John B. Watson’s famous Little Albert study remains controversial today, in part because he never disclosed the child’s real name, leaving researchers and the public to speculate about his identity and fate.
In 2009, psychologists Hall P. Beck, Ph.D., and Sharman Levinson, Ph.D., combed through public records and consulted facial‑recognition experts to solve the mystery of “psychology’s lost boy.” Their analysis concluded that the subject was likely Douglas Merritte, the son of a wet nurse who worked at the Harriet Lane Home.
Beck and Levinson worked with Gary Irons, a relative of Douglas Merritte, who supplied Douglas’s medical records from Johns Hopkins. The records reveal that he died as a young child from hydrocephalus—a condition involving an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the brain.
While Watson reported that Little Albert was a healthy infant, Dr. Jon Fridlund’s review of the original footage suggests otherwise. He noted that the boy had a disproportionately large head, was noticeably pudgy, and—most strikingly—did not display a single social smile during the approximately four minutes captured on film.
By six months, healthy babies typically begin to smile in response to social stimuli, and by nine months they actively seek more interaction. Fridlund also observed that Albert’s reactions to various stimuli were muted: he remained still when presented with a small dog, a burning paper, a leashed monkey, and even a steel bar struck with a hammer behind his back. In most infants, such potentially threatening cues elicit a turn toward a caregiver for reassurance.
Fridlund believes these muted responses may indicate hydrocephalus, which often presents at birth. Watson and his assistant, Rosalie Rayner, had described Albert as “extremely phlegmatic,” a trait they deemed suitable for fear‑conditioning experiments.
The collective findings were published by Fridlund, Beck, Irons, and pediatric neurologist William Goldie of Johns Hopkins, underscoring that a neurologically impaired child may not respond to stimuli in the same way as a typically developing infant.
In a separate investigation, Canadian researchers Russ Powell, Ph.D., Nancy Digdon, Ph.D., and Ben Harris identified an infant named William Albert Barger, whose mother also served as a wet nurse at the Harriet Lane Home. Barger’s birth date and weight matched the historical records for Little Albert, and he survived into his late eighties—contrasting sharply with Merritte’s early death.
In 2014, the team published their research on William Albert Barger, contributing a new perspective on the identity and legacy of the subject of Watson’s experiment.
