today I want to tell you about one of the least ethical studies ever conducted a study that could have left a man with lifelong trauma yet it is a study that is taught in almost every intro to psychology class in the world today I want to tell you about the little Albert experiment the little Albert experiment was a study that was looking into a version of classical conditioning the idea that was pioneered by legendary psychologist Pavlov and his famous dogs if you can't remember what Pavlov's procedure was it basically worked like this in the beginning Pavlov would show his dogs food and measure how much saliva they produced ands surprisingly when his dogs saw the food they produced a lot of saliva in anticipation of that food then in the second phase the conditioning phase Pavlov would pair the food with a bell that he would ring food and Bell would always come together then in the third phase Pavlov would test whether the dogs would produce saliva in response to just the Bell hoping that at this point because of the repeated pairing of the Bell and the food the dogs had learned to associate the B with that food and sure enough after enough repetitions when Pavlov rang the bell on its own his dogs produce saliva even though there was no food the dogs had become classically conditioned now similar types of conditioning experiments like this have been done on many different animals rats pigeons monkeys and what was found through these experiments is that not only could you condition animals to associate food with unrelated objects but you can also condition fear in animals you can condition animals to be scared of things that they normally wouldn't be scared of so let me ask you what are You Afraid of the Dark spiders maybe benign objects like a wardrobe or a children's toy now let me ask you why are you afraid of those things is it because they are inherently scary is it something in your genetics or is it because you have been conditioned to be scared of that thing conditioned by repeatedly seeing that thing associate with something negative and so you have this Association that that thing causes a bad outcome well that's what the little Albert experiment sought to find out the inventor of this experiment was someone called John Watson not the Sherlock Holmes John Watson this is a real life Dr John Watson a research scientist in the 1920s working at John Hopkins University through this experiment John Watson wanted to find out whether a little baby could be conditioned to be scared of things that otherwise weren't scary so in the 1920s John Watson basically stole a baby from the hospital that he was working at without the mother's consent and the procedure that Watson followed for this experiment was very similar to what Pavlov did with his dogs as you can see from this footage the first stage of the experiment is Watson introducing things to little Albert that he doesn't find very scary he shows him a white rack a dog he shows himself wearing a Santa Claus mask and other types of masks as you can see Albert is not scared of these things at first he's curious but he's not scared he's not crying he's not upset in any way but then comes the second part of the experiment which unfortunately we don't have footage of in this next part of the experiment Watson would show Albert the same things that he showed him in the first stage but this time every time that he showed Albert these things he would bang two loud objects behind Albert's head to frighten him and if Watson was the thing that Albert was reacting to like Watson wearing the mask then it would be his PhD student who would be doing this banging behind Albert's head now of course this made poor little Albert terrified and he would cry when he heard these loud bangs and after enough repetitions of this horrible experience Albert began to associate the stimuli with the unpleasant noise the white rat the dog and the masks and sure enough when they came to the third stage of the experiment where Watson and his students showed Albert the things that they showed him in the first stage of the experiment but without the loud Banks Albert would now begin to cry Albert was crying presumably because he had formed an association between those things and the unpleasant banging now very cruy as this experiment was going on Watson and his student would not allow Albert to crawl away of course when Albert was shown the white rat which he now associated with horrible bagging noises he tried to crawl away when Watson and his students saw Albert crawling away they would then pick him up and put him back on the mats that he had to stay in contact with the thing that he was now terribly afraid of this of course meant that poor little Albert was crying a lot in this experiment probably terribly traumatized by the entire experience and when his mother found out that these experiments were being conducted on her baby she whisked little Albert away and didn't allow Dr Watson to carry on with his experiments as any good mother would do but by whisking him away at this stage it meant that Dr Watson couldn't conduct the next phase of his experiment which was the deconditioning of the fear Watson later said that his plan was to put Albert through a deconditioning phase of this experiment meaning that he would basically put little Albert through an accelerated form of exposure therapy the idea being that he would show Albert the things that he was now afraid of repeatedly but without the loud banging therefore Albert would learn that these things that he was being shown aren't the cause of the banging that he heard before and would now begin to disassociate the banging with those things like the white rat and the dog and the masks and so Albert would no longer be afraid but because Al Bert was whisked away by his mother in mind that that deconditioning phase never occurred so you're probably wondering what happened to little Albert did he grow up to be a man terribly afraid of dogs and rats and Santa Claus for some unexplained reason well it turns out that's a very hotly debated question because the real identity of little Albert is a mystery currently there are two leading theories as to who little Albert could be the first one comes from a group who was looking for little albertt and said in in 2009 that they had found the real little Albert they said that little Albert was actually a pseudonym for a Douglas Meritt the son of a wet nurse who worked at the hospital in which John Watson did his experiment if little Albert is Douglas Meritt then we have no idea what would have happened to him had he grown up because unfortunately Douglas Meritt died at the age of six due to a condition known as hydrophilus a condition where there's too much fluid in the brain however there is another theory as to who little Albert might be some people claim that little Albert is actually a man called William Albert Banger William Albert Banger was born in the same hospital as Douglas Merritt and within one day of him additionally William Albert Banger was known by his family by his middle name of Albert and additionally William Albert Banger's development and size was more similar to what was documented in the original experiment now by the time William Albert Banger was identified he had also unfortunately died but he did live a full life up to the age of 87 but he died in 2007 however he did have a living relative his niece who apparently was very close with him and according to his niece William Albert Banger did have a very well-known hatred of dogs and additionally William Albert Banger had an aversion to most animals in general now obviously it's unclear whether this aversion to dogs and animals was due to the experiment done by John Watson but if William Albert Banger is little Albert then it's certainly plausible so I'll leave it to you to decide which of these two CL claims as to who little Albert is is more plausible I'm leaning more towards William Albert Banger personally and when it comes to the little Albert experiment of course statistically this experiment is completely meaningless it's a sample size of n equals 1 with no control group so it doesn't mean anything and of course ethically speaking n equals 1 is one too many a study like this would never be approved today by any ethics boards at least I certainly hope not it's an experiment that should have never happened and will hopefully never happen again thank you guys for watching subscribe if you haven't already and I will see you in the next one bye-bye [Applause]