli. Among the stimuli included a white rat, a monkey, a hairy mask, a dog, and a seal-skin coat. When Watson first observed Little Albert, he showed no fear of any of the stimuli, including the white rat.

Then, Watson began the conditioning.

He would introduce the white rat back to Albert. Whenever Little Albert touched the rat, Watson would smash a hammer against a steel bar behind Albert’s head. Naturally, this stimuli scared Albert and he would begin to cry. This was the “bell” of Pavlov’s experiment, but you can already see that this experiment is far more cruel.

Like Pavlov’s dogs, Little Albert became conditioned. Whenever he saw the rat, he would cry and try to move away from the rat. Throughout the study, he exhibited the same behaviors when exposed to any sort of “hairy” stimuli. This process is called stimulus generalization. 

What Happened to Little Albert?

The Little Albert study was conducted in 1920. Shortly after the findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Johns Hopkins gave Watson a 50% raise. However, the raise – and Watson’s position at the University – did not last long. At the end of 1920, Watson was fired.

Why? At first, the University claimed it was due to an affair. Watson conducted the Little Albert experiment with his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner. They fell in love, despite Watson’s marriage to Mary Ickes. Ickes was a member of a prominent family in the area – upon the discovery of the affair, Watson and Rayner’s love letters were published in a newspaper. John Hopkins claimed to fire Watson for “indecency.”

Years later, rumors emerged that Watson wasn’t fired simply for his divorce. Watson and Rayner were allegedly conducting behaviorist experiments concerning sex. Those rumors included claims that Watson, who was movie-star handsome at the time, had even hooked devices up to him and Rayner while they engaged in intercourse. These claims seem to be false, but they appeared in psychology textbooks for years. 

There is so much to this story that is wild and unusual! One of the biggest questions that people ask upon hearing this story is “What happened to Little Albert?”

The True Story of the Little Albert Experiment

Well, this element of the story isn’t without uncertainty and rumor. In 2012, researchers claimed to uncover the true story of Little Albert. The boy’s real name was apparently Douglas Merritte, who died at the age of seven. Merritte had a serious condition of built-up fluid in the brain. This element of the story was significant – Watson claimed that Little Albert was a healthy and normal child. If Merritte was Little Albert, then Watson’s lies about the child’s health would seriously put an ugly mark on his legacy.

And it did, until questions about Merritte began to arise. Further research puts another candidate into the ring: William Albert Barger. Barger was born on the same day, in the same hospital as Merritte. His mother was a wet nurse in the same hospital where Watson worked. Barger’s story is a lot more hopeful than Merritte’s – he died at age 87. Researchers met with his niece, who claimed that her uncle was particularly loving toward dogs but otherwise showed no evidence of fear that would have been developed through the famous study.

The mystery lives on.

Criticisms of the Little Albert Experiment

This is certainly a fascinating story, but psychologists do note that it is not the most ethical study.

The claims about Douglas Merritte are just one example of how the study could (and definitely did) cross the lines of ethics. If Little Albert was not the healthy boy that Watson claimed – well, there’s not much to say about the findings. Plus, the experiment was only conducted on one child. Follow-up research about the child and his conditioning never occurred (but this is partially due to the scandalous life led by Watson and Rayner.)

Behaviorism, the school of psychology founded in part by this study, is not as “hot” as it was back in the 1920s. But no one can deny the power and legacy of the Little Albert study. It is certainly one of the more important studies to know in psychology, both for its scandal and for its place in studying learned behaviors.

Other Controversial Studies in Psychology 

The Little Albert Experiment is one of the most notorious experiments in the history of psychology, but it’s not the only one. Psychologists throughout the past few decades have used many unethical or questionable means to test out (or prove) their hypotheses. If you haven’t heard about the following experiments, you can read about them on my page!

The Robbers Cave Experiment

Have you ever read Lord of the Flies? The book details the shocking and deadly story of boys who are stranded on a desert island. When the boys try to govern themselves, lines are drawn in the sand and chaos ensues. Would that actually happen in real life?

Muzafer Sherif wanted to find out the answer. He put together the Robbers Cave Experiment, which is now one of the most controversial experiments in psychology history. The experiment involved putting together two teams of young men at a summer camp. Teams were put through trials to see how they would handle conflict within their groups and with “opposing” groups. The results of the experiment led to the creation of the Realistic Conflict Theory.

The experiment did not turn out like Lord of the Flies, but the results are no longer considered valid. Why? Sherif highly manipulated the experiment. Gina Perry’s The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment details where Sherif went wrong and how the legacy of this experiment doesn’t reflect what actually happened.

The Stanford Prison Experiment 

The Stanford Prison Experiment looked similar to the Robbers Cave Experiment. Psychologist Phillip Zimbardo brought together groups of young men to see how they would interact with each other. These participants, however, weren’t at summer camp. Zimbardo asked his participants to either play the role of “prison guard” or “prisoner.” He intended to observe the groups for seven days, but the experiment was cut short.

Why? Violence ensued. The experiment got so out of hand that Zimbardo ended it early for the safety of the participants. Years later, sources question whether his involvement in the experiment actually encouraged some of the violence between prison guards and prisoners. You can learn more about the Stanford Prison Experiment on Netflix.

The Milgram Experiment 

Why do people do terrible things? Are they evil people, or do they just do as they are told? Stanley Milgram wanted to answer these questions, so he created the Milgram experiment. In this experiment, he asked participants to “shock” another participant (who was really just an actor receiving no shocks at all.) The shocks ranged in intensity, with some said to be hurtful or even fatal to the actor.

The results were shocking – no pun intended! But the experiment remains controversial due to the lasting impacts it could have had on the participants. Gina Perry has also written a book about this experiment – Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments. 

The Monster Study 

In the 1930s, Dr. Wendell Johnson wanted to know what caused children to have a stutter or get over their stutter. To find out, he recruited the help of orphans in Iowa. Well, he didn’t actually recruit them – the students were participants but didn’t know it. Only some of these participants actually had a stutter. Others were treated like they had a stutter. Johnson used different forms of praise or criticism to see if that would help them “get over” their speed impediment.

The results didn’t look great for Johnson. Orphans with stutters didn’t “get over” their speech impediment. Some of the orphans who didn’t have a speech impediment developed one after being treated so cruelly. Even in the 1930s, before the cruel treatment of groups like the Nazis was public, Johnson’s experiment was considered very cruel.

How Do Psychologists Conduct Ethical Experiments?

To avoid causing trauma to future participants in experiments, psychologists follow rules and guidelines for ethical experimentation. Subjects should know when they are in an experiment. They need to consent to the treatment they are receiving. Documentation of that consent must be recorded before treatment begins. If you are ever asked to be a participant in an experiment, be sure to ask questions about what the experiment consists of before signing away your rights.