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History of Psychology Did Little Albert Actually Acquire a Conditioned Fear of Furry Animals? What the Film Evidence Tells Us Russell A. Powell and Rodney M. Schmaltz Online First Publication, October 22, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hop0000176

CITATION Powell, R. A., & Schmaltz, R. M. (2020, October 22). Did Little Albert Actually Acquire a Conditioned Fear of Furry Animals? What the Film Evidence Tells Us. History of Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hop0000176

Did Little Albert Actually Acquire a Conditioned Fear of Furry Animals? What the Film Evidence Tells Us

Russell A. Powell and Rodney M. Schmaltz MacEwan University

Watson and Rayner’s (1920) attempt to condition a fear of furry animals and objects in an 11-month-old infant is one of the most widely cited studies in psychology. Known as the Little Albert study, it is typically presented as evidence for the role of classical conditioning in fear development. Some critics, however, have noted deficiencies in the study that suggest that little or no fear conditioning actually occurred. These criticisms were primarily based on the published reports of the study. In this article, we present a detailed analysis of Watson’s (1923) film record of the study to determine the extent to which it provides evidence of conditioning. Our findings concur with the view that Watson and Rayner’s conditioning procedure was largely ineffective, and that the relatively weak signs of distress that Albert does display in the film can be readily accounted for by such factors as sensitization and maturational influences. We suggest that the tendency for viewers to perceive the film as a valid demonstration of fear conditioning is likely the result of expectancy effects as well as, in some cases, an ongoing mistrust of behaviorism as dehumanizing and manipulative. Our analysis also revealed certain anomalies in the film which indicate that Watson engaged in some “literary license” when editing it, most likely with a view toward using the film mainly as a promotional device to attract financial support for his research program.

Keywords: John B. Watson, Little Albert, fear conditioning, history of behaviorism, ethics

A century has passed since Watson and Rayner’s (1920) iconic attempt to condition a fear of furry animals and objects in a young infant. Commonly known as the “Little Albert” study, it is one of the most referenced studies in psychology, with a Web of Science search at the time of this writing indicating over 25,000 citations. The study is typically presented as a seminal demonstration of the role of classical conditioning in the development of human fears (e.g., Bouton, 2007; Domjan, 2015; Mineka & Sutton, 2006; Ollendick & Muris, 2015; Seligman, 1971); Kimble (1961) called it “the most famous single case in conditioning history” (p. 24). In the 1970s, the study also began to be widely cited as an example of the lack of ethical guidelines in the early years of psychology (Todd, 1994), which has resulted in Watson often being vilified for deliberately instilling a phobia in a helpless infant (e.g., Aalai, 2015; Smith, 2017).1

Russell A. Powell and X Rodney M. Schmaltz, Department of Psychology, MacEwan University. We thank Nancy Digdon and Ben Harris for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. As per the request of

the late Gary Irons, we also acknowledge that his granting Russell A. Powell permission to view Douglas Merritte’s medical files does not indicate that he either concurred with or disagreed with any statements or conclusions reported in this article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Russell A. Powell, Department of Psychology, MacEwan University, P.O. Box 1796, Edmonton, AB T5J 4S2, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]

1 It should be noted that Watson and Rayner (1920) claimed only that they were conditioning in Albert a

“fear” of furry animals. They never used the word “phobia,” which is a clinical disorder in which the fear significantly interferes with one’s daily life (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In fact, Watson and Rayner stated that Albert was chosen for the experiment because his remarkably stable temperament made it highly unlikely that the experiment would cause him any lasting harm.

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History of Psychology © 2020 American Psychological Association 2020, Vol. 2, No. 999, 000 – 000 ISSN: 1093-4510 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hop0000176

1

In contrast to the widespread view of the Watson and Rayner (1920) study as a successful demonstration of fear conditioning, less attention has been paid to critics who have questioned both the study’s methodology and its results (e.g., Harris, 1979, 2011; Samelson, 1980; Todd, 1994; Valentine, 1930). These criticisms, which are outlined below, are based primarily on Watson and Rayner’s (1920) published account of the study. No one has yet systematically examined Watson’s (1923) film record to determine what it may indicate about the study’s validity. In this article, we present the results of such an analysis. Our findings support previous concerns and strongly question whether Albert actually acquired a conditioned fear of furry animals. The negative reactions he displays in the film can be readily explained by such nonconditioning factors as sensiti- zation and maturational influences on fear development and, in some cases, contradict the possibility that he was fearful of the stimulus being presented. We suggest that confir- mation bias likely played a major role in convincing Watson and Rayner that their conditioning procedure was successful. We also uncovered certain anomalies in the film which suggest that Watson may have manipulated and misrepresented certain aspects of the study to strengthen its impact as an example of fear conditioning. The most likely explanation is that he did so to enhance the film’s value as a promotional device to attract sufficient funding to support his research agenda.

The Little Albert Study

The Little Albert study was conducted in Watson’s infant behavior laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, most likely between early December 1919 and late March 1920 (Beck, Levinson, & Irons, 2009; Powell, Digdon, Harris, & Smithson, 2014). Watson’s previous research had led him to speculate that infants are born with only a few innate fears, one of which is fear of loud noises. He proposed that most infant fears are instead the result of classical conditioning, often involving the inadvertent pairing of a loud noise with a particular stimulus. For example, when a flash of lightning is followed by the sound of thunder or the sight of an insect is followed by the coincidental slamming of a door, it could lead to a conditioned fear of those stimuli (Watson & Morgan, 1917; Watson, 1919a). The Little Albert study was an attempt to provide experimental evidence of this process.

The study was conducted over six sessions, which, for the sake of clarity, we have divided into a baseline session, two conditioning sessions, and three transfer sessions (see Table 1). During the baseline session, which occurred when Albert was approximately nine months old, he was shown various animals and objects he had never before seen. Albert was reportedly unafraid of any of the stimuli he was shown, which consisted of “a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, with [sic] masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspapers, etc.” (Watson & Rayner, 1920, p. 2). This session was followed approximately 2 months later by two conditioning sessions spaced 1 week apart, in which Albert was subjected to a total of seven pairings of a white rat followed by the startling sound of a steel bar being struck with a hammer. By the end of the second conditioning session, when Albert was shown the rat, he reportedly cried and “began to crawl away so rapidly that he was caught with difficulty before reaching the edge of the table” (p. 5). Watson and Rayner interpreted these reactions as evidence of fear conditioning.

The two conditioning sessions were followed by three transfer sessions. During these sessions, Albert was shown not only the rat—to assess whether his conditioned fear of the rat had been maintained— but also other furry animals and objects to determine whether the fear had generalized or “transferred” to similar stimuli. Complicating the experiment, however, the second transfer session also included two additional conditioning trials with the rat to “freshen up the reaction” (Watson & Rayner, 1920, p. 9), as well as conditioning trials in which a dog and a rabbit were, for the first time, also paired with the loud noise. An incident also occurred during this session in which the dog that Albert was being

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2 POWELL AND SCHMALTZ

shown suddenly barked, frightening both Albert and everyone else in the room. Unlike the two conditioning sessions and first two transfer sessions which were each separated by about a week, the final transfer session was conducted after a period of a month to determine if Albert’s conditioned fears would persist for that long. Immediately following the session, Albert and his mother left the hospital, which prevented Watson and Rayner from carrying out their original intention of attempting to remove any fear responses they had instilled in him.2

Criticisms of the Little Albert Study

Although the Watson and Rayner (1920) study is often referenced as a valid demon- stration of the role of classical conditioning in the development of human fears (e.g.,

2 The question is sometimes asked as to why Watson and Rayner (1920) did not attempt to remove Albert’s

conditioned fears prior to his departure from the hospital. They opted instead to determine if the fear conditioning would maintain itself for a longer period of time—the previous sessions being separated only by about a week— however, “in view of the imminence of Albert’s departure from the hospital [they] could not make the interval longer than one month” (p. 10). Although this statement implies that they knew in advance about Albert’s departure, Albert Barger’s medical file for March 31, 1920, states that “his mother suddenly [emphasis added] decided to leave the hospital” and that Albert was discharged from the hospital that same day (Barger Medical File, Alan Chesney Medical Archives at Johns Hopkins University). It is possible therefore that Albert’s sudden departure took them by surprise. If this is the case, they may have originally believed that they could conduct a delayed test of Albert’s fear reactions and still have sufficient time to carry out a treatment procedure. Albert’s sudden departure from the hospital, however, would have disrupted that plan and forced them to quickly arrange a final test session only.

Table 1 Description of Each Session in the Little Albert Experiment Along With Albert’s Age as Reported by Watson and Rayner (1920)

Session Age Session type Stimuli shown

1 8 months 26 days

Baseline session (filming mentioned)

Included tests with rat, rabbit, dog, monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, and burning newspapers (no fear)

2 11 months 3 days

First conditioning session

Rat paired with loud noise (two pairings)

3 11 months 10 days

Second conditioning session

Test with rat alone (elicited mild fear) Rat paired with loud noise (5 pairings) Test with rat alone (elicited strong fear)

4 11 months 15 days

First transfer session Tests with rat, rabbit, dog, fur coat, cotton wool, Watson’s hair, 2 observers’ hair, and Santa Claus mask

5 11 months 20 days

Second transfer session

In original testing room: tests with rat, rabbit, and dog; an extra conditioning trial with rat; and conditioning trials with rabbit and dog (1 pairing each)

In a new room: tests with rat, rabbit, and dog; extra conditioning trial with rat; plus barking incident with dog

Included comment that all previous tests had been conducted on a table

6 12 months 21 days

Third transfer session (filming mentioned)

Tests with Santa Claus mask, fur coat, rat, rabbit, and dog

Albert was also discharged from the hospital on this day

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3DID LITTLE ALBERT ACQUIRE A CONDITIONED FEAR

Bouton, 2007; Domjan, 2015; Mineka & Sutton, 2006; Ollendick & Muris, 2015; Seligman, 1971), there are several reasons to believe that the study actually provides little evidence in this regard. A major methodological flaw, for example, is that the study did not control for the possibility of pseudoconditioning. If the loud noise was as upsetting to Albert as described by Watson and Rayner, it may have sensitized him to react fearfully to any novel or sudden stimulus during the remainder of the session (Lieberman, 2000; Powell, Honey, & Symbaluk, 2017). The closest that Watson and Rayner came to controlling for this possibility was that they sometimes gave Albert wooden blocks to play with and reported that, unlike the furry animals and objects, the blocks did not elicit a fear response. These blocks, however, were described as “his” blocks, which implies that they were play objects that were both familiar and appetitive to him and would thereby have been resistant to being perceived as aversive even if he had been sensitized by the loud noise.

Another methodological flaw in the Watson and Rayner (1920) study was the lack of control for the possible influence of innate, maturational factors on fear development. These were first proposed by Valentine (1930; see also Jones & Jones, 1928), who observed the emergence of fear responses in his own children— hence, Watson would not have been aware of such factors at the time of the Little Albert study. Evidence suggests that infants often pass through developmental phases in which they become predisposed to react fearfully to events of which they were previously unafraid. Fear of strangers, which usually emerges in the latter half of the first year, is a notable example (Sroufe, 1977); however, a variety of other fears can also emerge or become intensified during this time, including fear of sudden, unexpected, or looming objects, and fear of masks (Marks, 1987; Scarr & Salapatek, 1970; Witherington, Campos, Harriger, & Margett, 2010). Underlying many of these reactions may be a propensity for infants to become apprehen- sive of events that are in some way discrepant with earlier experiences (Kagan, 1979). These tendencies are of relevance to the Little Albert study in that the study lasted almost four months from the baseline session (at around nine months of age) to the final session (at almost 13 months of age), during which time maturationally based fears may have emerged.

In addition to the methodological flaws, there is evidence to suggest that whatever conditioning did occur during the study was relatively weak and easily extinguished (Harris, 1979; Samelson, 1980; Todd, 1994). As noted earlier, during the second transfer session, Watson and Rayner (1920) conducted additional conditioning trials with the rat because Albert’s fear of the rat seemed to have diminished since the previous session. They also, for the first time, conducted conditioning trials with a rabbit and a dog, presumably because these stimuli were eliciting insufficient evidence of a generalized fear response. In addition, Albert’s fear reactions were sometimes inconsistent. For example, “on this occasion [when Albert was shown the rat during the second transfer session] there was no crying, but strange to say . . . he began to gurgle and coo, even while leaning far over . . . to avoid the rat” (p. 7). Albert also sometimes sucked his thumb which rendered him “impervious” to fear and again suggests that he did not find the stimuli particularly frightening. It is also the case that early attempts to replicate Watson and Rayner’s (1920) results were either unsuccessful (English, 1929) or only partially successful (Bregman, 1934; Valentine, 1930); it has been argued, however, that these studies were themselves so methodologically flawed as to be of little relevance (Delprato, 1980; Todd, 1994).

The preceding criticisms of the Little Albert study are primarily based on Watson and Rayner’s (1920) published report of the study. The film depiction of the study has received little attention. Samelson (1980) simply commented that “the brief [film] sequences of Albert do not contribute much to strengthen my faith in the results of the experiment” (p. 621), while Harris (2011) mentioned only how they “sometimes tossed animals at him, sometimes shoved things like Rosalie’s sealskin coat at him, and their method of presenting him with a Santa Claus mask was to have Watson put it on and crawl toward

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4 POWELL AND SCHMALTZ

Albert at eye level” (p. 5).3 No attempt has yet been made to systematically examine the film to assess the nature of the evidence it provides for conditioning.

The Little Albert Film

The footage of the Little Albert study is part of a silent, black and white film entitled Studies Upon the Behavior of the Human Infant: Experimental Investigation of Babies (Watson, 1923). The film portrays the various tests Watson was using at that time to assess infants’ motor and emotional development. The Little Albert portions of the film consist of 34 brief clips (M � 9 s; SD � 6 s) that were spliced together; it is therefore extremely choppy, with no information provided about what happened before or after each clip.

Albert first appears in the film in a depiction of his ability to grasp objects and to crawl as part of the section on motor development. The fear conditioning sequence occurs near the end of the film in the section on emotional development. It begins with a demonstra- tion of Albert’s lack of fear when shown a burning newspaper, a monkey, a dog, a rat, and a rabbit, in that order. These were some of Watson’s standard tests for emotional development, but in Albert’s case they would also serve as the baseline session for the later attempts at fear conditioning. The clips of the baseline session are followed by a series of clips depicting a transfer session in which Albert is shown a rat, a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, and a mask, in that order. Curiously, neither of the preceding conditioning sessions, in which the presentation of the rat was paired with the loud noise, is shown. An earlier portion of the film, however, does show a much younger infant being startled, but only slightly, by the sound of a steel bar being struck by a hammer.

Two Assumptions and Relevant Evidence

We make two assumptions about the Little Albert case which bear upon our analysis of whether Albert acquired a conditioned fear of furry animals. Our first assumption is that Little Albert was not Douglas Merritte, whom Beck et al. (2009) proposed to have been the real Albert. Douglas was an infant who resided in Johns Hopkins Hospital with his mother (a wet nurse) around the presumed time of the Little Albert study and was approximately the right age to have been Albert. Beck et al.’s investigation further revealed that Douglas died from hydrocephalus a few years following the experiment, thereby ending any speculation as to whether he had grown up with a fear of furry animals. In a follow-up study, however, Fridlund, Beck, Goldie, and Irons (2012) discovered that Douglas had been severely ill with hydrocephalus even during the time of the experiment. They further conjectured that Watson, in a serious breach of ethics, had selected him for the study despite his illness. Fridlund et al. also claimed that an examination of the film record of the Little Albert study revealed evidence of neurological and visual impairments in Albert’s behavior that would be consistent with Douglas’s illness.

More recent evidence, however, strongly refutes the Douglas Merritte hypothesis. It instead indicates that Little Albert was most likely Albert Barger, another infant who was also living in the hospital at the time and who was also the correct age to have been Little Albert (Digdon, Powell, & Harris, 2014; Powell et al., 2014). Additional evidence for Albert Barger as Little Albert includes the following: (a) Albert Barger was a generally healthy infant, which matches Watson and Rayner’s (1920) description of Little Albert; (b) Albert Barger’s weight at 9 months of age is a close approximation to the weight reported by Watson and Rayner for Little Albert and is consistent with his chubby

3 It was Harris who, in 1979, rediscovered the film, which for many years had been presumed lost (Harris,

2011).

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5DID LITTLE ALBERT ACQUIRE A CONDITIONED FEAR

appearance in the film; (c) the name Albert Barger matches the name “Albert B.” that Watson and Rayner gave to Little Albert (use of participants’ real names or initials being a common practice in research publications in that era); and, perhaps most significant, (d) Albert Barger’s age on the day that he was discharged from the hospital exactly matches Little Albert’s reported age at discharge. Douglas Merritte, by contrast, does not match any of these characteristics; for example, Douglas’s medical records indicate that he was severely underweight at the time of the experiment (in the first percentile on modern growth charts), and his age at time of discharge from the hospital was one week younger than that of Little Albert. Moreover, a reexamination of the film footage revealed no substantive evidence that Little Albert was neurologically and visually impaired. Thus, although the evidence for Albert Barger as Little Albert is not conclusive, it is much stronger than the evidence for Douglas Merritte as Little Albert (Digdon, 2020; Griggs, 2015). We therefore assume that Albert’s reactions in the film are those of a neurotypical child who is capable of perceiving and reacting normally to the various stimuli he is being shown.4

Our second assumption concerns which transfer session is being shown in the film. As previously noted, the film clips depicting Albert’s fear conditioning begin by showing his reactions during the baseline session to various animals and objects he had never before seen. These clips are followed by two intertitles that read, “Fear of an animal may be set up by stimulating the infant with a loud sound just at the moment the animal is presented. Six combined stimulations produced the marked fear of the rat next shown” (Watson, 1923).5 If this statement is accurate, then the session that is next shown in the film should be the first transfer session following the conditioning sessions. Several clues, however, indicate that it is not the first transfer session, but the final transfer session. These clues are as follows:

4 In a recent article, Fridlund et al. (2020a) contend that Douglas Merritte remains the closest fit for the real

Little Albert and presented evidence in support of that contention. Fridlund et al. claimed to have learned that the 9-month-old Albert on film was extremely short-statured, with a body length that was at the 50th percentile for a 2-month-old infant (which, on modern World Health Organization growth charts is �59 cm in length and would be at the �.001th percentile for a 9-month-old infant!). Short stature is sometimes associated with chronic hydrocephalus (e.g., Klauschie & Rose, 1996); hence, this evidence seems to support the possibility that Douglas Merritte was indeed Little Albert. It also accounts for how, despite his extremely low body weight, Douglas (as Little Albert) would nevertheless have appeared quite pudgy on film. One difficulty with this evidence, however, is that Douglas’s medical records indicate that at 17.5 months of age, he was 80 cm in length (Merritte Medical File, Johns Hopkins Medical Archive, August 27, 1920), which is at the 26th percentile for that age and suggests that Douglas’s chronic hydrocephalus had little or no effect on his stature. A potential problem with the Fridlund et al. assessment, which is similar to the issues involved in Fridlund et al.’s (2012) estimate of Albert’s head circumference (Powell et al., 2014), is the difficulty of trying to estimate body length from a low-quality film image in which Albert is never fully prone and where only slight changes in certain measurements could yield very different results. Most critical, however, is the fact that Albert Barger’s recorded weight is a close match to the weight reported by Watson and Rayner (1920) for Little Albert, whereas Douglas Merritte’s recorded weight is much lower. Add to this the reasonable assumption that Albert Barger’s body length at 9 months of age was within the normal range— his recorded length at 2 months of age was at the 48th percentile (Barger Medical File, Johns Hopkins Medical Archive, May 14, 1919)—then his physical appearance would likewise have been consistent with Little Albert’s hefty appearance on film, with no further calculations or assumptions needed. Thus, in terms of Occam’s razor, Albert Barger is a stronger candidate for the real Little Albert in terms of body weight and physical appearance. More generally, Fridlund et al. (2020a) failed to adequately explain why Douglas Merritte, whose documented information is largely discrepant with Watson and Rayner (1920) account of Little Albert, should be considered a strong candidate when there is another baby, Albert Barger, whose documented information indicates a much closer fit. That said, we recognize that this was only a brief presentation of their evidence for the Douglas-as-Albert hypothesis and look forward to seeing their forthcoming article on the topic (Fridlund et al., 2020b; see also Digdon, 2020; Harris, 2020; and Pickren, 2020).

5 Watson and Rayner (1920) indicated that there were seven, not six, “combined stimulations” (conditioning

trials in which the rat was paired with the loud noise). Watson, however, is notorious for making minor errors like this, especially in his later descriptions of the study (Beck et al., 2009; Harris, 1979).

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6 POWELL AND SCHMALTZ

• Watson and Rayner (1920) explicitly mention the occurrence of filming only when describing the baseline session: “a permanent record of Albert’s reactions to these objects and situations has been preserved in a motion picture study” (p. 2), and the final transfer session: “again and again while the motion pictures were being made at the end of the thirty-day rest period. . .” (p. 13). This suggests that only these two sessions may have been filmed. A possible reason for doing so is that film was expensive, and Watson had to do a considerable amount of lobbying to university administrators to obtain sufficient funds to purchase film (Beck et al., 2009; Watson, 1919b, 1919c). He might therefore have hesitated to waste film on anything in which the outcome was less than certain, such as whether it was possible to use a loud noise to condition a fear of a rat. This is especially the case given that Watson had already been unsuccessful in a previous attempt at fear conditioning that involved pairing a light flash with a loud noise (as an analogue of lightning and thunder; Watson & Morgan, 1917). This would also explain why the film curiously does not show any of Albert’s conditioning trials; they may not have been included because they were never filmed.

• As previously noted, Watson and Rayner (1920) stated that Albert would begin sucking his thumb whenever he was upset, which made him impervious to fear; as a result, “while the motion pictures were being made at the end of the thirty-day rest period, we had to remove the thumb from his mouth before the conditioned response could be obtained” (p. 13). Watson can be seen carrying out this action during the transfer session shown in the film (see Figure 1). This is consistent with the session shown being the final transfer session, which occurred 31 days following the previous transfer session.

• Watson and Rayner (1920) described Albert as “nodding his head in a very peculiar manner (this reaction was an entirely new one)” (p. 10) during the final transfer session. During the transfer session shown in the film, Albert can be seen repeatedly nodding or bobbing his head (which looks very much like sneezing; see Figure 2).

• Watson and Rayner’s (1920) description of the next-to-last transfer session states that “all of the tests so far discussed were carried out upon a table supplied with a mattress located in a small, well-lighted dark room” (p. 8). However, the transfer session shown on film was, like the baseline session, conducted on the

Figure 1. Watson pulling Albert’s thumb out of his mouth during the transfer session. Watson and Rayner (1920) indicated that these incidents occurred during the final transfer session. From the film Studies Upon the Behavior of the Human Infant: Experimental Investigation of Babies, by J. B. Watson (Writer/Director), 1923. This image is available for use in the public domain.

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7DID LITTLE ALBERT ACQUIRE A CONDITIONED FEAR

floor rather than on a table. Therefore, if all the tests up to and including the next-to-last transfer session were conducted on a table, then the session shown in the film must, by elimination, have been the last transfer session.

We also tried to determine which transfer session is shown in the film by matching Albert’s reactions on film with Watson and Rayner’s (1920) written descriptions of his reactions. Unfortunately, his reactions on film do not clearly match the written descrip- tions for any of the transfer sessions. For example, Albert is never described as crawling over the rat which, as will be shown later, is what we see in the film. And while Watson and Rayner stated that Albert was presented with a Santa Claus mask during the first and last transfer session, the article nowhere indicates that Watson wore the mask while crawling toward Albert, which is also what we see in the film.

An inconsistency in assuming that the film portrays the final transfer session is that the order in which the stimuli are shown matches the reported order for the first transfer session (rat, rabbit, dog, fur coat, and then mask) and not the last transfer session (mask, fur coat, rat, rabbit, and then dog). Watson, however, could have rearranged the film clips of the last transfer session to match the order of stimuli in the first transfer session. By doing so, the film would depict the straightforward sequence of Albert first displaying a conditioned fear of the rat as a result of conditioning which is then followed by Albert displaying a generalized fear of other furry animals and objects. Another possible reason for hiding the fact that the session shown is the final transfer session is that, during the previous transfer session, the dog and rabbit had also been paired with the loud noise, thereby confounding the extent to which Albert’s fear of them would be indicative of generalization. Reordering the clips from the final transfer session to make it appear that they were from the first transfer session would eliminate the need to explain such complexities. This would be of particular importance to Watson given his intention to use the film during lectures he was frequently asked to give to various organizations about his research findings (Watson, 1919b, 1919c). Whatever the reason, if the transfer session depicted in the film is the final transfer session—which occurred almost four months following the baseline session—it increases the likelihood that maturational factors might account for some of the differences in Albert’s reactions between the baseline session and the transfer session shown in the film.

The Analysis of Albert’s Reactions on Film

In the following section, we examine Albert’s reactions to each of the stimuli he is being shown in the film. The purpose of this analysis is not to determine precisely why

Figure 2. An example of Albert’s head nodding motion during the transfer session (which looks like a sneeze). From the film Studies Upon the Behavior of the Human Infant: Experimental Investigation of Babies, by J. B. Watson (Writer/Director), 1923. These images are available for use in the public domain.

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Albert behaved the way he did—the film is too fuzzy and choppy with no indication of what occurred before and after each clip to make any such determination (Digdon et al., 2014; Powell et al., 2014)— but to assess whether viable alternative explanations may exist to Watson and Rayner’s (1920) conditioning interpretation.

Albert’s Reactions to a Rat

Stills of Albert’s filmed reactions to the rat are shown in Figure 3. During the baseline session, he seems quite interested in the rat and even reaches for it. During the transfer session, however, he initially pays no attention to the rat even though Watson places it on his leg and in his lap. Albert’s gaze instead seems fixated to one side of the camera (possibly because his mother or another caretaker is standing there). He then falls forward and tries to crawl in that direction and, in doing so, crawls over the rat. Watson reacts by pulling the rat out from underneath Albert and placing it either on or near his hand. At this point, Albert immediately pulls his hand back, sits upright, and begins to cry. One interpretation of this reaction is that Albert is crying because the rat was previously paired with the sound of a loud noise. A more parsimonious interpretation is that he was startled by the sudden, unexpected feeling of the rat on his hand. Given Albert’s initial indiffer- ence to the rat and his attempt to crawl over the rat rather than away from it, the latter interpretation is arguably more plausible.

Figure 3. Albert’s reactions to the rat during the baseline session (first still) and transfer session (remaining stills; stills are ordered sequentially by row from top left to lower right). During the transfer session, Albert initially pays no attention to the rat and even tries to crawl over top of it. Only when Watson retrieves the rat from underneath Albert and places it either on or in front of his hand (middle row) does Albert pull his hand back, sit upright, and begin crying (bottom row). From the film Studies Upon the Behavior of the Human Infant: Experimental Investigation of Babies, by J. B. Watson (Writer/Director), 1923. These images are available for use in the public domain.

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9DID LITTLE ALBERT ACQUIRE A CONDITIONED FEAR

Albert’s Reactions to Rabbits

Examples of Albert’s reactions to rabbits are shown in Figure 4. During the baseline session, Albert did not behave as though he was particularly fearful of the rabbit being shown, although he did hold his arm up as though to avoid touching it. The initial clip of Albert’s transfer session encounter with a rabbit shows Watson removing Albert’s thumb from his mouth, after which Albert simply stares at the rabbit. The second clip in the sequence shows Albert again gazing to one side of the camera with no rabbit present. The third clip shows Rayner quickly pulling the rabbit out from behind a white sheet and dropping it on Albert’s lap, at which point he begins to cry. Although this might represent evidence of a conditioned fear response to furry animals, it is also possible that he is crying because he was startled by the sudden appearance of the rabbit on his lap. In support of this interpretation, the next clip shows Albert no longer crying and instead trying to shuffle his legs away from the rabbit. He then falls forward and attempts to crawl past the rabbit and toward the camera (which Rayner prevents by grabbing his leg). At one point, Albert’s head is only a few inches from the rabbit, which seems inconsistent with the possibility that he is afraid of the rabbit.

Albert’s Reactions to Dogs

Stills of Albert’s reactions to dogs are shown in Figure 5. During the baseline session, he is shown a rather large and seemingly friendly dog that he appears unafraid of, at one point even handling its paw. The film clip of the transfer session, however, shows a smaller, more active dog attached to a leash that Watson uses to drag the dog back and forth. Albert watches the dog closely and at times appears distressed. But is he distressed because of a conditioned fear of furry animals, or because he is instead bothered by the dog’s erratic and unpredictable movements as Watson drags it about?

Figure 4. Albert’s reactions to the rabbit during the baseline session (first still) and during the transfer session (remaining stills). The top right still shows Rayner holding the rabbit that she has suddenly pulled out from behind a white blanket and, in the bottom left still, places on Albert’s lap, at which point which he begins crying. The next two stills show Albert first shuffling his legs away from the rabbit and then trying to crawl past it. Note the proximity of Albert’s head to the rabbit which he is supposed to be fearful of. From the film Studies Upon the Behavior of the Human Infant: Experimental Investigation of Babies, by J. B. Watson (Writer/Director), 1923. These images are available for use in the public domain.

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Another possibility is that Albert is indeed showing evidence of a conditioned fear, but it has nothing to do with the experimental manipulation; rather, he fears the dog because of its inadvertent association with the sudden barking that had severely frightened him during the previous session: “Albert immediately fell over and broke into a wail which continued until the dog was removed” (Watson & Rayner, 1920, p. 9). In fact, the sound of barking is in some ways much better suited as a conditioning event than the experi- mental stimulus of a loud bang. Conditioning can be affected not only by temporal contiguity between stimuli, but also spatial contiguity. For example, a light that is located beneath the floor grids through which a rat experiences shock is more readily associated with the shock than a light that is presented overhead (Testa, 1975). In the Little Albert study, the loud bang that came from behind Albert was not spatially contiguous with the rat that was being presented from the front. The sound of the dog’s barking, however, would have come from precisely the same direction as the dog and, from a temporal perspective, would have coincided precisely with the dog’s facial movements. Conversely, we do not know if the dog that barked at him during the previous transfer session was the same as, or even similar to, the dog that appears in the transfer session on film (which looks very different from the dog that appears in the film clips of the baseline session).6

Albert’s Reactions to a Fur Coat

Stills of Albert’s reactions to the fur coat are shown in Figure 6. There are no film clips of his reactions to a fur coat during the baseline session, nor do Watson and Rayner (1920) include a fur coat in the list of stimuli he was shown in that session. During the transfer session, Albert fixates his gaze on the coat as it approaches and makes a motion to move away from it when it is placed directly in front of him. He may be doing so, however, not because of a generalized fear of furry objects, but because the coat is a large, looming object that many infants at that age would be wary of (e.g., Scarr & Salapatek, 1970).

6 The adult Albert Barger was described by his niece as having a general dislike of dogs (and other animals)

and especially the sound of barking (Digdon et al., 2014; Powell et al., 2014). One might speculate therefore that his aversion to dogs is a conditioned remnant of the frightening experience he had with the barking dog as the infant in the Little Albert study. However, his niece also remembers him once saying that his dislike of dogs stemmed from the distress he felt as a child after seeing his pet dog get run over in the street—which weighs against the possibility that he had acquired a conditioned aversion to dogs during the experiment.

Figure 5. Albert’s reactions to the dog during the baseline session (first still) and transfer session (remaining stills). The middle still shows Albert dropping his head forward as though to begin crawling, but the dog is blocking his path. In the far right still, Albert has a look of distress on his face as he watches the dog being pulled back and forth by Watson. From the film Studies Upon the Behavior of the Human Infant: Experimental Investigation of Babies, by J. B. Watson (Writer/Director), 1923. These images are available for use in the public domain.

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11DID LITTLE ALBERT ACQUIRE A CONDITIONED FEAR

Albert’s Reactions to a Mask

Stills of the transfer test with the mask are shown in Figure 7. There are no film clips of his reactions to the masks that he was shown during the baseline session, but Watson and Rayner (1920) indicated that he was not afraid of them. In the film clips of the transfer session, however, Watson does not simply show Albert the mask, but instead places it over his face and crawls toward Albert while wearing it. Albert fixates on the mask and backs up as Watson draws near. Notably, however, he does not cry and turns to crawl away only when Watson is almost on top of him. Given the tendency by many infants at that age to be fearful of masks (e.g., Marks, 1987; Scarr & Salapatek, 1970), one could argue that Albert’s reaction is actually rather muted in comparison to how many infants at that age would have reacted.

Overall Assessment of Albert’s Reactions

In general, the film provides no substantive evidence of fear conditioning. Although Albert does at times appear bothered or distressed, most of his reactions can parsimoni- ously be explained as normal reactions to novel or sudden events that many infants at that age would find fearful (e.g., Kagan, 1979; Scarr & Salapatek, 1970). In keeping with previous criticisms of the study (Harris, 1979; Samelson, 1980), our examination of the film also reveals a good deal of inconsistency in Albert’s reactions. Particularly notewor- thy is Albert’s initial lack of attention to the rat during the transfer session. This suggests not only that any fear of the rat that may have resulted from earlier conditioning trials had

Figure 6. Albert’s reactions to the fur coat during the transfer session. He appears to dislike the coat and tries to move away from it. In the final still, he is also about to nod his head (or sneeze). From the film Studies Upon the Behavior of the Human Infant: Experimental Investigation of Babies, by J. B. Watson (Writer/Director), 1923. These images are available for use in the public domain.

Figure 7. Albert’s reactions to the mask during the transfer session. He gazes intensely at the mask and backs away as Watson crawls forward. Notably, however, he does not cry. From the film Studies Upon the Behavior of the Human Infant: Experimental Investigation of Babies, by J. B. Watson (Writer/Director), 1923. These images are available for use in the public domain.

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by then dissipated, but that Albert may have even begun to habituate to the rat. This is especially significant given that the rat was the stimulus that had most frequently been paired with the loud noise and from which Albert’s fear of other stimuli was supposed to have generalized.

Little Albert as “Propaganda”

If the film evidence for fear conditioning is so weak, the question can be asked as to whether Watson and Rayner (1920) were being deliberately misleading when maintaining that fear conditioning had occurred. We do not believe this to be the case. If nothing else, people who engage in deliberate deception tend not to distribute a film of their fraudulent activities. A more likely explanation is confirmation bias (e.g., Greenwald, Pratkanis, Leippe, & Baumgardner, 1986; Kahneman, 2011; Lilienfeld, 2017; Nickerson, 1998), a pervasive phenomenon to which even researchers are susceptible. Watson and Rayner (both of whom appear in the film) may have been especially susceptible to confirmation bias if they recorded their observations following each session, in which case they may have misremembered Albert’s reactions in ways that would be congruent with their expectations. Also, although Watson was critical of the notion that children’s fears are often innate, he was unaware of the possibility of maturational influences on fear development as a child ages, which was only later proposed by Valentine (1930). Hence, from Watson’s theoretical perspective, any fear responses that Albert displayed during the transfer sessions, even if weak and inconsistent, would most likely have been acquired through conditioning.

That said, confirmation bias is most likely to occur when one is highly motivated to achieve a particular goal or defend a particular position or hypothesis (Nickerson, 1998). In fact, Watson would sometimes knowingly exaggerate his research findings if he perceived that it would advance his research agenda (Buckley, 1989; Samelson, 1980). It is perhaps from this perspective that the Little Albert film is best understood. When lobbying the university’s president for funds to purchase film, Watson emphasized the promotional, or “propaganda,” value of the film—to hopefully entice wealthy individuals to donate to his research program—as much as its scientific value (Watson, 1919b, 1919c). Of particular interest to Watson was the possibility of establishing a facility in which children would live with their mothers in a controlled and closely monitored environment (these would presumably have been single mothers who provided many of the infants used in Watson’s research program at Johns Hopkins Hospital; Watson, 1924/1925). For example, in a letter written to university president, Goodnow, requesting the funds to purchase film, Watson (1919c) wrote,

As you know, I am extremely anxious to obtain money to establish a small home in which 15 or 20 children can be collected with their mothers, where I can make continuous observations from birth to at least adolescence. . . . I am constantly being called upon to lecture to rather large groups. Many of the people interested are influential and wealthy and if they could be properly convinced, they would be willing to advance money for such investigations.

The strength of Watson’s (1920) commitment to this project is especially evident in a subsequent letter written to Goodnow:

I shall never be satisfied until I have a laboratory in which I can bring up children from birth to three or four years of age under constant observation. By propaganda and writings I am bringing this about as rapidly as I can.

Interestingly, insofar as the Little Albert study was most likely completed by late March, it is possible that Watson was by this time already using the film clips of Little Albert in presentations he was making. Mary Cover Jones, who a few years later

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13DID LITTLE ALBERT ACQUIRE A CONDITIONED FEAR

conducted a study in which she used behavioral principles to gradually eliminate a severe rabbit phobia in a young boy (Jones, 1924),7 claimed that her interest in the topic first arose when she attended a public lecture by Watson which included motion pictures of Little Albert. Although she remembers the lecture occurring in spring of 1919 —when she and a friend had traveled to New York to attend the theater but ended up at Watson’s lecture instead—it is more likely that she misdated the memory and that Watson’s lecture occurred in spring or summer of 1920. This is especially the case given the strength of the evidence for the Little Albert study having been conducted between early December 1919 and late March 1920 (Beck et al., 2009; Powell et al., 2014). If so, this suggests that within a few months of the study being completed, Watson was already using the film clips of the Little Albert study to publicize his research and attract funding. Watson’s intense desire to obtain funding may also have motivated him to deliberately manipulate certain aspects of the film to enhance its presentability. It would also account for Watson’s dramatic touch of wearing the mask on film, rather than simply showing it to Albert (which he may have done on an earlier trial), so as to strengthen the film’s impact on an audience.

In this sense, the Little Albert film was perhaps never intended to be an accurate portrayal of the experiment, but rather a dramatized representation of what occurred, designed to maximize its impact and attract the type of funding Watson needed to fulfill his research goals. As such, it foreshadows the dilemma many researchers face when trying to balance scientific accuracy and objectivity with the reality of needing to promote their research in a way that strengthens the likelihood of future funding—an ongoing problem that has likely contributed to psychology’s current replication crisis (Lilienfeld, 2017).

Conclusion

Watson and Rayner (1920) claimed that a principal reason for choosing Little Albert for the experiment was his “stolid and unemotional” temperament; they assumed that the experiment would therefore do him “relatively little harm” (pp. 2–3). Our examination of the film evidence concurs with that assessment, even more so than Watson and Rayner had intended. The distress that Albert displays at various points in the film seems well within the normal range for children of that age and can be readily accounted by factors other than Watson and Rayner’s conditioning procedure. Thus, rather than being an accurate demonstration of fear conditioning, the film clips of Albert are better construed as a promotional device that Watson hoped to use to attract major funding for his research.

If the film record provides little evidence of fear conditioning, why is it so often viewed as showing the opposite? Viewer expectation likely plays a major role. For example, the intertitle that precedes the film clips of the transfer session explicitly states that condi- tioning had “produced the marked fear of the rat next shown.” In addition, many people who view the film, such as on YouTube (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v � 9hBfnXACsOI), probably do so after hearing about the experiment and how Watson had once conditioned a phobia in a young infant. Viewers will therefore be predisposed to seek out elements that conform to this narrative. In this context, any behavior suggestive of fear, such as Albert crying when a rabbit is suddenly placed on his lap or backing away when a fur coat is thrust toward him, will be readily interpreted as evidence of condi- tioning.8 Add to this a culture that has become increasingly sensitive to issues of child

7 Watson helped supervise this study although he had by that time already resigned from his academic position

at Johns Hopkins University over the controversy surrounding his highly publicized affair with Rayner (Buckley, 1989; Jones, 1924).

8 In fact, the first author himself once believed that the film provides clear evidence of fear conditioning. He

began to see problems with this interpretation, and with the Watson and Rayner (1920) study in general, only after encountering the criticisms of it by Harris (1979) and Samelson (1980).

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abuse and trauma, and it would be surprising if viewers of the film did not perceive stronger evidence of fear conditioning than is actually the case.

One must also consider the possibility that the propensity to view Little Albert as having been conditioned to fear animals may stem to some extent from an ongoing perception of behaviorism, with its emphasis on environmental determinism, as dehumanizing and manipulative (Todd, 1994). It is interesting to note in this regard that, while YouTube clips of the Little Albert study elicit almost entirely negative comments from viewers, the surprisingly numerous YouTube videos that show parents and siblings deliberately scaring young children, sometimes severely so (https:// www.youtube.com/results?search_query�parents�scare�prank�mask), are typi- cally regarded as humorous. Ironically, Watson himself would almost certainly have been appalled by such videos. Based on the results of the Little Albert study, he warned parents to minimize children’s exposure to loud noises, such as the slamming of a door, which might inadvertently be associated with nearby objects and events (e.g., Watson, 1924/1925; Watson & Watson, 1928). Similarly, although Watson is often rightly criticized for recommending that children not be shown too much affection and should instead be treated like adults (e.g., they should be given a handshake rather than a hug and a kiss; Watson & Watson, 1928),9 almost no mention is made of his rather progressive, for that era, recommendation that parents should minimize the use of physical punishment. He believed, for example, that a simple rap on the fingers, if done at the right moment (and without anger), should be sufficient to teach a child not to reach for a forbidden or dangerous object and without producing any lasting fear or resentment. “There is no excuse for whipping or beating!” he argued (Watson, 1924, p. 183), asserting that “such things as beating and expiation of offenses, so common now in our schools and home, in the church, in our criminal law, in our judicial procedure, are relics of the Dark Ages” (Watson & Watson, 1928, p. 63).

In a review of how John B. Watson has been misrepresented in introductory psychology textbooks, Todd (1994) noted that “the potential negative impact on millions of students of possibly inaccurate and biased descriptions of one of psychol- ogy’s most important figures should not be discounted” (p. 76; see also Todd & Morris, 1992). He argued that we should not only avoid inaccuracies in what our students are being taught, but we must also remain cognizant of the extent to which inaccuracies may damage the way in which psychology is viewed. This can have serious implications concerning the extent to which psychological findings and recommendations are given proper consideration. A case in point is the emergence of applied behavior analysis as a viable intervention for autism and other developmental disabilities (e.g., Reichow, 2012; Roane, Fisher, & Carr, 2016). Despite considerable evidence for its efficacy, there remains considerable resistance to its adoption, often stemming from a false belief that behavioral treatments commonly make use of aversive procedures (Leaf & McEachin, 2016; Trump et al., 2018). Although the Little Albert experiment predates the emergence of applied behavior analysis by many decades, the notion that Watson, the “founder of behaviorism,” once conditioned a phobia of furry animals in a helpless infant creates a fertile ground for such misper- ceptions to persist. Instructors and textbook authors should therefore think carefully about how they characterize Watson and the Little Albert experiment and should resist the urge to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of a good story (see also Griggs, 2015).

9 In later years, Watson (1936) regretted some of his writings on child-rearing, admitting that “I did not know enough to write the book I wanted to write” (p. 280).

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15DID LITTLE ALBERT ACQUIRE A CONDITIONED FEAR

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Received July 19, 2019 Revision received July 20, 2020

Accepted July 28, 2020 �

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