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Record W2581147128 · doi:10.1037/hop0000055

The Little Albert controversy: Intuition, confirmation bias, and logic.

2017· article· en· W2581147128 on OpenAlexaff
Nancy Digdon

Bibliographic record

VenueHistory of Psychology · 2017
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicPhilosophy and History of Science
Canadian institutionsMacEwan University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsScrutinyPsycINFOHeuristicsEpistemologyIntuitionRule of thumbPsychologyHistory of psychologyCognitive biasConfirmation biasCognitionSociologySocial psychologyCognitive psychologyCognitive scienceLawMEDLINEComputer sciencePhilosophyPolitical science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This article uses the recent controversy about Little Albert's identity as an example of a fine case study of problems that can befall psychologist-historians and historians who are unaware of their tacit assumptions. Because bias and logical errors are engrained in human habits of mind, we can all succumb to them under certain conditions unless we are vigilant in guarding against them. The search for Little Albert suggests 2 persistent issues: (a) confirmation bias and (b) that overconfidence in a belief detracts from reasoning because logical errors are intuitive and seem reasonable. This article uses cognitive psychology as a framework for understanding why these issues might have arisen in the Albert research and passed the scrutiny of peer review. In closing, the article turns to historians' writings to gain insight into rules of thumb and heuristics that psychologist-historians and historians can use to mitigate these concerns. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.019
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.089
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Other · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.993
Threshold uncertainty score0.100

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0190.089
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0030.004
Science and technology studies0.0070.054
Scholarly communication0.0110.015
Open science0.0020.003
Research integrity0.0080.006
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.160
GPT teacher head0.298
Teacher spread0.138 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreOther

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations4
Published2017
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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