Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov, a Russian neurologist, demonstrated conditioned learning—also known as a conditioned reflex—by conducting an experiment involving dogs and a bell. Before feeding them, he would ring the bell, and over time, the dogs began to associate the sound with food, eventually salivating at the sound alone.
This discovery was groundbreaking and influenced the theory of behaviorism that suggests “all behaviors are acquired through conditioning processes.”
This means that “It all comes down to the patterns of learning we’ve acquired through associations, rewards, and punishments. This approach argues that it’s our environment that shapes our actions more than our thoughts and feelings.”
Influenced by Pavlov’s work, psychologist John B. Watson and his graduate student Rosalie Rayner decided to apply the same logic. This time, however, using a baby known as “Little Albert.”
Their experiment is referred to as “medical misogyny.”
They chose a nine-month old baby, whose mother was a vet nurse at the hospital where the experiment was conducted. She wasn’t fully aware of what her child experienced behind closed doors.
“He was healthy from birth and one of the best developed youngsters ever brought to the hospital, weighing twenty-one pounds at nine months of age,” Watson and his study partner, Rosalie Rayner, wrote of Little Albert. “He was on the whole stolid and unemotional. His stability was one of the principal reasons for using him as a subject in this test. We felt that we could do him relatively little harm by carrying out such experiments.”
The baby was exposed to soft animals, including a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, some masks, cotton, wool, and burning newspapers among the rest.
At first, he played with the animals and didn’t show any fear, but over time, whenever he reached for the white rat, Watson would bang a metal pipe with a hammer right behind the baby, startling him and making him cry.
This was repeated enough times until the baby cried and screamed just by looking at the rat.
This is in loving remembrance of Douglas Merritte who was my little Albert in the “Little Albert Experiment”.Thank you for your greatness! f=”https://t.co/FvEBFghJhr”>pic.twitter.com/FvEBFghJhr
— John B. Watson (@John_B_Watsonnn) September 21, 2016
Eventually, Albert began to associate anything white and fluffy with sheer terror. This included Santa Clause, because of his white beard.
Watson was happy his “Little Albert experiment” worked, but neither he nor his assistant did anything to reverse the damage – or to “decondition” him – as they promised to his mother.
Instead, they let Albert toughen up all by himself.
Sadly, Little Albert died aged six from hydrocephalus – a condition where fluid builds up in the brain.
It turned out that he wasn’t as healthy at the start of the experiment as Watson wrote in the study he published.
“He has a very large head, and he’s quite pudgy and short, but the head is still big for a pudgy, short infant,” Fridlund told How Stuff Works of the obvious health issues the baby was having.
“The second thing was how abnormal he was in his behavior. During that entire film – on which Albert appears for roughly four minutes – you see not one social smile from Albert. Not one.”
Further, he added: “Not once in the film, despite being brought an Airdale that’s scampering all over, being shown burning paper, being shown a monkey cavorting on a leash – and he has a steel bar struck with a hammer 14 times behind his back – not once does Albert turn to either Watson or Rayner to seek support. If infants perceive that the stimulus is threatening, they typically run toward a caretaker.”
Over the years, scholars have debated over the true identity of Little Albert.
Researcher Hall Beck from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, believes he was Douglas Merritte, the six-year-old who died.
Russ Powell and his colleagues at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada, believed baby Albert was in fact William Albert Barger, who was born at the same hospital. Barger lived until 2007 but didn’t recall being part of any experiment. Throughout his life, he was only afraid of dogs.
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Bored DaddY
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