Watson never divulged his young test subject’s real name, leaving many psychologists (and others) curious about his identity and what happened to Little Albert.
In 2009, psychologists Hall P. Beck, PhD, and Sharman Levinson, PhD, pored over public data and consulted facial recognition experts, hoping to solve the mystery of “psychology’s lost boy.” They believe that Little Albert was Douglas Merritte, the son of a wet nurse at the Harriet Lane Home.
They worked with Gary Irons, a relative of Douglas Merritte, who obtained Douglas’s medical records from Johns Hopkins. Unfortunately, Douglas died as a young child from hydrocephalus, a build-up of fluid in the brain.
Little Albert Looks Unwell on Film
While Watson claimed that Little Albert was a healthy baby, Fridlund observed signs of illness when viewing footage of the study.
“He has a very large head, and he’s quite pudgy and short, but the head is still big for a pudgy, short infant,” Dr. Fridlund says. “The second thing was how abnormal he was in his behavior. During that entire film — on which Albert appears for roughly four minutes — you see not one social smile from Albert. Not one.”
By six months, healthy babies engage in social smiling and seek even more social contact by nine months.
Dr. Fridlund also noticed Albert’s muted responses to stimuli:
“Not once in the film, despite being brought an Airdale that’s scampering all over, being shown burning paper, being shown a monkey cavorting on a leash — and he has a steel bar struck with a hammer 14 times behind his back — not once does Albert turn to either Watson or Rayner to seek support. If infants perceive that the stimulus is threatening, they typically run toward a caretaker.”
Dr. Fridlund says his muted responses may very well indicate hydrocephalus, which is nearly always present at birth. Watson and Rayner themselves called Albert “extremely phlegmatic,” Fridlund says, and this was the reason they picked him for fear conditioning.
So Fridlund, Beck, Iron, and pediatric neurologist William Goldie (at Johns Hopkins) published their collective findings. A neurologically impaired child, of course, might not have the same responses to stimuli.
Another Albert
Meanwhile, a group of Canadian researchers — Russ Powell, PhD, Nancy Digdon, PhD and Ben Harris — discovered an infant named William Albert Barger whose mother was also a wet nurse at the Harriet Lane Home.
William, whose middle name was Albert, was born on the same day as Little Albert. Notes on his weight also match the weight of Little Albert. In 2014, they published their own research on Albert Barger. Unlike Merritte, Barger lived into his late eighties.
