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Ethical Evaluation of The Little Albert Experiment
Watson and Rayner (1920) conducted a study about conditioning. In this study the
main participant was little Albert who was 9 months old at the time. He was completely
healthy, and his development was successful. The researchers presented him some stimuli.
The first stimuli was a white rat. Albert did not show any significant reaction. The second
stimuli was a rabbit, and again there were no fear response. Other stimuli were presented such
as a monkey, and a dog. Albert did not fear from them and actually seemed to like them.
While Albert was playing with the white rat, the researchers strike the hammer on a metal bar,
causing it to make a loud noise. Albert was scared of this loud noise. The researchers repeated
this process for a couple of times. Every time the white rat was presented, a loud banging
noise from the metal bar followed it. After a while Albert had conditioned to show distress or
cry when he was presented the white rat even though there were no banging metal noise
anymore. He did show this distress over the other stimuli that I mentioned before. Even
without the loud noise Albert started to fear from all the fluffy stimuli. Then the experiment
was ended.
This experiment contains some ethical issues. First of all, the researchers should avoid
harming the participants. They should consider the well-being of the participants and take
precautions for potential risks. In the experiment we can see that the ethical code beneficence
and nonmaleficence was ignored. The participant, Little Albert, was put into the situations
where he was clearly in distress. In some circumstances he was crying for help, and because
of the fear that he felt he constantly tried to escape from the experiment’s conditions. There
were times where he jumped out from fear and fell. He was affected negatively from this
experiment. This study did not benefit him at all. In terms of responsibility the issues were
continued. The researchers should have considered the fact that Little Albert might have
experienced long-term psychological problems after the experiment. Especially when they did
