Hall Beck, PhD, and a team of students and colleagues at Appalachian State University have solved a 90-year-old mystery: who was "Little Albert"?
John Watson made "Little Albert" famous by conditioning him to fear a white rat in 1920. His fear generalized to include rabbits, Santa faces, and fur coats. You can see a clip of it on YouTube. But his identity was unknown until Beck and his team set out to find him, and published their findings in the October, 2009, American Psychologist.
"Little Albert" was Douglas Merritte, the son of a wetnurse, Arvilla Merritte, who lived and worked at a campus hospital. Douglas died at age 6 of acquired hydrocephalus and we do not know if he continued to fear furry objects.
Historical footnote: John Watson had to leave the university, and psychology, shortly after the experiment because it was discovered that he was having an affair with his student assistant, who can be seen in the video with him.
January 19, 2010
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1 comments:
I remember when you showed us that video and you were kinda making fun of John Watson and his philandering with his female assistant.
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