The Unconscious of History #3: Watson, Little Albert, and the Learned Origins of Our Fears

Introduction to the column: The Unconscious of History

History doesn't end in textbooks. It survives in the institutions we inhabit, in the ways we think about care, in the language we use to describe those who suffer. The Unconscious of History is born from a simple conviction: that understanding how the past constructed the psychological categories we use today — of normality, deviance, therapy, exclusion — is a necessary clinical and intellectual act, not a nostalgic exercise.

Each issue explores a historical moment, a movement, a reform, a figure, and brings it into the present. Not to celebrate or condemn, but to ask ourselves: what of that moment is still alive in us? What does it tell us about practice today?

Introduction to this month's theme: Watson, Little Albert, and the learned origins of our fears

There is an experiment psychology has never stopped remembering — and perhaps never stopped questioning itself because of.

It is 1920. John B. Watson — the father of behaviourism, the man who had promised to transform psychology into a science as rigorous as biology — enters the laboratory with a precise question: can fear be taught?

The subject is Albert. He is nine months old. He has no words yet for what is about to happen.

What Watson demonstrated in those sessions was not only about a child and a white rat. It was about something much larger: the idea that emotions are not simply something we feel, but something we learn. That fear, love, and anger can be constructed — brick by brick — through repeated exposure to what surrounds us.

An idea that in 1920 was revolutionary. And that today, in the era of algorithmic feeds and digital environments designed to maximise emotional response, sounds almost like a prophecy.

In this episode we explore the case of Little Albert: what really happened in that laboratory, what it taught us about how the mind works, and why that story — unfinished, controversial, ethically uncomfortable — continues to tell us something urgent about the present.

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01 — The world as it was: historical, political and cultural context

For over two thousand years, psychology was understood in its original sense: a discipline dedicated to the study of the soul. Over time, especially between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this object of study began to transform. The idea of "psyche" was not abandoned, but the way it was interpreted changed: from an inner substance to a set of functions observable through experience. At the beginning of the twentieth century, this process of transformation culminated in a radical turning point. Behaviourism represented a profound shift in the very object of psychology: no longer consciousness, but observable behaviour. One of the fundamental objectives of this movement was to grant psychology a rigorous scientific status, bringing it as close as possible to the biological sciences. From this perspective, what was not directly observable was progressively excluded from scientific analysis.

Behaviourism was officially born in 1913, when John B. Watson published the article "Psychology as the Behaviourist Views It", a text that would later be considered the manifesto of the new discipline. In this view, behaviour is defined as the set of the organism's responses to the environment — observable and measurable. The unit of analysis is no longer the single isolated reaction, but the complex action of the organism as a whole. Watson interpreted these behaviours as the result of combinations of simpler elements, reducing psychological activity to fundamental mechanisms of stimulus and response. Within this reductionist perspective, even emotions were traced back to elementary patterns. According to Watson, the primary emotions of the human being are few and fundamental: fear, anger, and love. All other emotions would derive from their combination and interaction with the environment.

02 — The fracture: the event, the figure, and the conflict that shattered every certainty

An emblematic case of Watson's experiments on the learning of emotions is that of the so-called Little Albert (1920), conducted alongside Rosalie Rayner. Albert was a child of about nine months, selected from a local paediatric hospital. The aim of the tests was to verify whether it was possible to induce an emotional fear response in a child through conditioning, and whether that fear could then generalise to other similar stimuli.

In the initial phase of the experiment, Albert was exposed to various objects and animals, including a white rat, a dog, a rabbit, a monkey, and various animated objects. In this phase he showed no fear reaction: he behaved calmly and, in some cases, even tended to reach out and touch the presented stimuli. This first step served to establish a behavioural baseline, in order to observe any subsequent changes.

In a second phase, Watson introduced the unconditioned stimulus. While Albert was lying on the mattress interacting with objects, a metal bar was struck behind him with a hammer, producing a sudden, loud, and terrifying noise. This sound provoked an immediate fear and crying response in the child. At this point Watson had two fundamental elements: a neutral stimulus (the white rat) and an unconditioned stimulus (the noise), capable of independently generating an emotional response.

The actual experiment began when the two stimuli were repeatedly paired. The rat was placed next to the child and, at the moment it was touched, Watson produced the metallic noise with the hammer on the bar. The procedure was repeated multiple times over the course of two sessions, spaced about a week apart. Progressively, the child's response changed. After repeated associations, the mere presence of the white rat was sufficient to elicit clear signs of fear, even in the absence of the noise.

The phenomenon did not remain limited to the original stimulus. A generalisation of the emotional response was observed: other white-furred or similarly textured objects — such as a rabbit, a dog, and even a wool coat — provoked the same reaction of distress and crying in the child. Five days after the initial conditioning, these stimuli were presented again and the fear response was still present, suggesting that the effect was neither immediate nor transitory.

Watson interpreted these results as a direct demonstration of classical conditioning — already studied by Pavlov in animals — but applied for the first time in a systematic way to human emotions. The theoretical consequence was radical: emotions, not only behaviours, could be learned through the association between environmental stimuli.

03 — The psychological lens: trauma, power, identity and diagnosis: how to read this episode

The Little Albert experiment (1920) can be understood through the paradigm of classical conditioning, according to which an emotional response can be learned through repeated association between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus. From this perspective, fear is not an exclusively innate experience, but a process that can be constructed through interaction with the environment. A stimulus that is initially neutral can acquire a negative emotional valence precisely by virtue of the repeated associations to which it is exposed.

This highlights the deeply plastic nature of the emotional system, especially in the early stages of development. Learning does not concern only observable behaviours, but also emotional responses that can stabilise and generalise over time, becoming part of the way in which the individual responds to the world.

From this perspective, the concept of trauma does not necessarily coincide with the event itself, but with the emotional meaning that is constructed through repeated experience. The emotional system does not simply record what happens, but organises responses on the basis of the associations that form over time.

A second level of reading concerns the dimension of power in the learning process: whoever controls the conditions of the stimulus also controls the possibility of modulating the emotional response. This highlights a strong asymmetry between the one who observes and the one who is the object of the experience. Overall, the case shows that emotions are not static entities, but dynamic processes that emerge from the continuous interaction between organism and environment.

04 — The legacy: what really changed. What the reform left us

The Little Albert experiment had a significant impact on the history of psychology, contributing to consolidating the principles of behaviourism and reinforcing the idea that human behaviour could be studied in terms of the relationship between stimuli and responses. In this sense, it represented an important theoretical turning point — but also one of the most controversial cases in the history of the discipline.

From the very beginning, the experiment raised ethical questions related to the use of a very small and vulnerable human subject, lacking the protections now considered fundamental in scientific research. Even at the time, criticisms were raised about the legitimacy of this type of experimentation, precisely because it directly involved the intentional construction of a fear response.

Today, thankfully, an experiment of this kind would not be considered replicable, both for ethical reasons and out of respect for the rights of the individual involved. A further element of uncertainty concerns the fate of Albert's conditioned responses: it is not clear whether the learned fear was subsequently attenuated or eliminated through a process of deconditioning — hypothesised but never completed due to the child's removal from the study.

Over time, behaviourism itself was partly scaled back and criticised, especially from the second half of the twentieth century onward, with the emergence of approaches that brought internal and cognitive processes back to centre stage. The legacy of this experiment therefore remains twofold: on the one hand, it contributed to the development of a new scientific conception of behaviour and learning; on the other, it opened a lasting reflection on the ethical limits of psychological research and on the relationship between scientific progress and the protection of the individual.

05 — Open question

If emotions can be learned through association with the environment, to what extent is the human being truly aware of the processes that shape their emotional life? This question takes on even greater relevance in the contemporary context, in which individuals are constantly exposed to repeated stimuli, selected and laden with strong emotional charge. Social, relational, and above all digital environments become spaces in which certain emotional responses are not only reinforced, but actively constructed over time.

On social media, for example, continuous exposure to idealised models of success, wealth, or personal perfection can generate automatic emotional associations. The repetition of images and narratives of apparently perfect lives can transform into constant comparison, a sense of inadequacy, or internal pressure — as if that reality represented the norm.

From this perspective, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish what is spontaneous from what is the result of implicit learning, built through repetition and continuous exposure. This reading is also central to clinical practice: many forms of psychological intervention work precisely on the possibility of modifying learned emotional responses, through new learning, gradual exposure, or the restructuring of emotional associations.

Watson's case, therefore, does not close with an experiment — it extends into the present, opening a reflection that remains urgent: on how the environment contributes to constructing our emotional experience, and on the degree of awareness we have of these very processes.

06 — Recommended texts

• Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It

• Watson, J. B., & Rayner, R. (1920). Conditioned Emotional Reactions

• Pavlov, I. P. (studies on classical conditioning)

• Gribaldo (ed.). Il libro della psicologia

• Legrenzi, P. (ed.). Storia della psicologia, 6th ed., Il Mulino

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Conclusion

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