Psychology’s Lost Boy

Abstract

This article is concerned with the recent debate about the identity of psychology’s lost boy—Little Albert, the infant subject in Watson and Rayner’s classic experiment on fear conditioning. For decades, psychologists and psychology students have been intrigued by the mystery of Albert’s fate. Now two evidentiary-based solutions to this mystery have been proposed. Given the present absence of coverage in introductory textbooks, the purpose of this article is to provide a cornerstone resource for teachers to use as an advance organizer to the literature on this debate. Synopses of the search and resulting evidence for each candidate are provided. A summative comparison of the evidence indicates that Albert Barger is likely Little Albert and that Douglas Merritte is not.