November 25, 2024

Jessica Park 

10th Grade

Williamsville East High School 

Is there such a thing as going too far for science?  Could our experiments result in irrevocably changing a human being’s life?  Questions like these often circulate in many people’s minds when hearing about the Little Albert Experiment, an experiment that became a guiding principle on the ethicality and moral code of science.

In 1920, psychologist John B. Watson and one of his students, Rosalie Rayner, conducted an experiment known as the “Little Albert Experiment”. John B. Watson had always been interested in behaviorism, more specifically conditioning, a concept developed by Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov. After reading an article centered around the concept of conditioning, Watson wanted to prove to the world that phobias could be learned and developed through conditioning. With his assistant Rosalie Rayner, he designed an admittedly flawed experiment, which lacked a control group and was unrepeatable. His experiment had three main objectives: (1) Could an infant be conditioned to fear an animal that appears simultaneously with a loud, fear-arousing sound?, (2) Would such a fear translate to other animals or inanimate objects?, and (3) How long would such fears persist? To answer these questions, they observed an infant referred to as “Little Albert”, who was around nine months old when the experiment began. 

Despite the seeming normalcy in how the experiment was received, most parents in the 1920s still lacked the necessary information about the nature and potential consequences of the experiment and thus neglected to let their infant child be sent to an experiment like this. There were multiple theories on how Watson got a hold of Little Albert. Some said that the behaviorist used his connections in a nearby hospital to pressure Little Albert’s mother into giving him up, whereas others said that the child was taken without informed consent by Little Albert’s mother. Whatever the case, Watson was able to get the child of a wet nurse in the nearby hospital. Little Albert was noted to be a “stolid” and “unemotional” infant who rarely cried, threw a tantrum, or even laughed. Watson was only able to get the child by loudly banging a hammer on an iron rod to induce fear.  

On the first day the child was brought in, he was subjected to several different objects and animals, such as a rat, a rabbit, a monkey, burning newspapers, a mask with fur, and a cotton ball. Originally, Albert reacted neutrally to the objects with slight curiosity. At no point did he show any fear during the first experiment. However, three months later, whenever he touched the rat, the hammer was banged, causing Albert to eventually become terrified of the rat. This fear seemed to translate to a fur coat, a rabbit, or a dog, but not to the room itself.  To not ‘disturb’ the infant too much, they allowed him to play with blocks in between the experiments, though he seemed to play with the blocks more forcefully or suck his thumb more frequently the more scared he was. It was noted that the originally stoic infant had begun to cry violently whenever near a furry object.  

Both a week and a month later, while the fear persisted, Albert had begun to become much calmer around the animals and objects, merely backing away or covering his eyes compared to the outbursts from before. The scientists, wanting to determine how much stimulus it took for Albert to gain a phobia, repeated the previous experiments from before to heighten his fear again. Originally, a follow-up experiment of desensitization, where Albert would learn to associate furry things with a positive connotation, was to be performed, but his mother, maybe finally realizing the effect the experiment had on her child, withdrew him from the hospital and the experiment entirely.   

The Little Albert Experiment provided valuable insights into human behavior and the field of psychology: Conditioned emotional responses could generalize to other stimuli that share similar characteristics, expanding the impact of learned fear beyond the original conditioned stimulus. However, this study is highly unethical. While the experiment was originally dismissed, in the 1970s, there was a renewal of interest in this topic, and many people began to ask, what became of Little Albert? Based on the babies, time, and location, two possible theories emerged. One theory from 2009 states that Little Albert’s real identity was  Douglass Melvitte, a boy who was born on March 9th to a wet nurse named Arvilla Melvitte (Irons). Both boys had shockingly similar appearances and were described to be seemingly healthy upon birth.  Melvitte, however, was likely neurologically impaired, according to his mother’s statements and his unresponsive nature that seemed to be symptoms of a possible disorder. This raises further questions about Watson’s ethics and whether the child was really suitable for the experiment or not. Tragically, Melvitte died at the age of 6 due to hydrocephalus, a build-up of fluid in the brain. However, questions remain about whether Melvitte was indeed Little Albert. A more positive theory suggests that Albert Banger was the infant for the experiment.  He was born on the same day, shared the same name as the one written, and was described as a completely healthy infant. Although Albert Banger lived to the age of 87 and was growing up to be completely normal, he was noted by family members to have an aversion to pets, which may have been due to the experiment.  His discharge age is also exactly the same as Little Albert’s making him a possibly more likely candidate.

Whether Little Albert had been a neurologically impaired child or a perfectly healthy one, the experiment remains one of the key examples of unethical practice in research. The Little Albert Experiment has proven there is a reason current guidelines on experimentation and ethics exist today, extending from psychology to the medical field. Today, researchers must stick to ethical codes that prioritize the well-being and protection of participants.