John B Watson's Little Albert Experiment

Have you or anyone around you ever been involved in an experiment that some would call unwanted or unethical? Perhaps maybe even it happening to young children, It may surprise you how often unethical experimenting has been documented throughout the nation no less worldwide, and no less to very young children. This has been happening for years throughout history and still even today. However, this is a very highly debated topic as what someone would constitute a certain experiment unethical, others may count it as perfectly normal. Whether it is the case of Dr. Lauretta Bender, or the ever so famous case of the University of Iowa Speech therapy experiment, you are sure to find various amount of cases of unethical

Ethics remains unavoidable in most disciplines, and psychology is no exception. John Watson’s experiment deserves the current criticism because it failed to observe informed consent and protection from harm principle. The controversy arises from the principle of beneficence and non-maleficence. The principle requires psychologists, in this case, John Watson, and his student to benefit and care for his subjects. During the Experiment, Albert was nine-months-old. The age of the infants forms the first unethical behavior by Watson. The APA code requires psychologists to ensure justice, integrity, respect for people’s rights and dignity, responsibility and fidelity, and beneficence and non-maleficence. The experiment is unethical as most of the activities did not practice justice and integrity to the involved human subject.

Watson’s Classical Fear Conditioning experiment with Little Albert today, is considered unethical. According to ethical guidelines of psychology, when performing an experiment, the experimenter should always protect the participant and should always perserve their welfare and dignity. In Watson’s experiment, Little Albert and the animals were both exposed to danger, as one of the sole purposes of the experiment was to create fear, Little Albert was put through distress. Little Albert developed a conditioned fear that being the conditioned stimulus the rat. Today psychologists are obligated to obtain the participants consent before proceeding with their research. However, in Little Albert’s case little is known about his voluntary participation, after all he was a child. Thus, Watson’s experiment will not be allowed today as it

Douglas Merritte, better known as Little Albert was 9 months when he participated in a study along with John Watson. Watson exposed Little Albert to a white rat and furry objects, who before not feared rats and furry objects. As he played with the rat, Watson made a loud noise with a hammer. After numerous of trials, Watson introduced the rat and the furry objects to Little Albert who began to cry in fear of the loud noise. When the rate and furry objects were placed in front of Albert he cried, although there was no noise. Something that was first enjoyment to him has become fear to him. The bad thing about this experiment is that Watson created a child with a previously nonexistent fear. It has been said that Douglas known as Little Albert

The Little Albert experiment is seen as very unethical now, but in 1920 helped out psychologist. It was run by John B. Watson and one of his students, Rosalie Rayner. At the John Hopkins University, Watson and Rayner’s goal was to condition certain phobias into a perfectly normal child. Watson was testing Pavlov’s theory on humans, not dogs. They chose a nine month old baby who they called “Albert,” or “Little Albert.”

John Watson, father of behaviorism, was a psychologist who was apt to using orphans in his experiments. Watson wanted to test the idea of whether fear was innate or a conditioned response. Little Albert, the nickname given to the nine month old infant that Watson chose from a hospital, was exposed to a white rabbit, a white rat, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspaper, and a miscellanea of other things for two months without any sort of conditioning. Then experiment began by placing Albert on a mattress in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, the child showed no fear of the rat.Then Watson would make a loud sound behind Albert’s back

Watson and Rayner set out to substantiate his theory by recruiting a subject, who basically stayed in a hospital attached John Hopkins University, and the conducting an experiment on the chosen infant. Their aim was to classically condition the infant to fear a white laboratory rat. The infant, Albert B. or “Little Albert”, was a physically healthy and emotionally stable 9-month old boy (Watson & Rayner, 1920, p. 1). He was described as a very relaxed baby who hardly ever cried. In the emotional tests, before conditioning, Albert was exposed to a series of objects, which included fire, cotton wool, a monkey, a dog, a white rabbit, a mask with hair, and a white laboratory rat. He had not shown a scared or nervous response toward these neutral stimuli, and particularly adored the white laboratory rat. (chaopret 7, p. 239).

In professional fields, such as psychology there are discrepancies on whether some research methods are ethical. Therefore the key ethical issues in psychological research was

The Little Albert experiment has become a famous case study that has been discussed by a plethora of professionals in the psychology industry. In 1920, behaviorist John Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner began to conduct the first experiment that had been done with a child. Watson and Rayner chose Albert because they thought he was stable; he was accustomed to a hospital environment due to his mother’s career as a wet nurse, he was healthy and showed little emotion. Stability played a major factor in choosing Albert for this case study because Watson wanted to ensure that they would do as little harm as possible with the experiment. The conditioning of Albert began with a series of emotional tests that became part of a routine in which Watson and Rayner were “determining whether fear reactions could be called out by other stimuli than sharp noises and the sudden removal of support” (-----). Watson’s method of choice for this experiment was using principles of classic conditioning to create a stimulus in children that would result in fear. Since Watson wanted to condition Albert, he used a variety of objects that would otherwise not scare him. These objects included white rat, dog, blocks, rabbit, fur coat, wool and a Santa Claus mask.

In 1920, John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner set out to support their revolutionary behaviorist ideology, seeking to explain all behavior as conditioned by environmental influences and to prove environmental influences can condition any behavior into man or beast, through the groundbreaking and controversial “Little Albert” experiment. An 8- month-old infant informally named Little Albert was previously shown to be of remarkably stable disposition and to innately fear none of many selected animals serving as neutral stimuli, and Watson and Rayner demonstrated they could condition Little Albert to fear a white rat and, through generalization and second-order conditioning, animals and objects similar in enough respects to trigger the same conditioned

The Little Albert experiment was done on an infant boy called Albert. He was tested on his reactions to different stimulus. Unconditioned Stimulus is any stimulus that can cause a response without the organism going through any previous learning. Little Albert was considered as unemotional because he did not show fear of this stimuli, however when a hammer was struck against a steel bar behind his head made him feel fear. This is what we call and unconditioned stimuli. This noise made little Albert burst into tears. In this study, the infant was shown a rabbit, a white rat, monkey, and various masks. This is considered the Conditioned Stimulus on this experiment. A Conditioned Stimulus is a formerly neutral stimulus that, after merging with

Almost every Introductory Psychology textbook mentions Watson’s work with the infant Albert because it’s a very important factor in classical conditioning. I think the theoretical point made by this experiment was to prove that the classical conditioning principles can be utilized to condition the emotional response of fear. I believe this experiment was unethical, simply because it did not protect Albert from any psychological harm whatsoever. I also believe that it could have been approached in a totally different way.

In the development of psychology from the very beginning, there have been many experiments that can be said to tread a very fine line between ethical and unethical practices. Many believe that John Watson crossed over that fine line of ethics while conducting the experiment with little Albert. Essentially, Watson exposed little Albert to the white rats in various manners that ultimately made little Albert fear the rats (Schultz, 2012).

This was recently challenged by another group of researchers. Russell Powell and his colleagues suggested that the real Little Albert was really a boy named William Albert Barger, who they believe matches the characteristics of Little Albert better than Douglas Merritte. What sparked their interest for this investigation was the name that Watson had given to Douglas Merritte and the lack of connection between the two. By today’s standards, it is important to take the necessary steps in keeping information private; however, during Watson’s time it was not an ethical requirement to conceal the identities of their participants so it was not likely for researchers to put much effort is concealing their participant’s identity. Pearl Barger was a wet nurse at Harriet Lane Home, the same time that the Little Albert study was conducted.

For example, the strange situation experiment was classed as unethical due to distress children experience when separated from their mothers (Ainsworth et al, 1970). This experiment does not seem capable of producing any psychological or physical harm, which makes it easier to replicate the study. The Medical Research Council advises that children should only be used in research if adults cannot provide the same knowledge, and that the research results will be beneficial to children (Medical Research Council, 1991). This research was conducted to solely learn about categorisation with labels in the early years of life; therefore it would have been senseless to not use children. This makes the study ethically appropriate. However, the researchers did not clarify whether there was informed consent from the children’s parents/guardians, which is a drawback. In order to improve their study, they should give out informed consent forms to the parents in order to not be criticised over their