Discovering Little Albert Analysis

Madison Kesner
29 October 2015
Section #: 1002
Net ID: mkesner
Discovering Little Albert
The experient of classical conditioning created by Watson and Rayner in 1918 on a baby they nicknamed "Little Albert" became famous for many psychologists to analyze. In the article, “Correcting the Record on Watson, Rayner, and Little Albert”, the writers of this article: Russell Powell, Nancy Digdon, Ben Harris, and Christopher Smithson, are on the search of who “Little Albert” really was. In the original report of Watson and Rayner they never disclosed who “Little Albert” was other than the name, “Albert B.”. The article that these 5 writers base their accusations on are from a different research paper that has been written and reported by Fridlund

Barger’s niece explained in the article that her uncle avoided most animals during his life, but it was due to the dislike of them rather than an actual fear of them. Also in Watson and Rayner’s theory, they claimed that Albert would have a personality change later in his life due to their experiment. Barger’s niece also expressed this accusation to be false because her uncle grew up to be a salesman for an airline company; which made him the opposite of

Albert Barger proved to match Little Albert’s weight, age, head circumference, physical health, name, and mother’s occupation at the time when the experiment was being accomplished in the year of 1918. Frilund and Beck’s accusation of Douglas Meritte being Little Albert seemed like an interesting accusation, but made Watson and Rayner seem sneaky and untruthful to their experiment. Barger’s life was lived without the fear of animals and social problems; which proved Watson and Rayner’s theory was wrong and that classical conditioning doesn’t have lifelong effects.
Significance
This article is significant due to the research that Watson and Rayner performed on Little Albert about classical conditioning. The article proved that Albert’s conditioning effects did not last him the rest of his life, nor did it have a major impact on his personality or how he lived his daily life. Classical condition remains only a temporary thing, but then it becomes extinct after a long period of time when it is no longer performed. Also, Albert, at the time, was an infant and the possibility of him retaining the information that Watson and Rayner did to him would no longer exist after he grew up.