Talk:Little Albert experiment/Archive 1

Comments
This article is largely wrong according to most historians of psychology. Watson's experiment had all sorts of horrible methodological errors in it, if I recall, such as needing to recondition over and over again which completely contaminated his results. Its popularity is more as a pop-psychology story, as a scientific study it is and was always wholly worthless. When I can find the book I have which addresses the Little Albert experiment's methodology in greater detail (the article so far does not get into the half of it) I'll update this a bit as it's not terribly accurate or useful as it stands. --Fastfission 07:44, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The article says that he reacted in a similar way to blocks. The blocks were not a conditioned response, the blocks were there to show that while he reacted to white furry things, immediately after presentation of a white furry object, he was happy to play with the blocks. They were a control to show that it was only the white rat which provoked fear. - sars 13:22, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)

There are links to Watson's study and Harris (1979) article, it'd be the best if someone'd rewrite the article to be relevant to text and it's critique. (es_uomikim 21:58, 27 October 2007 (UTC))

Nobody so far analyzed why Watson decided to have this study and the scope of his conditioning. Meanwhile, Little Albert remains the most distorted psycho study known. This article from the net offers explanations to these effects: "Why Watson's Little Albert became the most distorted study in the history of psychology" (Artour2006 (talk) 18:51, 13 June 2009 (UTC)).

Little Albert later in life
What became of Albert later in life, as he grew up? Where is he now? Is he still living? Did he still have the fears the experimenters helped him develop as a baby? For how long? Does he still have those fears today? Someone please add about Albert later in his life, and how he's been and what he's done more recently. --Shultz 07:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I was having a discussion about this case and came to this page looking for exactly that. When I first heard about it in a high school psych class a few years back, my teacher told me that nobody has any idea what became of him. I guess it's possible that still nobody's managed a follow-up study. -VJ 13:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * If he is still alive, the test subject will be about 87 years old. The possibility that he is no long with us is growing bigger each and every day. Not being mean here, but simply trying to explain what could have happened. Arbiteroftruth 15:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I was told in my university psychology class that the fear became extinct - but again, this may not be fact, so please don't take it for gospel! - HS

The Little albert experiment led to the ethical guidelines today. The rule state that everything must be undone comes right back to the albert experiment. Watson himself didn't know what happened to Albert and was unable to un-condition him. It may be at the time Watson didn't think it was important to try to uncondition Albert or believed that it could just be tested on another child. It may be likely that Albert himself does not know that he is important to the psych community. It is thought that his mother found out about the experiments and refused to come back to the hospital because she did not trust Watson and wouldn't let him continue the experiments. Watson also gave very different descriptions of the experiment when it was published changing the first UCS from a rat to a rabbit and other things were ommitted and changed as time went on. Zmship 15:34, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Dr Hall Beck managed to trace the family history back through the maternal side as his mother lived in an area where a census was performed every ten years, she was on the census. Others were ruled out by race or date they had their children. A copy of 'little Albert's' birth certificate was obtained and the dates matched, making it extremly possible that it was the same baby. From other research and living family interviews it was obtained that 'little Albert' (real name Douglas) died at the age of six years old.

My first line of questioning in my psych class was "does he still fear white rats and similar objects, or did he naturally un-condition" to which my psych teacher couldnt answer me. Now I shall be able to inform her. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.228.138 (talk) 15:33, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

folklore
somebody really needs to update the text according to the 1979 article. I removed some errors (first animal was a rat, not a rabbit; reasons for mother moving away is unknown), but there's a lot more in this article that really needs to find its way onto this page. --Sarefo 18:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Watson studied the behavior of people as they react to a situation.

student 09 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.9.255.106 (talk) 21:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * There is actually some controversy over which animal (whether it be a rat, or a rabbit or another animal) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.189.210.32 (talk) 01:54, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There is a video on YouTube of the actual experiment from when they did it - they used various animals, both a rat and a rabbit, also a monkey and dog... here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBfnXACsOI

Taja — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:F0B0:ECD0:AC39:C459:4B37:716D (talk) 01:11, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Orphan?
In one part of the article Albert is described as an orphan, in another it talks about his mother, which is rather confusing. If the woman in question was his biological mother, then he is not an orphan. If Albert had an adopted mother, this should be clarified. - Augustgrahl (talk) 00:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It looks like someone removed the orphan reference, so I removed the contradict tag. I'm not sure whether he was an orphan or not, but the contradict no longer applies. Schu1321 (talk) 21:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * See my comment below under "Mother's awareness"; Dr Watson refers to the mother in his paper, indicating that the child was not an orphan. Hot Pastrami (talk) 10:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The mother worked as a wetnurse for a local children's home and was paid for the use of 'Albert' (real name Douglas) in Watson's experiment. Although there is no real mention of the mothers whereabouts while the conditioning was taking place, he did go back into her care after Watson had gone through the initial process. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.228.138 (talk) 15:26, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

ethics
the first paragrah "Albert was 11 months and three days old at the time of the first test. Because of his young age, the experiment today would be considered unethical. Since this experiment, and others that pushed the boundaries of experimental ethics, the American Psychological Association has banned studies considered unethical," is not quite true. APA allows for underaged participants to have assumed consent through a parent or a guardian who is of age. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.189.210.32 (talk) 01:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Mother's awareness
There are several phrases that suggest that Albert's mother was unaware of the experiments, but I can't find any trustworthy sources that corroborate that claim. To the contrary, Dr Watson himself wrote, "These experimental records were confirmed by the casual observations of the mother and hospital attendants." Though he was referring to the "baseline" part of the study, this suggests that the mother had *some* awareness of the experiments. Hot Pastrami (talk) 10:17, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Timeline
The first part of this article states that the experiment was conducted in 1920. however, at the end, it says a film about Little Albert was made in 1919. which is correct? Blooddraken (talk) 04:47, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * the above has still not been addressed? could somebody please factcheck this (do not simply make assumptions & edit to tidy) Lx 121 (talk) 22:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * '''Still wondering whether they made a film about him the year before the study. Probably not.72.78.238.222 (talk) 09:57, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

This may be less contradictory than it seems. The study seems to have occurred in both 1919 and 1920. If Beck et al. (2009) are right that Little Albert was Douglas Merritte, then Watson and Rayner obtained their baseline assessment of Little Albert on or around December 5, 1919 (aged 8 months 26 days) and finished it around April 1920 (aged 1 year 21 days). The question, I guess, is how the film distributor, C. H. Stoelting Company, would have determined the film's date. They could have reasonably used the 1919 film start date rather than assigning a publication date. I didn't see any dates listed for films in the google books facsimile of their 1930-1937 catalog.

Some of the confusion in the literature may be because studies are usually dated by when they are nominally published, not when they are conducted or even actually published. The study was in the Feb 1920 issue of the journal. Thus, the study will commonly be called a 1920 study. However, we can't infer much from this date since many academic journals publish irregularly and are often 'late'. (If someone could find a copy in a library that has a "received" date stamped on it, this might be interesting. I didn't see one in the copy in google books).

I suggest relying on Beck et al. (2009) and modifying the beginning of the article to say it was conducted in 1919 and 1920. --MattBagg (talk) 18:48, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Analysis in How We Know What Isn't So by Thomas Gilovich
Chapter 6 of this book contains a detailed analysis of the 'Little Albert' studies.

"Many of the events that are often described in secondhand accounts of this story never occurred"

"The actual details of Watson and Raynor's study make it clear that Albert's fear of the rat was not so intense, nor did it generalize as readily to other entities, as is often claimed in textbook accounts"

http://www.amazon.com/How-Know-What-Isnt-Fallibility/dp/0029117054 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Graham king 3 (talk • contribs) 05:44, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

film claim is impossible
Per the article

Film Little Albert was featured in a 1919 film by Rayner and Watson.[4]

though the experiments were performed in 1920. So something's wrong.

expert Anniepoo (talk) 23:17, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

See the above discussion under the heading "Timeline." --MattBagg (talk) 18:52, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Some changes
I plan on making some changes, please feel free to help out if you can. Swaslos (talk) 16:48, 21 February 2013 (UTC)swaslos
 * Welcome! Please remember that Wikipedia is not an academic paper or essay! Wikipedia articles should not be based on WP:primary sources, but on reliable, published secondary sources (for instance, journal reviews and professional or advanced academic textbooks) and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources (such as undergraduate textbooks). WP:MEDRS describes how to identify reliable sources for medical information, which is a good guideline for many psychology articles as well. With friendly regards,  Lova Falk     talk   18:00, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Edits to Post Experiment and Critique
I made some changes to the Post Experiment section, added a small amount to the end of the Finding Little Albert section, and added a good amount to the Critique section and Ethics section. I also added 7 sources to the article.Swaslos (talk) 11:21, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

Pynchon Reference

 * "In Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Baby Tyrone is conditioned to associate erotic arousal with the smell of plastic Imipolex G. Decades later, his sexual behavior in London is studied in an effort to track V-2 rocket explosions because the plastic is used in the rocket."

This is a fairly common shallow misread of Gravity's Rainbow which takes some of the book's many red herrings literally. Let me emphasize that these are not interpretive infelicities, they're blatant, unsupported misstatements. All page cites are to the Viking edition.

1) Tyrone Slothrop is "pushing 30" in the summer of '45 (GR 463), so Infant Tyrone's erections must have been conditioned by Prof.-Dr. Lazlo Jamf in 1916 or thereabouts. According to the corporate documentation Slothrop sleuths out, Imipolex G was invented in 1939 "years before its time" (GR 249).  Slothrop may believe he's being haunted by the smell of that plastic (GR 286), but we never learn the nature of Jamf's "Mystery Stimulus" (GR 84) or what it may have meant to have de-conditioned Infant Tyrone's erections to "a silent extinction beyond the zero" (GR 85).

Considering that the first of the four books in this novel is called Beyond the Zero, this turns out to be an enormous red herring that drives Slothrop's Pavolovian nemesis Mr. Pointsman around the bend. He is convinced that this "reversal" is somehow related to the supersonic rocket's explosion and shock wave coming after the impact (another reversal, as opposed to the subsonic V-1 buzz bomb), and that the stimulus, like some that Pavlov used on dogs, is auditory (GR 86).

2) We never learn the precise nature of Slothrop's sexual affinity for the V-2 rocket. The location of his London trysts with women coincide with rocket strikes (in a statistical Poisson distribution), but they precede them by several days (GR 85-6). Toward the end of Slothrop's story, the best we get from the omniscient narrator (as opposed to highly speculative theories from various less-than-reliable characters) is that Slothrop has the gift of "dowsing rockets" (GR 490).

3) Ned Pointsman, F.R.C.S. and "high-class vivisectionist" (GR 37), is drawn as a fairly broad satire of prewar scientific determinism, the archetypical creepy behaviorist. He's out not so much to study Slothrop "to track the V-2 rocket explosions" as to destroy him (GR 144), because he can't accept that there seems to be no basis (save statistical) to link the distribution of rocket strikes to Slothrop's prescient sexual adventures, and this profoundly threatens his faith in cause and effect:


 * "But if it's in the air, right here, right now, then the rockets fall from it, 100% of the time. No exceptions.  When we find it, we'll have shown again the stone determinacy of everything, of every soul.  There will be precious room for any hope at all.  You can see how important a discovery like that would be" (GR 86).

Pointsman settles for attempting to castrate Slothrop, but winds up through comical mistaken identity castrating Slothrop's other nemesis instead, the racist / misogynist Major Duane Marvy (GR 607-09). Levels higher than Pointsman attempted to use Slothrop wandering the postwar German Zone to "destroy the blacks" (GR 615) i.e. neutralize the Schwarzkommando (616) and even more obscure influences may have planted the entire Imipolex question with Slothrop so he'd seek out the mysterious erogenous plastic for them (GR 490) -- although that's Slothrop's speculation.

4) Finally, Slothrop couldn't possibly smell Imipolex G in the rocket strikes his trysts so uncannily predict because Imipolex G was not used in any rocket save for the singular Rocket 00000 (GR 242, 252), a top-secret diversion of the V-2 rocket program engineered and exquisitely manipulated (GR 397-433) by the rogue SS Major Weissmann who, as code named Captain Blicero, commanded the rocket battery that fired it (GR 750-760). Imipolex G shows up on the spec sheets as an "insulation device" (GR 242) for something called the Schwarzgerät (GR 292), a custom-designed retrofit in Rocket 00000 amounting to a perverted "space capsule" to insert Blicero's passive young lover and rocket-battery cadet Gottfried into, wrapped in a shroud of Imipolex G -- the first erectile plastic (GR 699).  Before the armed rocket warhead immolates Gottfried, Blicero will send radio commands to the Imipolex G shroud to sadomasochistically contort his body during liftoff (GR 758-760).

Which probably stands as the most grotesquely grandiose example of military-funded live-action S&M snuff porn in all of literature -- at least in any literature that won the National Book Award.

My humble rewrite suggestion:

In Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, the Infant Tyrone's penile erections are conditioned in a manner modeled on Watson and Rayner's conditioning of Little Albert, to both satirize behaviorism and wind the book's plot around Pynchon's themes of control and the institutional corruption of innocence.

Identity of Little Albert
The article correctly states that Beck et al. claimed that Albert B was Douglas Merritte and goes on to correctly state that Digdon et al. later found that Albert B was more likely to be Albert Barger. So far, so good. However, the article then goes back to discussing Merritte for no apparent reason and even goes so far as to show a photo of Merritte's gravestone. Unless someone can give me a good reason not to, I plan to delete the extraneous Merritte material as it focuses undue attention on a outdated and poorly supported claim. Dean Hougen (talk) 16:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The ethics section talk about "little Albert's" life without distinguishing between Merritte and Barger. Edison (talk) 15:02, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I just read this article and thought I'd share its link for you guys to add (or not) to your Wiki page:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26307-baby-used-in-notorious-fear-experiment-is-lost-no-more.html

fwiw it has an embedded youtube video of the experiment.

Phantom in ca (talk) 21:04, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Contradiction
In the section 'Identifying Little Albert' it is claimed that his mother may have been a wet nurse, but also may have been someone who worked in the same building as Watson. In the section 'Ethics and considerations' it is claimed that it is known that his mother was a wet nurse. This should be checked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 18.111.99.49 (talk) 04:01, 10 November 2014 (UTC)