Key Takeaways
- The Little Albert experiment showed that fear can be learned through classical conditioning.
- The study also demonstrated how conditioned fears can generalize to similar objects or situations.
- This research helped explain how fears develop, informing treatments for conditions like specific phobias.
The Little Albert experiment was a landmark study that demonstrated that fear can be classically conditioned in humans. Conducted by behaviorist John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner, it involved conditioning a young boy, Little Albert, to fear a white rat by pairing it with a loud, frightening noise. Over time, this fear generalized to similar objects, revealing how emotional responses can be learned.
Verywell / Jessica Olah
What Happened in the Little Albert Experiment?
The experiment’s participant was a child that Watson and Rayner called “Albert B.” but is known popularly today as Little Albert. When Little Albert was 9 months old, Watson and Rayner exposed him to a series of stimuli, including a white rat, a rabbit, a monkey, masks, and burning newspapers, and observed the boy’s reactions.
- Initial testing: At the experiment’s outset, the little boy showed no fear of any objects he was shown. What Watson did next changed everything.
- Conditioning: The next time Albert was exposed to the rat, Watson made a loud noise by hitting a metal pipe with a hammer.
- Results: Naturally, the child began to cry after hearing the loud noise. After repeatedly pairing the white rat with the loud noise, Albert began to expect a frightening noise whenever he saw the white rat. Soon, Albert began to cry simply after seeing the rat.
Watson and Rayner wrote: “The instant the rat was shown, the baby began to cry. Almost instantly, he turned sharply to the left, fell over on [his] left side, raised himself on all fours, and began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table.”
It’s a textbook example of how classical conditioning works. In some cases, these frightening experiences can cause a lasting fears, such as with phobias.
How Watson Used Classical Conditioning on Little Albert
The Little Albert experiment is a great example of how classical conditioning can be used to condition an emotional response. Here’s how the stimuli and responses are defined:
- Neutral stimulus: A stimulus that does not initially elicit a response (the white rat).
- Unconditioned stimulus: A stimulus that elicits a reflexive response (the loud noise).
- Unconditioned response: A natural reaction to a given stimulus (fear).
- Conditioned stimulus: A stimulus that elicits a response after repeatedly being paired with an unconditioned stimulus (the white rat).
- Conditioned response: The response caused by the conditioned stimulus (fear).
Why Little Albert Feared More Than Just White Rats
In addition to demonstrating that emotional responses could be conditioned in humans, Watson and Rayner also observed a phenomenon known as stimulus generalization.
After conditioning, Albert feared not just the white rat, but a wide variety of similar white objects as well. His fear included other furry objects, including Raynor’s fur coat and Watson wearing a Santa Claus beard.
More recent examinations of the film evidence suggest that Watson and Rayner may have exaggerated the extent to which Albert’s fear response generalized to other white, furry objects.
Why the Little Albert Experiment Was So Controversial
While the experiment is one of psychology’s most famous and is included in nearly every introductory psychology course, it is widely criticized for several reasons. First, the experimental design and process were not carefully constructed. Watson and Rayner did not develop an objective means to evaluate Albert’s reactions, instead of relying on their own subjective interpretations.
The experiment also raises many ethical concerns. Little Albert was harmed during this experiment—he left the experiment with a previously nonexistent fear. By today’s standards, the Little Albert experiment would not be permitted.
What Happened to Little Albert?
The question of what happened to Little Albert has long been one of psychology’s mysteries. Before Watson and Rayner could attempt to “cure” Little Albert, he and his mother moved away. Some envisioned the boy growing into a man with a strange phobia of white, furry objects.
Initial Attempts to Identify Albert
In 2009, researchers published the results of their attempt to track down the boy’s identity. As reported in American Psychologist, a seven-year search led by psychologist Hall P. Beck led to the discovery of a child the researchers believed might be Little Albert.
After tracking down and locating the original experiments and the possible identity of the boy’s mother, it was suggested that Little Albert was actually a boy named Douglas Merritte.
Unfortunately, the researchers discovered that Douglas had died on May 10, 1925, at the age of six, of hydrocephalus (a build-up of fluid in his brain), which he had suffered from since birth.
In 2012, Beck and Alan J. Fridlund reported that Douglas was not the healthy, normal child Watson described in his 1920 experiment. Instead, they suggested that Watson may have known about and deliberately concealed the boy’s neurological condition.
If true, these findings would have cast a shadow over Watson’s legacy and deepened the ethical and moral issues of this well-known experiment.
More recent evidence, however, suggests that Merritte was incorrectly identified as Little Albert.
The Likely Identity of the Real Little Albert
In 2014, however, Beck and Fridlund’s findings were questioned when researchers presented evidence that a boy named William Barger was the real Little Albert.
Barger was born on the same day as Merritte to a wet nurse who worked at the same hospital as Merritte’s mother. While his first name was William, he was known his entire life by his middle name—Albert.
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
EBSCO. Little Albert study.
Mertens G, Krypotos AM, Engelhard IM. A review on mental imagery in fear conditioning research 100 years since the ‘Little Albert’ study. Behaviour Research and Therapy. 2020;126:103556. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2020.103556
van Meurs B, Wiggert N, Wicker I, Lissek S. Maladaptive behavioral consequences of conditioned fear-generalization: a pronounced, yet sparsely studied, feature of anxiety pathology. Behav Res Ther. 2014;57:29-37. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2014.03.009
Powell RA, Schmaltz RM. Did Little Albert actually acquire a conditioned fear of furry animals? What the film evidence tells us. Hist Psychol. 2021;24(2):164-181. doi:10.1037/hop0000176
Beck HP, Levinson S, Irons G. Finding Little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson’s infant laboratory. Am Psychol. 2009;64(7):605-14. doi:10.1037/a0017234
Fridlund AJ, Beck HP, Goldie WD, Irons G. Little Albert: A neurologically impaired child. Hist Psychol. 2012;15(4):302-27. doi:10.1037/a0026720
Digdon N. The Little Albert controversy: Intuition, confirmation bias, and logic. Hist Psychol. 2020;23(2):122-131. doi:10.1037/hop0000055
Powell RA. Correcting the record on Watson, Rayner, and Little Albert: Albert Barger as “psychology’s lost boy”. Am Psychol. 2014;69(6):600-11.
Additional Reading
- Beck, H. P., Levinson, S., & Irons, G. (2009). Finding little Albert: A journey to John B. Watson’s infant laboratory. American Psychologist, 2009;64(7): 605-614.
- Fridlund, A. J., Beck, H. P., Goldie, W. D., & Irons, G. Little Albert: A neurologically impaired child. History of Psychology. doi: 10.1037/a0026720; 2012.
- Watson, John B. & Rayner, Rosalie. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 1-14.
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