In Memory of Little Albert

Scientific interest in complex human motivations started to challenge behaviorism in the 1930s, well before the cognitive revolution of the 1960s, back in the day when researchers discovered with glee that hungry rats withstood painful electric shocks if that’s what it took to gain access to a new experience in a new environment, and rhesus monkeys worked on puzzles for no earthly reason. They seemed to enjoy it! They needed no paired-associate reward-punishment training. A rift among researchers along the fault line of introspection vs observed behavior as the privileged data source was beginning.

Anomalous rats and monkeys, curious little buggers, cropped up to help the minority view push back on the paradigm of Pavlov and his dogs, keeping alive an unpopular political perspective on freedom and human dignity. Society would work so much more smoothly if we only had automatons with impeccable training, thought the Pavlovians. Indeed, BF Skinner’s book Beyond Freedom and Dignity argued against free will and the need for dignity. Happiness be damned.

In February, 1920, a classic article published in the third volume of the Journal of Experimental Psychology (Watson and Rayner, 1920) garnered attention and outrage because of the “Little Alfred” experiment, one which raised ethical flags and continues to serve as a notorious example of unethical research. In the interest of historical accuracy, I cite it here not to profit from it, but to expose its brutality. One could argue that Little Alfred lives today in classrooms across America.

Little Albert had been born in the Harriet Lane Home for Invalid (sic) Children. According to the researchers, Albert’s life was “normal.” At nine months old, he was selected for the study because he was a hefty tyke (20+ pounds), and he was “stolid and unemotional.” The authors take extreme measures to assure us that no one had ever heard Little Albert cry nor express fear. By the end of the experiments, Little Albert cried and learned to fear. There is some controversy about who Albert was as a historical figure with two candidates, both long lived, both dead. But I get ahead of myself.

The objective of the study was to determine whether Little Albert could be taught to fear objects which initially did not cause him distress. To accomplish this end, the researcher tested Albert on the objects they were going to teach him to fear. Here is their account of what they found on this “pretest”:

The next “pretest” was to determine whether Little Albert could be frightened by loud noises. If the child simply lacked the capacity to feel fear or to cry, he would be of no use to the scientists. So they had to stimulate him, to scare the holy crap out of him:

The stage was set. Watson and Rayner (1920) could now experiment to see if Little Albert could learn to transfer the stimulus for fear from a loud noise to an object—a cotton ball, a mask, a burning newspaper. Science had proven Albert could hold his composure in the face of a burning torch. Could Albert learn to respond emotionally? You betcha.

But before we read the results, the researchers confess some uneasiness about proceeding with the study. In fact, they postpone it for a few months to let Little Albert mature—much like the rules of classroom comportment gradually tighten before the clamp down in middle school. Albert would experience fear soon enough in the “rough and tumble” or life:

Teaching research methods in graduate school at Sacramento State was among my favorite assignments. Naturally, the topic of petitioning the committee on the rights of human subjects for approval to conduct a study involving children was significant in the class. I can’t tell you the number of times the argument “well, what I want to do isn’t any worse than what kids have to do all the time” has come up. Down this path lies a dark place. Entering this dark place didn’t deter our researchers from a century ago:

One starts to wonder why the researchers choose to investigate fear. Earlier in the paper they discussed “reflexes” like fear and included among them “love.” Why not test to see whether a particular song learned in paired-association with being held and cuddled might produce more smiles when the child hears the song? Several days later:

Later, after the training period ended, tests were redone to determine whether the effects persisted. Some did, some did not. I’m going to share one more test result with you and ask you to imagine yourself on a panel reviewing a research proposal to determine the potential for harm. This test showed a persistent fear of the ilk of the clown phobia:

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Watson’s legacy is indelibly stamped on public schooling to this day. Behaviorism penetrates much of the practical knowledge base teachers draw on for classroom management. A core problem of behaviorism derives from flawed assumptions that human behaviors flow from the surface of life. A child will complete an exercise in math to get the reward of recess.

The following quote comes from a website on OpenOregon where open source textbooks are available for community colleges. Many future teachers are drawn from community colleges. This textbook affirmatively advocates for behaviorism:

“John B. Watson (1878-1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) are the two principal originators of behaviorist approaches to learning. Watson believed that human behavior resulted from specific stimuli that elicited certain responses. Watson’s basic premise was that conclusions about human development should be based on observation of overt behavior rather than speculation about subconscious motives or latent cognitive processes (Shaffer, 2000).”

An authorized definition of behaviorism in the same textbook:

“Behaviorism is primarily concerned with observable and measurable aspects of human behavior. In defining behavior, behaviorist learning theories emphasize changes in behavior that result from stimulus-response associations made by the learner. Behavior is directed by stimuli. An individual selects one response instead of another because of prior conditioning and psychological drives existing at the moment of the action (Parkay & Hass, 2000).”

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I’m sure you’ll agree with me that behaviorism squares with advocates of the etic paradigm (see my previous post). Nonetheless, even within a positivist, etic epistemology, counter research going back many years to the early 1960s competes for the souls of teachers. Leaning into a sociocultural (emic) view of teaching, valuing responsive teaching as an umbrella perspective on the classroom, understanding student motives, goals, and intentions as the core of active learning, I will end with this quote I used in my doctoral dissertation on portfolio assessment. I’ll return to the other side of this issue shortly.

“Within [the knowledge-base model] ... the competence that a student will display depends on interest and intention, and these in turn influence the constructive activity that lead to future development.... [But] at any one moment student motives are taken as givens, [though] they are also thought of as evolving and capable of being stifled or nurtured by the teacher. The same notions apply to the [Intentional Learning model], except that in [this model] interests and intentions are not just mediators of competence, they are part of a person’s competence––something to be developed [italics added].” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987, p. 14)