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What Are The Ethical Implications Of The Little Albert Experiment

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As the title suggests, The Little Albert experiment was based on a small nine-month-old baby. In this experiment John B. Watson was trying to find out if conditioning could be done on humans to invoke an emotion. Cherry (2022) states that Watson and his colleague Rayner exposed the baby to a series of stimuli which included: white rats, rabbits, and face masks. Watson would expose a rat to the baby while simultaneously hitting a pipe with a hammer to make a loud noise. Albert would instantly cower with fear and start crying. The main problem with this experiment that should be considered is that a baby was harmed against his will and left with a new fear. This experiment is extremely unethical and goes against many APA principles. The American …show more content…

However, to make this study meet the APA’s standards it would have to change basically the whole experiment. For starters, Watson’s whole question that he wanted to solve was to find out if conditioning could work on humans. In my opinion, why did he have to choose a negative approach with loud noise to observe the baby’s emotional response. Watson could have started with a positive approach. He could have offered the baby sweets or even his usual snacks to be associated with the rat. This would’ve ended with a positive ending and a happy baby away from harm and trauma. In addition, getting consent from his mother while being informed of the whole truth and the risks that came with the experiment. As little albert was a nine-month-old baby, his mom should have been allowed to know and observe what really was going on in these …show more content…

According to Mcleod (2023), he emphasizes that Watson did not desensitize Albert to his fear of rats. Therefore, not only was Albert put through about ten days of fear and torture of loud noises, but he was not able to get over the fear. This experiment went against another principle in the APA Code of Conduct. The American Psychological Association (2017) states in their Principle D: Justice section, that psychologist should recognize justice entitled to all people and know their boundaries and limitations. As the leader of this experiment, Watson needed to consider how he was basing his experiment on a baby. Those who aren’t in the science or medical field even know how sensitive babies are. In addition to the baby’s fear of rats, Albert would constantly be hearing loud banging noises. These loud banging noises could have ruptured his eardrum and left him with potential hearing problems. The information gathered does not outweigh all the harm little Albert had to endure during and after the

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He wanted to test the notion that by following the principles of the procedure now known as "classical conditioning", he could use this unconditioned response to condition a child to fear a distinctive stimulus that normally would not be feared by a child (in this case, furry objects). Method Edit The aim of Watson and Rayner was to condition a phobia in an emotionally stable child.[1] For this study they chose a nine-month old infant from a hospital referred to as "Albert" for the experiment.[2] Watson followed the procedures which Pavlov had used in his experiments with dogs.[3] Before the experiment, Albert was given a battery of baseline emotional tests: the infant was exposed, briefly and for the first time, to a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, a monkey, masks (with and without hair), cotton, wool, burning newspapers, and other stimuli.

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The experiment was executed well. Yet, there are unethical practices happened during the experiment. First, the participants were not fully informed about the experiment. The researchers did not explain to the participants the processes in conducting the experiment. The participants were not informed that they would be arrested by cops in their homes.

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I believe that the experiment is considered ethical because it only affected the children emotionally for a very short

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For this paper, I chose to write about the Little Albert experiment The overall importance of this study was to discover if a human could be conditioned to develop a bias, fear, or generalized fear of an animal, object, or person based the stimuli placed around the involved person, animal or object. Watson & Rayner (1920) suggested that “in infancy the original emotional reaction patterns are few, consisting so far as observed of fear, rage and love, then there must be some simple method by means of which the range of stimuli which can call out these emotions and their compounds is greatly increased.” This means that before any conditioning occurs, the subject should have a pure response, but after minor and simple experimentation and conditioning,

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