What are some of the most horrific psychological experiments?

[Ronald Ray]

Watson and Rayner's Little Albert Experiment

If you have ever taken an Introduction to Psychology class, then you are probably at least a little familiar with Little Albert. Behaviorist John Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner conditioned a boy to fear a white rat, and this fear even generalized to other white objects including stuffed toys and Watson's own beard.

Obviously, this type of experiment is considered very controversial today. Frightening an infant and purposely conditioning the child to be afraid is clearly unethical. As the story goes, the boy and his mother moved away before Watson and Rayner were able to decondition the child, so many people have wondered if there might be a man out there with a mysterious fear of furry white objects.

Some researchers have suggested that the boy at the center of the study was actually a child named Douglas Merit.

These researchers believe that the child was not the healthy boy Watson described, but actually a cognitively impaired boy who ended up dying of hydrocephalus when he was just six years old. If this is true, it makes Watson's study even more disturbing and controversial.

However, more recent evidence suggests that the real Little Albert was actually a boy named William Albert Barger.

Thanks!