Experiments

Little Albert 1920

A single infant was reported to show fear of a white rat after it was paired with a loud noise, and similar fear of some other furry objects.

Learning and conditioningDemonstration

John B. Watson, Rosalie Rayner

Main paper: Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1–14. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm

The question

Can an emotional reaction be learned by pairing a neutral object with something that already frightens an infant?

Design: demonstration

A single case or single condition that shows a phenomenon can occur. It has no comparison that rules out other explanations.

One infant, no comparison infant and no separate control for the conditioning. It shows an outcome was possible, not how often it happens.

Reported sequence for one infant

Pairing

  1. White rat shown
  2. Loud bar strike behind infant
  3. Initial block of seven pairings; more in later tests

Result reportedFear of the rat alone

Test

  1. Rat alone
  2. Similar objects
  3. Blocks as neutral objects

Result reportedFear reported to rat and some similar objects

Original diagram drawn for this site from the descriptions in the sources. It is a simplified summary, not a figure from the paper.

Procedure

The infant, called Albert B., lived in a hospital where his mother worked as a wet nurse. Watson and Rayner described him as healthy and unemotional and began testing at about nine months. Preliminary tests with a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, masks and other objects produced no fear. A loud sound made by striking a steel bar did.

At about eleven months the rat was presented and the bar was struck behind Albert, in an initial block of seven pairings across sessions. Further pairings were given in later tests to refresh the response. The authors then tested whether fear appeared with the rat alone and with similar objects, including a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, cotton wool and a mask, using blocks as a neutral comparison.

Findings

The authors reported that after the pairings Albert cried and moved away from the rat alone, and showed similar reactions to some other furry or white objects but not to blocks. They reported reactions still present when he was retested about a month later, with some loss of intensity.

Albert left the hospital before any attempt to remove the fear, and the paper reports no follow-up.

Interpretation

Watson and Rayner argued that emotional reactions can be conditioned in humans and might help explain how some fears form. They proposed that fear learned this way could spread to similar objects.

Limits on what it shows

  • One infant, observed by the investigators themselves, with informal scoring and no independent comparison child.
  • The stimuli were not controlled as tightly as later textbook accounts suggest, and the later pairings and test settings varied.
  • The paper does not show that Albert developed lasting or lifelong fears. Such claims go beyond what it reports.

Ethics

An infant was deliberately frightened with a loud noise, and the paper reports that the fear could not be removed because Albert left the hospital. Parental consent, a risk review and a plan to reverse induced fear are the kinds of safeguards that studies with infants are expected to have.

Replication and reassessment

Later historical accounts disagree about Albert's identity and health. Those disagreements reinforce the need to distinguish what the 1920 authors observed from later retellings. The report provides no evidence of lifelong fear and cannot estimate how often this kind of conditioning occurs.

Think it through. An original practice question written for this site.

Why can this study not tell us how common it is for a child to learn a fear this way?

Show a way to reason about it

There was one infant and no comparison child, so there is no way to separate the effect of the pairing from the child's temperament or other experiences. A claim about how often this happens needs many children and a comparison condition. That would be unethical here, which is part of the lesson.

Nothing you think or select here is recorded.

Textbook connection

Covered in this sectionOpenStax Psychology 2e, 6.2 Classical Conditioning

Section describes the Little Albert study.

Sources and access scope

Each label says how much of the source was opened while preparing this profile. An unopened source is listed so the claim can be checked, not because it was read.

  1. Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020). Psychology 2e. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/6-2-classical-conditioningTextbook contextSelected textbook passages inspected

    Textbook context. The section describes the Little Albert study.

  2. Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned emotional reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1–14. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htmOriginal researchSelected full-text sections inspected

    Classics in the History of Psychology reproduction. The procedure, ages, pairings and the authors' stated limits come from sections inspected with page tools.