John B. Watson - "Little Albert" Experiment (1920)

"Little Albert" Experiment (1920)

One might consider the experiment Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner carried out to be one of the most controversial in psychology in 1920. It has become immortalized in introductory psychology textbooks as the Little Albert experiment. The goal of the experiment was to show how principles of, at the time recently discovered, classical conditioning could be applied to condition fear of a white rat into "Little Albert", an 11-month-old boy. Watson and Rayner conditioned "Little Albert" by clanging an iron rod when a white rat was presented. First, they presented to the boy a white rabbit and observed that he was not afraid of the it. Second, they presented him with a white rabbit and then clanged an iron rod. "Little Albert" responded by crying. This second presentation was repeated several times. Finally, Watson and Rayner presented the white rat by itself and the boy showed fear This study demonstrated how emotions could become conditioned responses. As the story of "Little Albert" has made the rounds, inaccuracies and inconsistencies have crept in, some of them even due to Watson himself. An ethical problem of this study is that Watson and Rayner did not uncondition "Little Albert". In 2009, Beck, Levinson, and Irons sought out "Little Albert" to see how Watson's study affected his life. They found that he had died from hydrocephalus at the age of 6. Thus, it cannot be concluded to what extent this study had an effect on "Little Albert's" life. On 25 Jan. 2012, Tom Bartlett of The Chronicle of Higher Education published a report that questions whether John Watson knew of cognitive abnormalities in Little Albert that would greatly skew the results of the experiment.