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History is replete with notorious experiments which, quite rightly, would not be performed today. The "Little Albert" experiment takes a prominent place in the list, alongside the infamous Milgram experiment and the Monster Experiment. The Little Albert experiment was actually inspired by another horror show you may be familiar with: Pavlov's dogs. Before he did his infamous experiment, Ivan Pavlov was actually interested in the study of gastric juices, as well as collecting these juices from the dogs to sell as a "cure" for indigestion.
During this work, he noticed that the dogs would salivate whenever they saw someone in a lab coat approaching to give them food, and even when a foodless lab assistant went by. This inspired his experiment, which demonstrated "classical conditioning".
In it, a metronome was set ticking whenever the dogs were about to be given food. After a time, the food was taken away, but the dogs were conditioned to salivate whenever they heard the sound of Pavlov's metronome.
