[Image: Timeline (1920). Crying 9-month-old infant sitting with a rabbit in his lap. A man is kneeling and looking down at the infant from behind.]
[Image: The Needle Blog (1920). A collage of two separate images. The top image shows a 9-month-old infant looking at a man who is wearing a clown mask. The bottom image shows a 9-month-old infant crying and looking down while sitting in between two men.]
[Image: Ethics in Science (2013). A portrait of a man with short white hair wearing a suit, psychologist John B. Watson.]
[Image: Timeline (1920). Crying 9-month-old infant sitting with a rabbit in his lap. A man is kneeling and looking down at the infant from behind.]
FEARING THE FURRY
In 1920, at Johns Hopkins University, psychologist John B. Watson, interested in psychological behavior in response to classical conditioning, experimented on 9-month-old Albert. Classical conditioning is the association of a certain stimulus with another unrelated stimulus of behavior. He placed a rat in front of Albert, who had little to no reaction, besides curiosity. He then placed the rat in front of him again and began to hit steel with a hammer to create a loud noise that frightened the baby. Albert cried of course, and as this experiment continued, Albert eventually began to fear just the sight of the rat and started to cry when he saw it.
As represented in the picture, Watson repeated the experiment with various other animals with fur without making the loud noise and Albert feared them, despite not having the scary sound associated with them. In between the tests with the animals, playing blocks were placed in front of Albert and he began to play with them. This was to test whether Albert’s fear response was influenced by the environment he was in, or solely the result of seeing the animals associated with loud sounds. Various masks were also worn in front of the baby to document the fear response. The experiments lasted for two months. Albert’s mother, Arvilla Merritte, was a wetnurse who lived and worked at the campus hospital. She received one dollar as compensation for the experiments conducted with her son.
Watson had kept the identity of the baby unknown in his research documentation, and shortly following the experiments, Watson was released from the University due to having an affair with one of his graduate student assistants. “Little Albert” was the name given to the baby to conceal his identity. Seven years later, after carefully tracking down Little Albert’s suspected family and utilizing facial recognition to compare the child’s face to Albert’s, physiologist Hall P. Beck uncovered the identity of Albert. He discovered that Douglas, “Little Albert”, had died at the age of 6 from hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus is a condition in which there is a buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the cavities deep within the brain.
Sources:
Watson, John B, and Rosalie Rayner. “Conditioned Emotional Reactions.” Classics in the History of Psychology . Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1920. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm.
“Little Albert Experiment.” GoodTherapy.org Therapy Blog, July 30, 2019. https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/little-albert-experiment.
“‘Little Albert’ Regains His Identity.” Monitor on Psychology. American Psychological Association, January 2010. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/01/little-albert.
“Hydrocephalus.” Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, July 26, 2019. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hydrocephalus/symptoms-causes/syc-20373604.
Little Albert Was Made to Fear Furry Animals. Experiments on This Infant in 1920 Were Unethical, but Became a Staple of Psychology Text Books. Timeline, n.d. https://timeline.com/little-albert-fear-experiment-9152586f245. (Link Inactive)
Little Albert Mask Experiment. Beyond Good and Evil. The Needle Blog, n.d. https://theneedleblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/beyond-good-and-evil/.
Little Albert with Rabbit. The Mysterious Case of Little Albert. Ethics in Science, November 17, 2013. https://uhethics.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/the-mysterious-case-of-little-albert/.
John B. Watson. The Mysterious Case of Little Albert. Ethics in Science, November 17, 2013. https://uhethics.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/the-mysterious-case-of-little-albert/.