No, Little Albert's mother did not give informed consent; she consented without full knowledge of the experiment's true, potentially harmful nature, and ethical standards at the time were poor, leading to severe criticism because the fear was never reversed, violating the principle of "do no harm". Albert's mother, a nurse at the hospital, agreed to her infant's participation, but she wasn't fully aware of the plan to deliberately create a phobia and its long-term effects, a major ethical breach.
Other criticisms stem from the health of the child (cited as Douglas Merritte) who was not a "healthy", "normal" infant as claimed in the study, but one who was very ill and had exhibited symptoms of hydrocephalus since birth—according to relatives he never learned to walk or talk later in life.
Although the experiment is still very famous, it raises several ethical concerns: There was no informed consent (from the parents or the child) and the principle of 'do no harm' was violated. (Additionally, the study had many methodological shortcomings, i.e. no control condition and too few participants, namely one).
The Ethical Controversy
The researchers deliberately inflicted psychological distress on an infant and did so without the informed consent of Albert's mother. The most significant failing was that Watson and Rayner did not decondition Little Albert, meaning they did not reverse the fear they had created in him.
The Little Albert study, conducted in 1920 by John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner, explored the concept of emotional conditioning in infants. The study aimed to determine whether a previously neutral stimulus, such as a white rat, could evoke fear in a child when paired with a loud, frightening sound.
What do the two accounts mean for the fate of Little Albert? If he was Douglas Merritte, then the story is a sad one – the boy died at age six of hydrocephalus. In contrast, if Little Albert was Willam Barger, he in fact lived a long life, dying in 2007 at the age of 87.
Watson's daughter from his first marriage, Mary Ickles Watson, and his two sons with Rayner, William Rayner Watson and James Broadus Watson, all attempted suicide. William died by suicide in 1954. During the latter part of his life, Watson's already poor relationships with his children progressively worsened.
Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. These principles include voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, potential for harm, and results communication.
He thought that a phobia could be created and then extinguished through the process of Classical Conditioning. Up till this point, research into Classical Conditioning had been carried out on animals. Watson believed the same principles of association and generalisation applied to human behaviour.
Young children cannot consent to being included in experiments, and informed consent was not obtained in Albert's case. Additionally, the conditioning of the irrational fear was never reversed in Albert. For these reasons, the psychology experiment is often considered unethical and abusive.
The Tuskegee experiment violated the principle of justice outlined in the Belmont Report and the conceptualization of risks and benefits in various ways. Vulnerable populations: First, fair procedures in the selection and recruitment of participants were non-existent.
Ethical Issues
Furthermore, modern ethics emphasize the participant's right to withdraw from a study at any point without consequence. Since Little Albert was an infant and unable to communicate his discomfort or desire to leave, this right was not upheld in the experiment.
Key Findings
After several pairings of the white rat with the loud noise, Albert began to exhibit signs of fear upon merely seeing the rat, even in the absence of the noise. This conditioned fear response demonstrated that emotional reactions could indeed be learned through classical conditioning.
-Compare: Ivan Pavlov's experiment didn't have any issues in ethical standpoint because the dogs didn't have any immediate harm. However,the Little Albert experience was use to cause a sense of fear or phobia, so this experiment is ethically questionable.
The Little Albert experiment would not be allowed to be recreated today due to ethical considerations and potential harm to the participant. Explanation: The Little Albert experiment conducted by Watson and Rayner in 1920 conditioned a baby to fear a white rat through classical conditioning.
In the winter of 1919/20, Watson and his graduate assistant, Rosalie Alberta Rayner, attempted to condition a baby boy, Albert B., to fear a white laboratory rat (Watson & Rayner, 1920). They later reported that the child's fear generalised to other furry objects.
Emma Watson: “I'm afraid of shots and sharks”
More specifically, Freud's psychoanalytic theory of phobias suggests that people have unconscious impulses or thoughts that cause conflict between the three parts of the human personality or psyche: the id, superego, and ego.
Generally, there are about 12 ethical principles: honesty, fairness, leadership, accountability, integrity, compassion, respect, responsibility, loyalty, respect for the law, transparency, and environmental concerns.
The Robbers Cave Experiment (1954)
The experiment raised ethical concerns as the participants were intentionally subjected to psychological stress without their knowledge or consent.
Informed consent is the process by which researchers ensure that individuals understand a study and voluntarily agree to participate. In the context of psychology research, informed consent means that every participant consents freely and with full information before any data is collected.
Sherlock also figured out that Mary was pregnant with John's baby. Their relationship remained stable until John heard Mary profess to having been an assassin, that she had been the one to shoot Sherlock and that everything he thought he knew about her past had been lies (something she hoped he would never find out).
“Men are built, not born…. Give me the baby, and I'll make it climb and use its hands in constructing buildings of stone or wood…. I'll make it a thief, a gunman or a dope fiend. The possibilities of shaping in any direction are almost endless.”
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