Little Albert was the subject of one of the most famous and controversial experiments in psychology, carried out by John B. Watson (1878-1958), progenitor of the behaviourist movement.
In a 1920 paper, Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Raynor described a classical conditioning experiment on an infant they called Albert B, although he has become known as ‘Little Albert’ and it has since been discovered that his real name was Douglas Merritte.
Watson argued that infants are tabula rasa, ‘blank tablets,’ and that all personality and behaviour are condi‒ tioned by environmental influences.
In the last experi‒ ment of his career, he set out to provide experimental backing for some of his basic claims by carrying out a form of Pavlovian conditioning with a human rather than canine subject.
Little Albert was nine months old when the experiments began at Johns Hoplins paediatric hospital.
Watson wrote that the infant has been selected because he was healthy and seemed temperamentally robust.
Initially he was presented with a range of stimuli — unconditioned stimuli (UCS) in the lexicon of beha‒ viourism — including a white rat, a rabbit and even a burning newspaper.
Little Albert displayed no fear in response to any of them.
He did, however, get frightened and start crying when a steel bar was struck with a claw hammer behind his back.
Two months later Little Albert was again shown the white rat, but this time the presentation was accompa‒ nied by a frightening strike of the hammer on the steel bar whenever he touched the rat.
After seven pairings of the rat and noise (in two sessions, one week apart), Albert reacted by crying and attempting to flee (he had to be caught before he fell off the table) when the rat was presented without the loud noise.
Albert had been conditioned to fear the rat.
What’s more, testing with a variety of other white, furry things including a rabbit, a bearded Santa Claus mask and Watson’s own hair showed that this conditioned reflex had been generalized to other stimuli.
A month later Albert’s mother moved and Watson claimed it was not possible to follow up with the infant.
Even at the time ⇨ there were questions about whether the Little Albert experiment was ethical.
Watson defended himself by arguing that the ends justified the means: ‘They (such experiments) will be worth all they cost if through them we can find a method which will help us remove fear.’