Milgram's 'Shocking' Experiments on Obedience to Authority

It would be difficult to discuss ethics in psychological research without introducing the infamous experiments conducted by Milgram in the 1960's.  

Following World War II, Milgram became very interested in what led people to commit such atrocious acts as those witnessed in Nazi Germany. He aptly hypothesized that the presence of authority (or perceived authority) played a key role. It is my understanding that this hypothesis may have been strongly influenced by the results of the Nuremberg trials. During these trails, many men claimed that they were good people who were driven to do terrible things by the orders of Nazi authority figures.

About the Experiments
Milgram set out to test obedience to authority in a series of laboratory experiments.
In the first experiment (and perhaps the most well known), adult working men were invited to participate in a "study of memory and learning"at Yale for $4 in compensation. Here is a copy of the study advertisement, which I find to be particularly interesting:

The (In)Famous Case of 'Little Albert', 1920

Welcome to Psychology for Everyone.

For this first post, I have chosen one of the most influential and controversial experiments in the history of psychology. Today's discussion will be on Watson and Rayner's "Conditioned Emotional Reactions", better known as 'the case of little Albert'.

If you have had any exposure to psychology, chances are you have heard of Watson's rather infamous experiments with "little Albert".  However, it is equally likely you have never actually read Watson's article...and his work is frequently misquoted or misrepresented. So both for those who are not familiar with this experiment and for those who have limited familiarity with it, let's take a closer look at what really happened in this experiment which was so important in bringing behaviorism to the forefront of psychological research.