At the end of 1919, Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner set up an experiment designed to show the correctness of behavioral theory. Their task is to evoke, employing external stimuli, a complex mental emotion that did not exist before. Watson and Rayner chose an 11-month-old infant, “Albert B.”, for the experiments. He was a customarily developed child, but later studies uncovered hydrocephalus from birth and provided strong evidence that Watson was aware of the boy’s condition and deliberately misrepresented his health status (Beck et al., 2009).
First, the experimenters tested Albert’s reactions by showing him a white rat, various masks, a burning newspaper, and cotton yarn. None of these items showed fear in the baby. Watson and her assistant then proceeded to develop a fear response. Simultaneously, with the child being allowed to play with a white rat, the experimenter hit the steel strip one meter long with a hammer so that the child could not see the hammer and the strip: the loud sound frightened Albert. Of course, quite quickly, the child began to be frightened of the rat itself – already without a blow. The conditioned reflex of fear of the rat was fixed in the baby.
After five days, Albert was tested for reactions: ordinary toys did not cause an adverse reaction, although the rat still frightened the baby. It also turned out that the child is terrified of a rabbit, a dog, fur coats, and even Santa Claus masks, which is dictated by the effect of classical conditioning (Fridlund et al., 2012). Further, Watson and Rayner planned to demonstrate the possibility of removing the evoked fear reactions but could not because the child was taken from the hospital where the studies were conducted.
This experiment cannot be called ethical for several reasons. Firstly, the child was placed in a frightening situation without his consent; this consent could not be obtained from a person of that age. Secondly, the effect of obsessive fear probably had long-term consequences that negatively affected the baby’s future life. Thirdly, such phobias are challenging to treat and correct, as modern research has already proven (Mertens et al., 2020). From a scientific point of view, the experiment did not have a clear plan and structure; moreover, the experimenters could not objectively evaluate his reactions but relied only on their subjective interpretations.
References
Beck, H. P., Levinson, S., & Irons, G. (2009). Finding little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson’s infant laboratory. American Psychologist, 64(7), 605. Web.
Fridlund, A. J., Beck, H. P., Goldie, W. D., & Irons, G. (2012). Little Albert: A neurologically impaired child. History of Psychology, 15(4), 302. Web.
Mertens, G., Krypotos, A. M., & Engelhard, I. M. (2020). A review on mental imagery in fear conditioning research 100 years since the ‘Little Albert’ study. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 126. Web.