What was little Albert's experiment?

Throughout the history of science, and specifically in that of psychology, experiments have been carried out that, although contributed to expanding scientific knowledge, they also generated much controversy for how ethically questionable they They were.

In behavioral science, experiments such as the Stanford prison, Milgram's obedience experiment and Harlow's primate experiments that, after their performance, prompted changes in the code of ethics in psychology experimental.

However, little albert's experiment It has been, according to many, the most controversial experiment, since, in it, they experimented with a poor practically abandoned child, using him as an experimental guinea pig to produce phobias. Let's take a closer look at the history of this experiment.

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What was little Albert's experiment?

The figure of John Broadus Watson is widely known in behavioral science, since he is considered the father of the behavioral branch of psychology. This researcher, along with Rosalie Rayner, was

the person responsible for conducting an experiment that would not go unnoticed in the history of psychology: Little Albert's experiment.

However, before explaining the experiment itself, it is necessary to explain the background that led Watson to carry out the well-known investigation of it. Watson was familiar with the work of Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist who had won the Nobel Prize in physiology. in 1903 with his studies on the digestive system.

Pavlov had experimented with dogs and, while conducting his experiments, he discovered something very interesting that would serve a lot for psychology. When he presented food to his dogs, he made them salivate. Pavlov wondered if he could induce this same behavior without having to present the food, but using a neutral stimulus that was associated with it: a bell.

Through several attempts, Pavlov got the dogs to salivate when he heard the bell, even without presenting the food to them. They had associated the sound of the instrument with food. Thus, Pavlov first described associative learning that we know today as classical conditioning. He bases the behavior of animals (and that of people) as a sequence of stimuli and responses.

Once he knew this, John B. Watson decided to radically extrapolate this classical conditioning with people, matching it with his ideas about how human emotional behavior worked. Watson was a radical positivist, that is, he believed that human behavior could only be studied on the basis of learned behaviors. Thus, he was not a supporter of doctrines that spoke of inherited traits and animal instincts.

With this understood, it is not surprising that Watson thought that all human behavior depended on the experiences that the person had. The human mind was a blank canvas, a blank slate as the empiricist philosophers would have said, a canvas which was painted with the experiences of the individual throughout life. Through learning and conditioning, the person would be one way or another. All Watson needed was an experimental subject, a canvas with which to paint the picture that would demonstrate his theories.

Searching for the ideal subject through science

Watson, along with Rosalie Rayner, was a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He had been working at that institution for several years when, in 1920, he was finally able to carry out his experiment. His goal was to test with a very young baby, the perfect subject in Watson's eyes, since it would be the perfect blank canvas with which to condition all kinds of responses without fearing that other stimuli prior to experimentation would contaminate the results.

Watson intended to introduce a phobic response to the baby through a stimulus, which would condition the child to fear him. Later, they would transfer that phobic response to other stimuli with characteristics similar to the conditioned stimulus. Finally, the last phase of the experiment would consist of extinguishing the phobic response to the conditioned stimulus, that is, correcting the fear that had been introduced during the experimentation. Unfortunately, unfortunately for the baby, this phase never came.

While the idea of ​​scaring a baby wasn't technically cruel, it was, scientifically speaking, morally questionable, even for the time. It should be said that Watson had a very limited view of the emotionality of babies, considering that newborns could only present three recognizable feelings.

• Fear: conditioned by loud noises and lack of lift.
• Love: conditioned by caresses.
• Cholera: conditioned by the deprivation of freedom of movement.

Taking into account the Watsonian definition of these three basic emotions, no wonder Watson tried to arouse fear in the baby, since it was the easiest emotion to study in an experimental context. Interestingly, it was the most ethically questionable to inoculate a newborn.

Subject found

After clearly delimiting the objective and theoretical framework of his research, John B. Watson and his research partner (and in bed) went in search of the perfect subject, finding him at the Harriet Lane Home orphanage for disabled children.

There, one of the nurses carried her newborn son, who spent hours there, almost careless, while his mother worked. The child had not received emotional stimulation and, according to his mother, he had hardly cried or expressed anger since he was born. Watson was before his perfect experimental subject: his blank canvas.

So, at the age of just 8 months and 26 days, Albert was selected to be the guinea pig. experiment of one of the best known, and ethically questionable, experiments in the history of psychology.

Start the experiment

In the first session, the child was exposed to various stimuli to find out if he was afraid of them before the experiment began. He was exposed to a campfire and various animals, and he showed no fear. However, when Watson struck a metal bar, the boy did cry, confirming the idea that he was could induce a fear response in babies to a rude noise.

Two months later, the actual experiment began. The first stimulus that Watson and Rayner wanted to condition fear on him was a white lab rat. When presenting her to Albert, the baby was curious, even wanted to reach her. However, his behavior began to change when the experimenters sounded a metal bar while presenting the animal to him. This way of proceeding was practically identical to how Watson had done it with his dogs, the food, and the bell.

When the metal bar rang and saw the white rat, the boy began to cry. He jerked back, flustered. They tried again, showing him the white rat first and rattling the metal bar again. The boy, who had not been afraid of the rat this time, cried again when he heard the noise of the bell. The researchers had just managed to meet the first condition, causing the child to begin to associate fear with the little animal.

At this point, and in the only show of empathy for the baby, Watson and Rayner decided to postpone the rest of the experimental tests for a week, "so as not to seriously disturb the child". It must be said that this empathy would not counteract the way in which the experiment evolved, nor the damage that would be caused to poor Albert.

In the second experimental round, Watson made up to eight more attempts to make sure the child had related the rat to fear. On the seventh attempt he presented the white rat again by making the sharp noise of the metal bar. Finally, on the eighth attempt, he only presented the white rat, with no background rumbling. The child, unlike how he had behaved in the first experimental sessions, this time he was afraid, he cried, he did not want to touch the rat, he ran away from it.

Transferring fear

The experiment continued with two more experimental runs, when little Albert was already about 11 months old and when he was 1 year and 21 days old. Watson wanted to see if he could transfer the fear of the white rat to other stimuli with similar characteristics, that is, that they had hair or that they were white.

To do this, the researchers used several furry animals and objects, very similar to the touch of the white rat: a rabbit, a dog and, also, a fur coat. When they were introduced to Albert, the boy began to cry, without having to rattle the metal bar. The boy not only feared the white rat, but also things that he looked like. The fear was transferred to other elements similar to the animal.

The last test, in which Albert was already a year old, was presented with an even more disconcerting stimulus, even though it might seem innocent at first: a Santa Claus mask. When he saw the mask of the cheerful Christmas character, Albert also began to cry, gurgled, tried to slap the mask without actually touching it. When he was forced to touch her, he groaned and cried even more. Finally, he cried with the mere visual stimulus of the mask.

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What happened to little Albert?

The last phase of the experiment was to be trying to remove the inoculated fears. This part was the most important, since, in theory, it was going to involve undoing the damage that had been done to him. The problem was that such a phase never came.

According to Watson and Rayner themselves, when they tried to start this phase, little Albert had been adopted by a new family, which had moved to another city. The experiment was quickly canceled as the University had been irritated by its ethical controversy.. In addition, Watson and Rayner were fired the moment the institution discovered that they had a romantic relationship, something forbidden between colleagues.

It is for all this that, after being an experimental guinea pig, Albert lost track of it and could not remove those fears. The whereabouts as a child was unknown until well into the 2000s, in which several lines of investigation tried to find out what exactly had happened to the child after the end of the experiment, he had continued to suffer from phobias in his adult life or if the results of Watson and Rayner did not last long. Two have been the investigations considered most valid.

His name was William Barger

One of the most reliable and plausible lines of research is quite recent, dating from 2014. Two researchers, Russ Powell and Nancy Digdon reviewed the census and documentation from the early 20th century and they concluded that Albert was William Barger. This individual's biological mother had worked in the same orphanage where Watson and Rayner had gotten little Albert, the Harriet Lane Home.

William Barger had passed away in 2007, so she couldn't be interviewed to make sure he was little Albert, however, Barger's relatives assured that he had always had a special phobia of dogs, in addition to other furry animals.

Albert had hydrocephalus

Although the hypothesis that it was William Barger seems to be the most plausible, another theory, a little older, is considered by many psychologists as the true outcome of little Albert.

Hall P. Beck and Sharman Levinson published in 2009 in the APA their line of research on how Albert lived after having been an experimental subject of John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner. According to this research, Albert he did not manage to live for long, passing away from congenital hydrocephalus at the age of six.

This finding not only casts doubt on how unethical little Albert's experiment was, but also invalidates the results obtained by Watson and Rayner. In theory, Watson explained the results of him believing that he had experimented with a healthy childBut, given that the hydrocephalus could have involved neurological problems, which would explain his lack of emotionality, the psychologist's research would be strongly questioned.

Bibliographic references:

• Watson, J. B. & Rayner, R. (1920). "Conditioned emotional reactions". Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3 (1), pp. 1-14.
• Beck, H. P., Levinson, S., & Irons, G. (2009). Finding Little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson's infant laboratory. American Psychologist, 64, 7. pp. 605-614.