What Ever Happened to Baby Albert?

At a special time in my Introductory Psychology class, it’s time to tell my latest batch of students about a particular classic psychology experiment. And like many good yarns, it’s a tale that involves a healthy dose of sex, lies – and the ethically questionable participation of an innocent infant called Little Albert.

In 1920, John B. Watson was a successful psychologist at Johns Hopkins University. During his tenure as an eminent scientist, Watson was also department chair, with a loving wife at home as well as a tasty side dish in his lab (in the form of Rosalie Rayner, graduate student and research assistant in his lab). For John Watson, life was good.

Watson’s biggest contribution to psychology was his beliefs on behaviourism, or the influence of our experiences on our overt actions. He claimed that any infant could grow up to be either a doctor or a thief, depending upon the environment in which they were raised. In fact, Watson felt that the environment holds such power over behavior he claimed that he could create true phobias given the right conditions.

So Watson and Rayner embarked on what would become Watson’s final published work. Appearing in a 1920 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, it was a test of his theory that fear towards an animal could be created, and that this fear could then be transferred to other animals similar in appearance. All the researchers needed was a blank slate…

Enter Albert B., aged 11 months, stage right. Little Albert was raised almost completely from birth at the hospital, with his mother working as a wet nurse at a nearby home for ‘invalid’ children. Watson chose Albert for this experiment specifically because he was passive, stable and unemotional – the idea being that the child’s personality would guard against any lasting effects of the experiment.

When the researchers first met Albert, he showed no fear towards the test animal they had chosen - a fluffy white rat. Once the research began, Albert was introduced to the rodent repeatedly. However, each time that Albert would reach out to pet the rat, Watson would strike an iron bar with a hammer behind Albert’s head. The clanging sound scared Albert, and he would start to cry. With enough pairings of the loud noise and the presence of the white rat, Albert soon associated the rat with the fear of the sound. Seeing the white rat all by himself was enough to scare the diapers off of Little Albert. In fact, the fear response was so strong that he generalized his fear to a laundry list of similar-looking items: a Santa Claus mask, Watson’s head of greying hair, a rabbit, etc.

This experiment lasted for months, but before the researchers could reverse the effects of Albert’s conditioned fears, there was a shakedown at the research lab/love nest. Albert’s mother whisked the child away from the mad scientists. Watson and Rayner were evidently baffled by her rash action, but others have assumed that the mother was never given complete informed consent; once she discovered what was taking place, she became angry and removed Little Albert from their clutches. No one has seen or heard from the little lad since. The end.

At this point in the lecture, my students stare at me in disbelief. How could scientists do this to an infant? Was he scarred for life? Did he move to the tropics, unable to contend with frosty white winters and women sporting fur coats? Did his fear of the white and fluffy transfer into an aggression only satiated by clubbing baby seals in the frigid Canadian North? Doesn’t anyone know what happened to Little Albert?

The truth behind the tale of Little Albert is simple: no one knows what happened to him. The tryst between Watson and Rayner was exposed soon after the experiment ended, forcing the psychologist to resign from Johns Hopkins. Although he ran away with Rayner and had a successful career in advertising, Watson never overcame the loss of his academic career. Shortly before his death in 1958, he burned all of his documents – and any chance of learning Albert’s full identity.

To further compound the mystery, a 1989 review by Paul and Blumenthal of the University of Massachusetts published in the Psychological Record found that textbooks would often alter details of the experiment or fabricate a “happy ending” where Albert goes on to live a mentally healthy and happy life.

In the most detailed examination of the Little Albert experiment, Benjamin Harris of Vassar College notes in a 1979 issue of American Psychologist that Watson himself would change aspects of the experiment to improve the appearance of the experiment. Compound these inaccuracies with Internet rumors that Little Albert was an orphan stolen for experimentation/a kid that Watson babysat for a university janitor/Watson’s very own son, and it’s easy to see how the mystery around the myth has continued decades after the original experiment.

But take heart. Although many versions of the story claim that Albert’s conditioning was never reversed, there might not have even been a phobia to extinguish. Harris’ review found that after Albert supposedly acquired his intense phobia of the white rat, there were random intervals during testing when Albert seemed completely fine with the rodent. Watson and Rayner would sometimes find the boy petting the rat without any apparent fear, just a healthy dose of average childhood curiosity. 

If the phobia was as intense as the researchers claimed, Little Albert would have consistently drawn back from the rodent. Add that inconsistency to grand claims made on the basis of one study, with one participant with no successful replications since, and it’s questionable that Albert’s fear was even created in the first place. Little Albert, supposed victim of one of psychology’s most famous and diabolical experiments, was merely the participant of a weak pilot study that never really worked. He probably turned out fine. 

Then again, if you see an elderly gentleman have an anxiety attack at the sight of the Easter Bunny in a mall, give me a call.