researchers traced the identity of Little Albert, and the boy was found to have died at age 6 from hydrocephaly or “water on the brain.” Since he had most likely been born with this defect and would have suffered a cognitive deficit as a result of it, he was hardly a good subject to judge normal human reactions. What is more, it seems that Watson must have known that Little Albert was mentally impaired, and thus his generalization of the experiment’s findings was little more than academic fraud. Nevertheless, the Little Albert experiment is now seen as a sad chapter in the history of social psychology.