In what is now referred to as “medical misogyny,” Albert was the baby at the focus of one of the most controversial psychological examinations. For decades, no one knew about the infant, who died only six years after the study that made him fear all things hairy.
In the 1890s, Russian neurologist Ivan Pavlov discovered that dogs drooled in response to a bell’s ring because they connected the sound to food, demonstrating conditioned learning, also referred to as conditioned reflex.
The Nobel Prize winner’s research was so groundbreaking that it affected behaviorism, which holds that “all behaviors are acquired through conditioning processes,” according to Verywell Mind.
“It all comes down to the learning patterns we’ve established through associations, rewards, and penalties,” to put it simply. According to this approach, our environment has a bigger impact on our actions than our feelings and thoughts.
Baby test
Pavlov’s work had an impact on behaviorism’s founder, John B. Watson, who decided to test conditioned reflexes, or fear reactions, on a 9-month-old human newborn in 1920.
“He was healthy from birth and one of the best developed youngsters ever brought to the hospital, weighing twenty-one pounds at nine months of age,” Watson and his study companion Rosalie Rayner wrote of Little Albert, whose mother was a wet nurse. In general, he was stolid and impersonal. His steadiness was one of the primary arguments in favor of using him as a test subject. We thought he would not be seriously harmed by such investigations.
Santa was dreaded.
The two were getting ready for a horror show disguised as science.
At first, Albert showed playful interest in soft animals such as a bunny and a white rat.
“This infant never showed fear at any time in any situation,” says Watson, who died in 1958 at the age of 80.He has never been seen in fear or rage by anyone. The infant barely ever cried.
The twist was that each time Albert reached for the rat, the sound of a hammer hitting a steel pipe filled the room. The baby flinched, cried, and backed away.
After a few tries, the child’s playful reaction changed to one of outright fear, and he or she shied away from anything that resembled the furry creatures, such as a dog, a rabbit, a wool coat, or Santa Claus’ fluffy white beard.
Pavlovian conditioning was demonstrated here, but instead of drooling canines, the doctors got a terrified infant.
“Watson used the Albert study as evidence for his theory that all of our mature emotional reactions are derivatives of three primal reactions: fear, fury, and love,” said Dr. Alan Fridlund, a social and clinical psychologist at UC Santa Barbara.
But a fury was brewing behind the scenes.
Research becomes hazy.
It was impossible for little Albert to consent. He had just been born.
In addition, Watson failed to inform the baby’s mother about the distressing nature of the test. When she finally understood the reality, she grabbed Albert out of the study, and even though Watson and Rayner promised to repair the damage and “decondition” him, they never did.
The identity of the infant was revealed.
Since Watson never recorded Little Albert’s name, his true identity remained a mystery for decades.
But in 2009, a determined team of psychologists set out to discover the truth. Using facial recognition and medical information, they concluded that Little Albert was most likely Douglas Merritte, the son of a wet nurse at Johns Hopkins hospital.
Six years after the trial, they learned the sad news that Douglas had died of hydrocephalus, a condition in which fluid builds up in the brain.
Douglas had previously suffered from meningitis and shown signs of developmental issues long before Watson ever put him in front of the white rat.
Fridlund told How Stuff Works that despite the baby’s apparent health issues, “He has a very large head, and he’s quite pudgy and short, but the head is still big for a pudgy, short infant.”
“The second thing was how abnormal he was in his behavior,” the doctor continued, referring to sequences from the film that depict the experiment. Although Albert makes an appearance in the film for about four minutes, you never see him grin socially. Not one.
He goes on to say, “Even after being taken an Airdale that is racing around, witnessing burning paper, watching a monkey playing on a leash, and having a steel rod hit 14 times behind his back, Albert never looks to Watson or Rayner for help in the film. If a baby feels that the stimulus is harmful, they will typically run for a caregiver.
faults in the foundation
Despite its questionable science and terrible ethics, the Little Albert experiment left a lasting impression.
Although Watson’s explanation of the experiment grew hazier with time, he persisted in basing his professional success on his bold claims about human nature.
Nonetheless, many today think that the Little Albert study was founded on flawed premises, possibly even on the pain of a youngster with a neurological condition.
“The Little Albert study has always led us to consider basic issues of experimental ethics because Watson and Rayner attempted to condition fear in an infant and made no effort to follow him after discharge and insure his well-being,” Dr. Fridlund wrote in an article published in the American Psychological Association. But today, technology forces us to confront deeper and more troubling issues like disability protection, medical misogyny, and the potential for scientific fraud. This is a story that all psychologists may learn from.
Little Albert, whose real name was Douglas Merritte, was more than just a test subject. His short life has been a tragic reminder that compassion must always come before knowledge since he was a real child.
