Watson and Little Albert’s theory

John B. Watson was the Psychologist predominantly liable for the increase of Behaviourism. Watson believed that internal thought played no role in human behaviour which behaviour might be induced via conditioning . He demonstrated this with the famous “Little Albert Experiment”.

Initial Conditioning

In 1920, Watson and his assistant, Rosalie Rayner, conducted an experiment during which they attempted to condition an infant to fear an animal. Additionally, they sought to look at if that fear would transfer to similar animals or objects and observe how long this fear would last. they chose a healthy, 9 month old, infant who would become immortalised in Psychology as “Little Albert”. Watson and Rayner (1920) described Little Albert as “stolid and unemotional”.

Initially, Albert interacted with various animals like a rabbit, rat, dog and a monkey and inanimate objects like cotton, fur and masks to look at his unconditioned responses to those stimuli. Albert was judged to possess no fear of any of the animals but was found to become afraid when a loud, unsettling noise was created by striking a steel bar with a claw hammer. Watson and Rayner (1920) continued to look at Albert’s unconditioned responses and after about two months decided they might plan to induce within Albert a phobia of a white rat.

In order to condition the fear response into Albert, the researchers had to cause Albert to associate the rat with the unsettling noise. whenever Albert touched the rat, the bang would be made immediately afterwards and therefore the child would become distressed. When Albert saw the rat, he reacted by crying and attempting to avoid the animal even without the noise.

Generalisation and Permanence

With it proven that Albert was conditioned to fear an animal, they now examined how this fear was generalised to other animals or objects. 5 days after the conditioned fear response, Albert was placed during a room with the rat, a rabbit, a dog, a sealskin coat, some white cotton, a bearded Santa Claus mask, some wooden blocks and therefore the inverted heads of Watson and his assistants in order that Albert could feel their hair. Reportedly, Albert showed a robust fear response to the rat, dog, rabbit and sealskin coat, a negative response to the Santa Claus mask and Watson’s hair and mild response to the cotton. Albert however, enjoyed the blocks and therefore the assistants’ hair.

After 5 more days, Watson attempted to recondition Albert to fear the rat and to also condition Albert to fear the dog and rabbit. Watson tested this conditioning but during a larger room than previous trials. during this room, Albert only had a light reaction to the rat, dog and rabbit.

With it shown that the phobia can reach similar objects, the ultimate step was to check the permanence of the conditioning. Watson and Rayner (1920) didn’t see Albert for 31 days before he returned to them for the ultimate tests. Albert interacted, once more , with multiple different objects and he showed fear when touching the rat, dog, rabbit, sealskin coat and Santa Claus mask. However, he did initiate contact with the rabbit and coat. Thus, it appeared that his fear persisted but to a way lesser degree. After these tests, Albert’s mother removed him from the experiment but Watson knew this is able to happen a month beforehand .

The Fate of Little Albert

For years after the experiment, the fate of Little Albert was unknown until, in 2009, Psychologist Hall P. Beck published how he was ready to uncover Albert’s mother’s real name and subsequently deduce that Albert was actually a boy by the name of Douglas Merritte. Unfortunately, Douglas gave up the ghost at the age of six thanks to hydrocephalus, a build from fluid within the brain. Beck also found that Douglas had suffered from hydrocephalus since birth. He believed Watson knew about this and intentionally lied about the health of the kid for his experiment.

However, in 2014, researchers also presented evidence that tiny Albert was actually William Albert Barger. Barger was the son of a wet nurse who worked at the hospital where the experiment was conducted. Regrettably, it’s going to never be known surely who Little Albert really was since Watson burned his collection of letters and private papers before his death.

Criticisms of the small Albert Experiment

There was never an object measure of Albert’s fear response. it had been supported Watson and his assistants’ own subjective observations.
The experiment was incredibly unethical by today’s standards, especially considering that no attempt was made to decondition the kid .
Watson understated the severity of Douglas Merritte’s illness for the experiment, assuming he was Little Albert.

Beck, H. P., Levinson, S., & Irons, G. (2009). Finding little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson’s infant laboratory. American Psychologist, 2009;64(7): 605–614.

Fridlund, A. J., Beck, H. P., Goldie, W. D., & Irons, G. Little Albert: A neurologically impaired child. History of Psychology. doi: 10.1037/a0026720; 2012.

Powell, R. A., Digdon, N., Harris, B., & Smithson, C. (2014). Correcting the record on Watson, Rayner, and Little Albert: Albert Barger as “Psychology’s lost boy”. American Psychologist, 69(6), 600–611

Watson, J.B. & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1–14.