what was the monster study experiment

The Monster Study (Summary, Results, and Ethical Issues)

Psychologists and scientists often go into their line of work for the betterment of mankind. Through their experiments and tireless work, they hope to discover information that will cure diseases, uncover the root of certain disorders, and improve the general health of the population. That being said, it has not always been approached in the best way. Experiments on humans, especially those in marginalized groups, often cross ethical lines. One of the most well-known, line-crossing experiments is The Monster Study.

The experiment is not called the Monster Study because it involves any monsters - but it did threaten to ruin the reputation of the psychologists behind it. The idea was so scary to fellow the psychologist’s peers that the results were hidden away for years.

What Is The Monster Study?

The Monster Study was conducted by Dr. Wendell Johnson (a speech pathologist) to learn more about why children developed a stutter. Johnson developed the Monster Study to see if stuttering was a result of learned behavior or Biology, however, there are many ethical problems with the study.

When Was the Monster Study Conducted?

Dr. Johnson conducted the Monster Study back in 1936 at the University of Iowa. Ethics were not prioritized as they are now in psychology and scientific experiments. If this experiment had been proposed today, the researcher may have been stopped before they could begin!

What Happened in the Monster Study?

Johnson chose 22 orphans as participants for The Monster Study. Some of the orphans had a stutter. (It’s not uncommon for young children to have a stutter and then naturally “get over” the stutter without treatment.) Some of the orphans didn’t have a stutter.

The orphans were split up into two groups, with stutterers and non-stutterers in both groups. One of these groups were labeled “normal speakers.” The others were labeled “stutterers.” Throughout the course of the experiment, the children were treated as such.

Johnson’s team met with the children every few weeks for five months to “evaluate” their speech. Children in the “normal” group were praised for their ability to speak well, even if they were actually stuttering or had problems speaking. Children in the “stuttering” group were told that they spoke poorly. They were told things like, “You must try to stop yourself immediately. Don't ever speak unless you can do it right.”

So what happened?

Results of The Monster Study

The children who were labeled “normal” weren’t affected much by the researchers’ praise. They saw improvement in only one child.

Children in the “stuttering” group fared a lot worse. Remember, not all of these children actually had a stutter - they were just told that they had a stutter. Of the six children that were falsely chastised for their speech, five developed speech problems. Reports show that these children became withdrawn and some stopped speaking altogether. These children were as young as five years old.

The study was created with good intentions. Johnson and his colleagues at the University of Iowa frequently conducted studies on themselves and willing adult subjects in the name of finding a cure for stuttering. But other colleagues worried that the use of orphans was crossing lines. Johnson wasn’t the only person conducting studies on marginalized groups in the name of science - Nazis were doing the same thing over in Germany. So the results of the study were never published.

The Impact of the Monster Study

Even in the 1930s, the Monster Study was crossing lines. Using orphans as test subjects is one thing - using minors in a study without their consent is another. Even the staff at the orphanage were unaware of what was really going on. This left many of the “stutterers” with unresolved psychological trauma. Researchers knew that this was a possibility. One member of Johnson’s team wrote “'I believe that in time they...will recover, but we certainly made a definite impression on them.”

She was right. The students’ schoolwork suffered and one ran away from the orphanage two years later. Later, she said that the study ruined her life.

Subjects didn’t know that they were a part of a study until sixty years after it happened. Only a handful of speech pathology students at the University of Iowa learned about the study after it was published. The information was useful - no one at the time had collected so much data about stuttering and how it developed. But the premise of the study was so horrifying that they nicknamed it “The Monster Study.”

The Monster Study didn’t become nationally infamous until 2001. The San Jose Mercury News published a series of articles about the study and commentary from speech pathologists. While some argued that the experiment crossed many ethical boundaries, others argued that it was just a result of its time. Some acknowledged the importance of the data, while others said that it didn’t come to any real conclusions.

At that point, Wendell Johnson had been dead for over 30 years. The University of Iowa issued a formal apology for the study. As all of this made national news, subjects started to learn the truth about what had happened to them.

The Lawsuit

The subjects sought justice. In the early 2000s, three of the subjects in the “stutterer” group sued the University of Iowa for emotional distress and fraudulent misrepresentation. The estates of three of the other “stutterers” were also included in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs claimed that the impact of the study had a lasting impact. One still “hates to talk.” Another, who says she now has a good life, said that she didn’t have many friends in the orphanage partly because she was so quiet.

They won their settlement and the University of Iowa paid over $1 million to the victims and their estates.

Importance and Infamy of The Monster Study

This study should never be repeated, but it shouldn’t be swept under the rug, either. The Monster Study is an important lesson about transparency and consent in experiments. If we don’t learn from these mistakes, we are bound to repeat them. Even 60 years later, it’s important to talk about The Monster Study, why it was wrong, and how psychology has evolved into a more ethical science.

Other Infamous Experiments in Social Psychology

The Monster Study is not the only controversial experiment in social psychology. It often ends up on lists besides experiments like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

In the 1970s, psychologist Philip Zimbardo recruited a group of young men to pose as guards and prisoners. The guards received no formal training - just instructions to guard the prisoners. Although The Stanford Prison Experiment was meant to take place over the course of two weeks, it was cut short. The results were chilling, and have since been disputed.

Why did it get shut down? Allegedly, the guards took the role so seriously that they began to act cruelly toward the prisoners. Zimbardo asked the guards not to resort to physical violence, but they did. By the sixth day of the experiment, the prisoners had threatened to overthrow the guards. One prisoner stopped eating. Another had a breakdown. Yet, it took six days to call the whole experiment off. 

The Milgram Experiment 

Participants in the Milgram Experiment were faced with a choice: to shock (or not to shock) another participant. No electric shocks were actually administered, but the participants believed they would be. Researchers pressured the participants to administer the shock, despite the knowledge that the shocks were harmful or even deadly. Stanley Milgram put the experiment together to see how far people would go to obey the order of another. 

Robbers Cave Experiment 

This experiment was similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment, but with slightly younger participants. The Robbers Cave Experiment brought together two groups of boys at a summer camp. Researchers separated the two groups, assigned them names, and began to create conflict between them. Results were not as dramatic as the Stanford Prison Experiment, but similar criticisms have arisen. Also, like the Stanford Prison Experiment, the study only used young, white boys in the experiment, but made wide generalizations about social psychology. Excluding such a large portion of the population may be okay if you’re doing a study on one demographic, but this should be mentioned in the research. 

What do all of these experiments have in common? They all have the potential to cause great trauma. The events of the experiments may not be “real” to researchers, but they are “real” to participants. The participants in the Milgram experiment truly believed they were administering deadly shocks. Prisoners in the Stanford Prison Experiment were physically harmed. Those effects don’t “go away” when the experiment is over. And usually, a participant may not understand the premise of an experiment before they sign up. This is why ethical codes in psychology are especially important, both for the participants in research and for anyone who views the conclusions derived from the research.

How to Conduct Ethical Experiments in Psychology 

Ethics is more important nowadays than it was in the 1930s. But how do psychologists ensure that their experiments are ethically sound? Organizations like the American Psychological Association put together guidelines for psychologists and researchers to follow. Guidelines from the APA have been in place since the 50s, but they are constantly evolving. 

Principle A: Beneficence and Non-maleficence

This principle goes beyond being nice. The APA encourages professionals to care for the people who are subjects in their research. Eliminating biases and prejudices is just one way that psychologists can act with beneficence and non-maleficence.  (It’s important to note that subjects include humans and animals.) 

Principle B: Fidelity and Responsibility

Psychologists have a responsibility not only to consider the well-being of their subjects, but to ensure that colleagues are acting ethically, too. The psychologists working alongside Philip Zimbardo or Stanley Milgram also had a responsibility to inform their colleagues of the possible effects of their controversial experiments. 

Principle C: Integrity

Psychology research is supposed to reveal the truth about the way the mind works. Professionals may have an idea about how the study will turn out, but they must keep an open mind. If the results don’t match the psychologist’s hypothesis, they have to report that honestly. Skewing the results, or skewing the study in order to get certain results, is not ethical. 

There is controversy as to whether Philip Zimbardo, for example, skewed the Stanford Prison Experiment to make the guards more cruel to prisoners and the results more dramatic. But to find the expose that challenges his findings is harder than learning about the Stanford Prison Experiment itself! 

Principle D: Justice

Treating everyone equally is crucial to keeping psychology a just field. Patients should be held in the same esteem regardless of their background, age, education level, etc. They should also have access to important information in psychology that might benefit their lives and the lives of others. 

Principle E: Respect for People's Rights and Dignity

Finally, psychologists must show respect for the rights and dignity of all people. Maintaining confidentiality is one way to achieve this goal. Why? Think about the Milgram experiment. How would you feel knowing that, under the pressure of the experiment, you hit the “shock” button? People might tell you that you’re cruel. You might feel guilty already, and your guilt may be amplified if your identity were to get out. Confidentiality is key to dignity. 

Related posts:

• Stanley Milgram (Psychologist Biography)
• Philip Zimbardo (Biography + Experiments)
• Stanford Prison Experiment
• The Little Albert Experiment
• Human Experimentation List (in Psychology)

Reference this article:

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Why The Monster Study On Stuttering Was Unethical

The so-called ‘Monster Study’ on children’s stuttering was dramatic, unethical and was never published.

The so-called ‘Monster Study’ on children’s stuttering was carried out in 1939 on 22 orphaned children in Davenport, Iowa.

Conducted under the supervision of Dr Wendell Johnson, a severe stutterer himself, the study examined the effects of being labelled a ‘stutterer’ on children’s development.

The research was dramatic on three counts:

• It was unethical.
• Its results were never published for fear it would be likened to experiments carried out by the Nazis ( Rothwell, 2003 ).
• Finally, in historical context, its findings were dramatic.

Monster study summary

Dr Wendell Johnson, a speech pathologist, wanted to show that the prevailing theories about the causes of stuttering were wrong.

During the 1930s it was thought that stuttering had an organic or genetic cause.

This meant you were born a stutterer (or not) and little could be done.

Dr Johnson had different ideas. Instead he thought the labelling of children as stutterers could actually make them worse, and in some cases cause ‘normal’ children to start stuttering.

To prove his point, he suggested an experiment which has since become known as the ‘Monster Study’.

Power of labelling

For the ‘monster study’, twenty-two young orphans were recruited to participate in the experiment.

They were then divided into two groups.

The first were labelled ‘normal speakers’ and the second ‘stutterers’.

Crucially only half of the group labelled stutterers did actually show signs of stuttering.

During the course of the experiment, the normal speakers were given positive encouragement but it was the treatment of the other group that has made the experiment notorious as the ‘monster study’.

The group labelled stutterers were made more self-conscious about stuttering.

They were lectured about stuttering and told to take extra care not to repeat words.

Other teachers and staff at the orphanage were even unknowingly recruited to reinforce the label as the researchers told them the whole group were stutterers.

Monster study dramatic results

Of the six ‘normal’ children in the stuttering group, five began stuttering after the negative therapy.

Of the five children who had stuttered before their ‘therapy’, three became worse.

In comparison, only one of the children in the group labelled ‘normal’ had greater speech problems after the study.

Realising the power of their experiment, the researchers tried to undo the damage they had done, but to no avail.

It seemed the effects of labelling the children stutterers was permanent.

This is something the orphans labelled stutterers have had to cope with for the rest of their lives.

Clearly this research raises a number of major ethical issues.

Defending the monster study

• The researchers had the best of intentions – they were motivated to help stutterers of all ages. Indeed Dr. Wendell Johnson was himself a severe stutterer.
• The findings supported Dr Johnson’s theory and contributed to new and successful ways of treating people with stutters.

Why the monster study was unethical

Despite the researcher’s good intentions, the ‘monster study’ fails on any number of ethical dimensions.

• The children were never told they had been involved in a study, until it was revealed by a newspaper over 60 years later.
• The teachers and administrators of the orphanage were also misled about the purpose of the study. This deception was never explained to them.
• The study was never published. Because of this some argue the damage inflicted on the children was even more unethical. All studies must balance the potential risks against the potential benefits. Without publication and dissemination through the academic community, this study’s benefits are reduced.

The final word

This is left to the University of Iowa, where Dr Johnson was working at the time of the experiment.

In 2001, 36 years after his death, they issued a formal apology, calling the experiment both regrettable and indefensible.

This judgement is impossible to argue with.

UPDATE: Six participants in this study have just won a £500,000 settlement against the University of Iowa.

Author: Dr Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. View all posts by Dr Jeremy Dean

Join the free PsyBlog mailing list. No spam, ever.

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The Stuttering Doctor's 'Monster Study'

By Gretchen Reynolds

• March 16, 2003

Wendell Johnson was a tall, knobby 20-year-old farm boy when he arrived at the University of Iowa in Iowa City to study English in 1926. The class president and valedictorian of his tiny high school in Roxbury, Kan., Johnson was engaging, ''quite a clown'' in the estimation of the folks back home. He also stuttered grotesquely, often rendered speechless by the impediment. His inability to express himself nudged him toward writing and literature, and he developed a penchant for antic humor, which kept him popular despite his silence. It also propelled him to U. Iowa, the most famous center for stuttering research in the world. Around the country, speech pathology was fighting to be recognized as a science, and Iowa was the new discipline's polestar. Dozens of experiments were under way when Johnson arrived, and he enthusiastically threw himself into the invigorating work, switching to psychology for his master's study. ''I became a speech pathologist because I needed one,'' he'd later say.

Many of his fellow graduate students stuttered almost as painfully as he did, and they'd use one another as guinea pigs. They'd draw blood, hook themselves to electrodes, strike their knees to test reflexes, whip out notebooks in midstride and transcribe their own and others' faltering speech. They'd administer electroshock and shoot guns off near each other's ears to see if being startled affected stuttering. (It didn't, although the same experiment performed on normal speakers did affect their speech.) They'd also put casts on one another's arms, since it was hoped that immobilizing a person's dominant hand somehow would untangle confused brain signals. At one point, about 30 stutterers, including Johnson, wandered the Iowa campus with their arms wrapped in plaster, sometimes playing wrong-handed badminton. ''We knew that we were working on something central in the life of a human being,'' one of Johnson's contemporaries told an Iowa historian. ''We weren't just puttering around on the fringes.''

At the time, physiology had become the favored explanation at Iowa for stuttering. The department's lead professors were certain that the disorder originated in misdirected brain signals. They had used a new device called an electromyograph to study neuromus-cular activity in stutterers, nonstutterers and, in one experiment, people who were drunk (students who, solely in the interests of science, had become soused; the researchers skirted Prohibition by requisitioning alcohol from the university hospital.) The readouts from the booze-tinged subjects showed, to no one's surprise, impair-ment. Intriguingly, more comprehensive experiments showed that stutterers had subtle neuromuscular responses different from those of their nonstuttering peers.

But Johnson, by 1937 an ambitious assistant professor, wasn't convinced. His life story suggested otherwise. He'd spoken fine until he was 5 or 6, when a teacher mentioned to his parents that he was starting to stutter. Gradually an obsession with his speech took hold. His voice grew hesitant. He self-consciously repeated sounds. Those, of course, are among the hallmarks of stammering. By worrying about the problem, he decided, he'd produced it. His disorder lay not in his brain, in biology, but in his learned behavior. Stuttering, he later concluded, ''begins not in the child's mouth but in the parent's ear.''

This idea was provocative and powerful, with enormous implications for speech therapy. If stuttering is learned behavior, it can be unlearned. Biography, however, isn't proof. Johnson, to validate his thesis, needed to design an experiment that induced stuttering. If, he reasoned, any and every child could be made to stutter, then obviously no underlying physiological defect was required. If stuttering could be called forth in normal youngsters, it would be proved as a learned, conditioned response.

In the fall of 1938, Wendell Johnson recruited one of his clinical psychology graduate students, 22-year-old Mary Tudor, who was avid but timorous, to undertake exactly that experiment. She was to study whether telling nonstuttering children that they stuttered would make it so. Could she talk children into a speech defect? The university had an ongoing research relationship with an orphanage in Davenport, Iowa, so Johnson suggested she base her study there. And thus, on Jan. 17, 1939, Mary Tudor drove along the high, swooping bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River to the Soldiers and Sailors Orphans' Home. She toted notepads, chalkboards, a Smedley dynamometer (to measure hand strength) and a cumbersome Dictaphone.

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1939: “The Monster Experiment”

U.S. WWII & Cold War Experiments

The “Monster Experiment” was conceived by and conducted under the supervision of Dr. Wendell Johnson, one of the nation’s most prominent speech pathologists. The experiment induced stuttering in twenty-two children living at the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Davenport. It was designed to test Dr. Johnson’s theory about the cause of stuttering, using psychological pressure to induce children who spoke normally to stutter. The experiment was uncovered by Jim Dyer who had been a graduate student at the University of Iowa in 2001. * https://ahrp.org/article-24/

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The Monster Experiment: Scientific Findings of the Stuttering Experiment

Sehar Waheed and Muhammad Sohail

Table of contents.

In 1939, Dr. Wendell Johnson, a prominent psychologist and speech expert, embarked on a groundbreaking study known as the “Monster Experiment.” His intriguing hypothesis challenged conventional wisdom: could labeling children as stutterers exacerbate their condition and even induce stuttering in those deemed “normal”? (Source: Monster Experiment )

Dr. Johnson’s investigation delved into the intricate realm of operant conditioning, a psychological principle where behaviors are influenced by consequences. (Source: WebMD ) This study aimed to unravel whether negative labeling could act as a catalyst for stuttering, drawing parallels to the principles of operant conditioning. They used appreciation and shouting as reinforcement and punishment for the desired and undesired behavior.

Findings of the Monster Experiment

The impact of the negative stimulus was starkly evident among some orphan children involved in the study. Norma Jean, a five-year-old participant, faced pronounced difficulty speaking compared to her fluent pre-experiment communication. Similarly, a nine-year-old participant nearly ceased talking altogether due to adverse treatment, demonstrating the immediate effects on verbal expression. (Source: University of Iowa )

Betty Romp, another participant, exhibited a fear response, often shielding her eyes with her arms, highlighting the psychological toll of the experiment. The repercussions were notably milder on a 15-year-old participant, who, while becoming more self-conscious about speech, opted to minimize verbal interactions. The varying responses underscored the diverse impact of negative labeling on participants of different ages.

The toll on participants extended beyond mere difficulty in speech. Observable in her nervous demeanor, one participant resorted to snapping her fingers in frustration when prompted to talk. Academic efficiency plummeted across the board, with most participants refusing to participate in class recitations.

Eleven-year-old Clarence exemplified the struggle, pre-emptively acknowledging his speech challenges and later expressing difficulty in articulating words. He vividly described the sensation of words being stuck in his neck, shedding light on the profound psychological impact.

Mary Korlaske’s case revealed a distressing outcome as she became factitious and socially withdrawn. She confided in researchers that her best friend remained unaware of her stutter because she seldom spoke to her. The experiment’s repercussions became so unbearable for Mary that, after two years, she escaped the ordeal by running away from the orphanage. (Source: Stanford University )

Compensation and Views

Mary Tudor, following the experiment’s conclusion, made three visits to the orphanage to offer follow-up care to the affected children. While candidly addressing their lack of academic progress, the efficacy of her truth-telling approach remained uncertain. In a letter to Johnson, she acknowledged the potential for recovery over time but emphasized the undeniable negative influence the experiment had on the orphans’ lives. (Source: The New York Times )

The “Monster Study” got its name because it was done on kids without them knowing—orphans, to be exact. At first, it was kept a secret to protect Dr. Johnson’s reputation. In 2001, the University of Iowa apologized for the study.

Patrisha Zebrowski, a professor at the University of Iowa, had a different view. She thought the study gave the most info ever about stuttering. Dr. Johnson’s work was the first to really look at the thoughts and feelings that affect stuttering. It was a big deal in understanding this speech problem. (Source: BBC )

In conclusion, the “Monster Study” stands as a stark reminder of the ethical complexities within psychological research. Dr. Wendell Johnson’s experiment, conducted on orphan children, delved into the impact of negative labeling on speech development. The immediate and lasting effects on participants, ranging from speech difficulties to social withdrawal, underline the ethical concerns raised by such studies.

The belated acknowledgment and apology from the University of Iowa in 2001 highlight the gravity of the ethical lapse. Patrisha Zebrowski’s perspective adds a layer of complexity, viewing the study as a valuable source of information on stuttering. However, the ethical considerations surrounding the well-being of the orphan children cannot be overlooked.

At The Psychology Square , we advocate for awareness of such unethical practices to guide practitioners in upholding the highest ethical standards in their work. The “Monster Study” serves as a crucial case study, emphasizing the need for ethical scrutiny and conscientiousness in psychological research.

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The Who, What, When and Where of the “Monster” Study

By Gina Vaci and Elizabeth Thorson

• 1939 at the Stuttering Research Program at the University of Iowa by Mary Tudor, and Wendell Johnson
• Tudor conducted her study at an Iowa orphanage, and screened normally fluent children 
• She chose six children who were normal speakers but were told that they stutter
• Tudor’s hypothesis was that labeling a child’s normal speech as disfluent could emit stuttering

Controversial Issues of the Study

• Use of human subjects 
• Setting of the study
• Instructions to orphanage staff
• Children unaware of study
• Franklin Silverman—believed study’s findings were strong
• Many researchers disagree after reexamination of the study

To Children:

“The staff has come to the conclusion that you have a great deal of trouble with your speech.  The types of interruptions indicate stuttering.  You have many of the symptoms of a child who is beginning to stutter.  You must try to stop yourself immediately.  Use your will power.  Make up your mind that you are going to speak without a single interruption.  It’s absolutely necessary that you do this.  Do anything to keep from stuttering.  Try harder to speak fluently and evenly.  If you have interruptions, stop and begin again.  Take a deep breath whenever you feel like you are going to stutter. Don’t even speak unless you can do it right.  You can see how (name) stutters don’t you!  Well, he undoubtedly started the same way you are starting.  Watch your speech every minute and try to do something to improve it.  Whatever you do, speak fluently and avoid any interruptions whatsoever in your speech.”

“The staff has come to the conclusion that these children show definite symptoms of stuttering.  The types of interruptions they are having very frequently turn into stuttering.  We have handled a number of cases very similar to these children.  You should impress upon them the value of good speech, and that in order to have good speech one has to speak fluently.  Watch their speech all the time very carefully and stop them when they have interruptions; stop them and have them say it over.  Don’t allow them to speak unless they can say it right.  They should be made very conscious of their speech, and also they should be given opportunities to talk so that their mistakes can be pointed out to them.  It is very important to watch for any changes in the child’s personality, in his attitude towards school work, and toward his playmates.”

Results of the Study                                                                   

• Reduced speech for all 6 subjects
• Rate of speaking was decreased
• Length of replies was shorter
• They were more aware and embarrassed
• They accepted the fact that there was something wrong with their speech
• Every child reacted to his/her speech interruptions in some way (Silverman)

Tudor concluded that her findings supported the hypothesis that “evaluative labeling can influence behavior” (Tudor 1939).  A few months after Tudor left the orphanage, the orphanage contacted her to voice their concerns about the children’s speech.  She then returned to the orphanage, as she felt remorseful about the worsening of their speech, and attempted to use positive therapy to improve their speech. 

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Program: Unethical experiments: the Monster Study

Program: All In the Mind

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Wendell Johnson had a terrible stutter as a child.

As an adult, he wanted to investigate its causes. His hunch was that stuttering was a normal and temporary quirk of speech, but one that became debilitating the more parents and adults obsessed over it.

With relatively benign intentions, he devised an experiment that would go on to be dubbed the "Monster Study", inflicting terrible harm on a group of vulnerable and unsuspecting children.

Guests: Jonty Claypole Writer and documentary producer Author of Words Fail Us: In Defence of Disfluency

Presenter/producer: Sana Qadar

Producer: Jennifer Leake

• Sana Qadar, Presenter
• Jennifer Leake, Producer
• Isabella Tropiano, Sound Engineer

Image Details

The Monster Study was an experiment performed on 22 orphan children in Iowa in 1939. ( Getty Images: salim hanzaz )

Sana Qadar : The history of scientific research is littered with examples of unethical experiments.

The most infamous of these are pretty well known, like the horrific medical procedures Nazi doctors carried out on prisoners during the Holocaust, or the Stanford prison experiment where participants had to act as inmates or guards in a locked prison, which they did, to a terrifying degree. Both those examples led to ethical standards being introduced in their respective fields of medicine and psychology. But we're going to take a closer look at the field of psychology over the next couple of episodes, with a focus on some lesser-known studies.

Jonty Claypole : I first heard about the Monster Study when researching a book on stuttering I wrote.

Deborah Blum : If you look at Harlow as an example, the worst of those experiments were a device which he called 'the pit of despair'.

Jonty Claypole : It's a pretty horrifying attempt to prove a scientific theory.

Deborah Blum : And there they produced some really psychotic monkeys, some of whom could never be fixed.

Sana Qadar : This is All in the Mind , I'm Sana Qadar. We're going to find out how we arrived at the ethics standards we have today, and what it cost to get here.

Jonty Claypole : In the case of the Monster Study, it has no validity, no use and should never have happened.

Deborah Blum : These studies rewrote some of the fundamental principles of how psychologists work with abused children. I mean, they were really important. They were really awful and really important. You know, I'll say to people, Harry Harlow takes you right to the line and says, 'What are you willing to pay for knowledge?'

Sana Qadar : First up, the Monster Study.

Jonty Claypole : I became interested in the history of speech therapy because I had a very bad stutter as a kid and one that has lingered through, in a less obvious way, to adult life.

Sana Qadar : This is Jonty Claypole, he is a writer and documentary producer, and he first learned of what has been dubbed the Monster Study when he was researching his book on stuttering, Words Fail Us .

Jonty Claypole : And I came across it referred to on a number of occasions rather obliquely, without much detail. So you've got this very compelling label, the Monster Study, and not a great deal of information about it.

Sana Qadar : Jonty started digging, and what he found deeply disturbed him.

There are two main players in this story, Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor. Let's start with Wendell.

Jonty Claypole : A very, very important figure in speech therapy. Wendell Johnson, along with Charles Van Riper, is the speech therapist who's most important in our understanding of stuttering today.

Sana Qadar : As a kid, Wendell Johnson himself had a really bad stutter.

Jonty Claypole : And as he becomes an adult, to try and understand it and try and make his peace with it, he starts to study semantics and language. He very quickly comes to a theory that a stutter isn't something necessarily that's wrong with a child's speech, it's a habit of speech, generally a temporary habit of speech, that is then fixated upon by nervous adults, particularly parents, and the child develops a self-consciousness about it and the problem gets worse and worse and worse.

Sana Qadar : Wendell had a pithy line that encapsulated his theory.

Jonty Claypole : Which is a stutter develops in an adult's ear, not in a child's mouth.

Sana Qadar : And this idea was largely based on his own experiences, where the more his parents obsessed about his stutter as a kid, the worse it got. But he needed to test this theory. So in the 1930s he begins searching for a group of children to experiment with. He needs some who already have a stutter and some who don't.

Jonty Claypole : An experiment was to find out whether a child could be induced to stutter purely by being labelled a stutterer, told that they had a stutter and made to feel shame about it. And at the same time, whether a child could be cured of a stutter simply by being told that they didn't have a stutter and their speech was absolutely fine. That's the experiment. It sounds relatively benign, but the devil is in the detail of how they did it.

Now, where are you going to find a large group of children who don't have parents looking after them to make sure their children aren't subject of a scientific experiment? And so very quickly Wendell Johnson looks to the state orphanage down the road. And Wendell Johnson says this is perfect, there's 500 children in this orphanage, statistically five of them at least are going to stutter because 1% of all people stutter. So we're going to have some kids who stutter, we are going to have a lot who don't. They don't have parents to get in the way and tell us what we can and can't do, so we can put my whole theory to the test there.

Sana Qadar : And the orphanage didn't have any objections? Did they know what they were going to do to the children?

Jonty Claypole : The authorities of the orphanage, which is ultimately the state itself, know what's happening. In terms of the individual carers and the teachers they are, they don't. They are told by Wendell Johnson's team that they are speech therapists, they've come to do trials and work around speech therapy, and they need to help them in the work they're doing. They do not realise that a whole bunch of kids who don't have speech problems are going to be told that they do.

Sana Qadar : This orphanage also had an ongoing relationship with the University of Iowa, where Wendell was based, and had been used for experiments before. So the request to conduct a study there wasn't an outlandish one. Anyways, the person who would actually be running the study wasn't going to be Wendell Johnson, it would be his graduate student, a 23-year-old named Mary Tudor.

Jonty Claypole : And he says, 'Look, I've got a theory, I want to test it, there's an orphanage, you're good with kids, I've noticed that you're good with kids, so I want you to lead this study.'

Sana Qadar : Okay, so walk me through what she actually does once the study starts.

Jonty Claypole : Okay, so they take 22 children in total, 10 of whom have previous experience of stuttering. And then they choose, almost randomly, another group of children who are fluent speakers. What they then do is split the children into two groups. So in the first group, which is half the children, those children are told that their speech is absolutely fine, they speak fluently, they have nothing to worry about. Half of those children actually have stutters because Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor want to find out if just by telling a child who has a stutter that they don't stutter, their speech will improve.

The other group, once again consisting of half children who stutter, half children who are fluent speakers, they are told that they all have stutters and this is a terrible, terrible problem and that they need to do something about it because otherwise they're going to become very bad stutter is, it's going to impact their lives terribly.

She even writes down a script, so we even know exactly what it is she says to the children, so it's not hyperbole that we speculate now, her script as she writes it down is; 'You have a great deal of trouble with your speech. The type of interruptions which you have are very undesirable. In fact, you are beginning to stutter. You must try to stop yourself immediately. Use your willpower, it's absolutely necessary that you do this. Do anything to keep from chattering. Don't ever speak unless you can do it right.' That's word for word what she says to these kids.

Sana Qadar : I mean, that's kind of scary to hear, just hearing it. I can't imagine being a child being told don't ever speak until you do it correctly.

Jonty Claypole : And the children, some of them are very young, they range from between 5 to 15 years old, so some of them are very young, they don't have parents in their lives, they are in a very cruel environment which is a 1930s state orphanage, so they are kids that need a bit of love and care, and that's not what they are getting in this experiment.

Sana Qadar : So what does this message do to them?

Jonty Claypole : So over five months Mary Tudor goes every couple of weeks and spends time with each child to see how their progress is doing, and in that time she reinforces the message she is giving each one. What happens is that for the children who stutter who are told that they have fluent speech, their speech improves a little bit, they relax into it, they stutter a bit still but they become more fluent. So this is thumbs up for Wendell Johnson in that way. He and Mary Tudor have taken some children who have a stutter and then smothered them with praise and reassurance.

Sana Qadar : What's going on with the group that did stutter and were told 'your speech is terrible'?

Jonty Claypole : Interestingly for the kids who do stutter and are told their speech is terrible but are still given speech therapy, on the whole their speech improves a little bit, which is quite interesting. They still get some benefit from therapy and I suppose the stigma they have already acquired around stuttering isn't significantly reinforced by having a speech therapist saying 'you have a stutter, this is going to cause you problems', because they know it does.

Sana Qadar : So both groups of stutterers turn out fine. Where the biggest problems emerge is with the group who didn't have a stutter but were told they did.

Jonty Claypole : What happens for the children who don't have stutters at all but who are told that they do and it's very bad, is their speech starts to deteriorate. They become increasingly shy, they start to exhibit behavioural problems, they start to fall out with friends, they become very self-conscious.

Sana Qadar : How quickly does she see these behavioural changes?

Jonty Claypole : It happens almost immediately. So to take a particular case study, I think we should start to talk about names and children, shouldn't we. So there's a child who is referred to as case number 11. Number 11 is a five-year-old girl who six years later is revealed to be called Norma Jean Pugh, so I think we'll call her Norma rather than number 11. Norma in January 1939 has been assessed and is a very normal speaker. That's in week one. And Mary Tudor sits down with her and says, 'I want you to tell me a story.' And the girl says, 'I'll tell you the story of the Three Bears,' and tells the story of the Three Bears. And when she speaks, because she's five, she repeats the old word. She says of Goldilocks, 'She, she, she…' and at that point Mary Tudor says, 'Stop, you're stuttering, what you're doing is stuttering, this is very, very bad.' And she does this while the girl continues to tell this story. So that's in January.

In February a couple of weeks later when Mary Tudor goes back, she now finds it's very hard to get Norma to speak at all, and when Mary Tudor says, 'Why don't you want to speak?' Norma won't answer. And Mary Tudor says, 'Are you afraid of something?' And Norma says, 'Yes, I am, I'm afraid I might stutter.' And in the time that Mary Tudor has been away, Norma's teacher has reinforced Mary Tudor's message by calling her out in class and things and saying don't stutter. So within a few weeks, almost immediately, Norma has gone from being a child with very normal speech patterns to a child who is very reluctant to speak at all.

A few weeks later again, in March, Mary Tudor says, 'I want you to tell me another story,' and Norma won't begin. So Mary says, 'No, you have to tell me a story.' And so Norma begins to tell the story of Peter Rabbit, but she can no longer speak in normal sentences, she is breaking her speech into very, very short nuggets of words. And again, Mary Tudor says, 'What's wrong, why aren't you speaking much, why are you speaking in these weird, short nuggets?' And Norma says, 'I'm afraid I might stutter.'

By the end, by April, it's only a couple of months, she has gone from having been described as a normal speaker by the assessors, as somebody very, very unwilling to talk.

Sana Qadar : What do you make of that story when you hear that, how withdrawn that little girl became?

Jonty Claypole : It's heartbreaking, and I know what it's like to be a child who stutters and a child who stutters badly and feels very self-conscious about their speech. I know what it's like not to want to open your mouth in the classroom for fear of being laughed at. So I find it heartbreaking and I find it heartbreaking because she is an entirely defenceless five-year-old girl who has no parents, is in a very un-hospitable environment. And of all the problems she's got in her life, actually stuttering is not one of them but she is being told she does.

And the thing that always makes me choke in the report, in Mary Tudor's report, are these human glimpses that come through. So the report is full of data, you know, how many interruptions a child makes per minute in a speech, particular things they say that illustrate a point, but in the case of Norma, the only way to draw her out is to get her to tell stories. And so you get these accounts of how she begins telling the story of the Three Bears, and the idea of this five-year-old girl wanting to tell the story of the Three Bears but not being able to or being stopped every time she opens her mouth and told not to stutter, I find heartbreaking.

Sana Qadar : Yes.

I don't know about you, but hearing this honestly makes me want to cry, and to just give Norma a hug. We don't know what happened to Norma later in life, how that experience impacted her in adulthood, but we do know what happened to another girl called Mary Korlaske.

Jonty Claypole : So Mary Korlaske was part of that same group. She was a fluent speaking child who was told they have a stutter. Mary was a bit older, she was 12, her treatment starts in January 1939 where she is told she has this terrible problem, and a very similar thing happens. She becomes very reticent to speak. She falls out with her best friend, she becomes so self-conscious about her speech that she stops talking to her best friend, so she becomes a very isolated figure. And afterwards she becomes a delinquent, she runs away from the orphanage two years later and ends up in quite a rough school for orphans.

We know more about her because she emerges 60 years later, and what happens with the Monster Study is that after it's finished and Mary Tudor's dissertation is written up, it just gets put on a shelf in the University of Iowa library. It's known that it exists, but there is understandably within Wendell Johnson's department and more widely in the university a sense of embarrassment about it. There is a realisation quite quickly that it probably shouldn't have happened and that it was ethnically very compromised. And it was during that time that it acquired this legendary status and was referred to obliquely as the Monster Study, although very few people had access to it or could see it.

But what happens is in the early noughties, about 20 years ago, is a journalist who has seen references to it picks it up and starts to find out what happens. He goes to the University of Iowa library where it is there on the shelves, on the stacks, it can be read, and he starts to hunt down the children who participated in it.

One of the people he comes across is Mary Korlaske who was 12 at the time, and she tells her story. And she was sent to the orphanage when she was seven. Her mother was alive but her family had lost everything in the Great Depression, so they couldn't afford to feed her. And one day her mother handed her to a man in a car who was from the orphanage and said, 'Don't worry, you'll be okay,' and she was taken off and never saw her mum again at that time.

When she was told in January 1939 that she is going into a classroom to meet an outside woman called Mary Tudor, she was very, very excited, she thought this was going to be her new mum, that somebody was adopting her. So she goes into this classroom full of hope and meets Mary Tudor who begins to conduct this psychological experiment on her and tells her she has a problem with her speech.

At the moment she is approached in the early noughties, she has never done it was all a hoax essentially, because they never did a mop-up job afterwards. The University of Iowa, Wendell Johnson's department and Mary Tudor never went and told the kids 'hahaha, it was all a…' and I can understand to some extent why they wouldn't do that because they would be admitting to insupportable practice.

So Mary Korlaske finds out that this landmark event in her life, which destroyed her confidence, caused her to fall out with her friends and ultimately run away was all just a hoax, a scientific experiment. And what we do know is that she writes to Mary Tudor.

Sana Qadar : By this point, Mary Tudor was in her 80s, Mary Korlaske in her 70s. But the letter that she writes was addressed to 'Mary Tudor, the Monster'.

Jonty Claypole : And inside the letter says: 'You destroyed my life. I could have been a scientist, archaeologist or even president, instead I became a pitiful stutterer. The kids made fun of me, my grades fell off, I felt stupid, clear into my adulthood. I still want to avoid people to this day.'

Sana Qadar : For all the damage done by Wendell Johnson's study, he also disproved his own theory, that a stutter begins in an adult's ear, or that it's caused by anxious parents obsessing over natural and temporary quirks of speech, because the children who didn't stutter in the study but were told they did, didn't go on to develop stutters, despite what Mary Korlaske wrote. They developed psychological issues, self-consciousness and hesitations in their speech, but not stuttering, Jonty says.

Jonty Claypole : The assessors, speech therapists, all the assessors said that those children were not stutterers at the end. So it didn't actually prove Wendell Johnson's theory at all, it simply proved something which was fairly evident and obvious anyway, which is if you take vulnerable children and tell them they are terrible, they are going to wind up feeling pretty insecure. So that's about it, that's about as much as it proved.

Sana Qadar : Was there any criticism or pushback on the study at the time? Was there any ethical oversight and was there any criticism that came the years afterwards?

Jonty Claypole : It's only anecdotal, but one of Wendell Johnson's students in the '60s who then became an eminent speech therapist, when he wrote about it, he said when he was studying under Wendell Johnson it was talked about by the faculty but it had been agreed not to do anything with it or publish it. The reason why this student of Wendell Johnson believed that was the case was that because pretty soon after 1939 we know what happens which is that the West starts hearing about trials on human beings taking place in Nazi concentration camps, and there's something about the Monster Study that feels alarmingly similar to the way some of those experiments are conducted. So once again this is only anecdotal, but this student of Wendell Johnson believes that the Monster Study is just quietly hushed up by his department in order to protect the great Wendell himself.

Sana Qadar : And do we know if Wendell or Mary ever came to regret doing the study or feel it was wrong to have done it?

Jonty Claypole : Wendell Johnson didn't, he died relatively young anyway. I should say as well, he's a very, very significant and humane figure in the history of speech therapy more generally. He's not a villain. He has a very benign impact on generations of children who stutter. There's just this period at the start of his career where he needs to prove something to himself and does a bad thing. Mary Tudor does live long enough. She is alive when the Monster Study is made public in the early noughties, and she is confronted by it, by the journalist. She receives that package from Mary Korlaske saying 'you destroyed my life', she is very conflicted about it. Yes, she feels terrible about it. She tries to rationalise it. So when interviewed about it she says, 'Look, at the end of the day it was a small price to pay for science, look at the countless number of children it helped.' So she takes a utilitarian argument, but utilitarian arguments are never good ones to stand behind.

Sana Qadar : Did it help any children though?

Jonty Claypole : In the sense that Wendell Johnson did, and Wendell Johnson had a very positive impact on…just to pull out and give some broader context, in the 1930s, speech therapy and stuttering have been sort of sabotaged by psychoanalysis, and the psychoanalysts pull speech therapy and our understanding of stuttering back into…not back, they just pull it into a very, very dark place, and their theory of stuttering is that stuttering is all a symptom of neurosis, there is nothing physiological or neurological to it at all. According to Freud and his disciples, stuttering is purely neurotic in origin. And they write these very unpleasant, unseemly accounts of stuttering being similar to the action of the anal sphincter as it sort of clenches on faeces, stutterers are therefore mostly repressed homosexuals. And speech therapy goes to a very, very bad place and that psychoanalytic model of stuttering lasts right through the 20th century and is responsible for a lot of the stigma around stuttering that was still evident when I was a child.

A figure like Wendell Johnson is a saviour, in a sense, because he is somebody who has personal experience of stuttering, knows it's got nothing to do with repressed sphincter functions and neuroses, and just takes a very humane attitude to it and starts to develop quite simple techniques for helping children speak more fluently. So he takes on the psychoanalysts. And when I was a kid, the speech therapy I was doing was school of Wendell Johnson still. So he did help countless children, he helped me, but at a certain point he needed to…he felt he had to have concrete proof for his theory and that's what the Monster Study was designed to do.

Sana Qadar : Wendell Johnson went on to develop pioneering treatments that would help children improve their speech without shaming them.

Jonty Claypole : Essentially the job of a speech therapist is to help a child build confidence and give them a few practical tips for managing their stutter. So, some of that is what's called speech modification therapy where if you have a bad stutter, you are essentially taught to rebuild your speech from scratch, slow your words right down, you develop techniques for entering words more softly.

And he also developed a technique which is a very, very important one today and really at the heart of modern speech therapy practice, which is called voluntary stuttering, which is where you, as a person who stutters, you go and perform exercises in public where you address strangers, make phone calls, and you voluntarily stutter. You are effectively fake a stutter, and you start to build a kind of control around how you stutter. It's a form of exposure therapy and it's very, very effective. It's at the absolute heart of speech therapy practice today.

Sana Qadar : So, clearly, Wendell Johnson's legacy is a complex one. There is good and bad all mixed up in there. He was also working at a time when ethics standards weren't what they are today. His study was hardly an outlier. But we can still judge the Monster Study while understanding its context, and not only was it harmful at the time, it was ultimately useless.

Jonty Claypole : Very few psychological trials and experiments conducted in the 1920s, '30s or '40s are conducted in a way that we would do them today. There's rarely enough case studies or data. I mean, the Monster Study has 22 children, that's all, it's not a big enough segment to come to any firm conclusions. They are also riddled with prejudice and preconceptions at the start that I think make them very difficult to have too much trust in. So, for instance, in the Monster Study, there is a fundamental disrespect for the subjects, the children.

They are measuring their IQ but they are measuring their IQ…I mean, IQ, which is a very overrated form of intelligence assessment anyway, but in the 1930s was even more primitive, and lo and behold it turns out that IQ prejudices privileged well-educated children. So most of the children in the orphanage and almost all of the children in the Monster Study have low IQ by a 1930s' IQ assessment. So they are perceived to be of a sort of low calibre.

So it's very hard to say we took 22 children who were treated very badly and exist in the sort of institution that doesn't exist nowadays, and to say that's a study that has any use for today. So I think you have to look at each trial and experiment on a case-by-case basis about whether what they find has any validity or use today, but I'd certainly say in the case of the Monster Study, it has no validity, no use and should never have happened.

Sana Qadar : That's Jonty Claypole, author of Words Fail Us: In Defence of Dysfluency .

Thanks to producer Jennifer Leake and sound engineer Isabella Tropiano. And that's it for All in the Mind this week.

Next week we take a look at a series of studies that changed how we view the role of touch and affection in parenting, with methods that started off pretty harmless but ended in deeply unethical territory.

Deborah Blum : But I don't paint Harry Harlow as an out-and-out villain. What made him both a great scientist and, in the end, a very poor ethicist, was he was fearless about finding and trying to understand the questions he thought were important.

Sana Qadar : That's on our next episode. I'm Sana Qadar, thanks for listening, I'll catch you next time.

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Voices of Vulnerability: Ethically Dubious Insights from the Monster Study Experiment

By amelia sinclair, this article is divided into the following sections:.

The Monster Study Experiment, conducted in 1939 by Wendell Johnson and his team at the University of Iowa, is one of the most controversial and ethically debated studies in the history of psychology. This experiment sought to investigate the effects of positive and negative speech therapy on children, particularly focusing on the development of stuttering.

By examining the methodology, findings, and implications of the Monster Study Experiment, we can gain crucial insights into the impact of psychological interventions on vulnerable populations and the ethical responsibilities of researchers.

Methodology and Design

The Monster Study Experiment was designed to explore how different types of verbal feedback could influence a child’s speech patterns. Johnson’s team selected twenty-two orphaned children from Davenport, Iowa, for their study. These children were divided into two groups: those who exhibited normal speech and those who showed signs of stuttering. Each group was further divided into two smaller groups, receiving either positive or negative speech therapy.

The children in the positive therapy group were given encouragement and praised for their fluency, regardless of their actual speech patterns. On the other hand, the children in the negative therapy group were subjected to criticism and told they had speech problems, even if they did not. The researchers aimed to determine whether these differing feedback approaches would exacerbate or alleviate stuttering in the children.

The study’s design involved close observation and documentation of the children’s speech behaviors over several months. The researchers sought to understand the psychological impact of their interventions and to draw conclusions about the causes and treatment of stuttering.

Key Findings

The results of the Monster Study Experiment were both enlightening and deeply troubling. The children who received positive reinforcement generally maintained or improved their speech fluency, experiencing fewer instances of stuttering. In stark contrast, many of the children subjected to negative feedback exhibited increased signs of speech problems, including heightened anxiety, reduced self-esteem, and more pronounced stuttering behaviors.

These findings highlighted the powerful influence of verbal feedback on a child’s speech development and overall psychological well-being. The Monster Study Experiment demonstrated that negative reinforcement could have detrimental effects, particularly on young, impressionable children. The experiment underscored the importance of supportive and encouraging feedback in fostering healthy speech patterns and self-confidence.

However, the study also revealed the potential for significant harm resulting from unethical research practices. The children in the negative therapy group experienced long-lasting psychological damage, with some continuing to struggle with speech issues and emotional distress well into adulthood. The experiment’s outcomes raised critical questions about the ethical boundaries of psychological research and the responsibility of scientists to protect their subjects from harm.

Psychological Mechanisms and Implications

The Monster Study Experiment revealed several psychological mechanisms underlying the effects of speech therapy on children. One key factor is the role of self-fulfilling prophecies, where individuals internalize the expectations and feedback they receive, shaping their behavior to align with those perceptions. In the context of the study, children who were constantly criticized and labeled as having speech problems began to believe in their deficiencies, leading to increased anxiety and impaired speech performance.

Another important mechanism is the impact of self-esteem on behavior. Positive reinforcement helped children develop confidence in their abilities, reducing anxiety and improving speech fluency. Conversely, negative feedback undermined their self-esteem, creating a cycle of fear and failure that exacerbated stuttering.

These insights have profound implications for understanding the development of speech disorders and the broader field of child psychology. The findings emphasize the importance of nurturing environments that promote self-confidence and resilience, rather than criticism and fear. This understanding has informed therapeutic approaches that prioritize positive reinforcement and emotional support, aiming to create conditions conducive to healthy development.

Ethical Considerations

The Monster Study Experiment is often cited as an egregious example of unethical research practices. The use of vulnerable orphaned children as subjects, the deliberate induction of psychological harm, and the lack of informed consent raise serious ethical concerns. The experiment violated fundamental principles of research ethics, including respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.

The ethical controversies surrounding the Monster Study Experiment have significantly influenced the development of modern ethical guidelines for psychological research. These guidelines emphasize the importance of minimizing harm, obtaining informed consent, and ensuring the welfare of participants. Researchers are now held to rigorous standards to protect the rights and dignity of their subjects, reflecting lessons learned from past unethical practices.

Broader Societal Impact

The insights gained from the Monster Study Experiment have had significant implications for various domains, including education, therapy, and public policy. Understanding the impact of verbal feedback on child development can inform teaching strategies that foster positive learning environments. Educators can use constructive feedback to build students’ confidence and resilience, promoting academic success and emotional well-being.

In therapeutic settings, the findings of the Monster Study Experiment have underscored the importance of positive reinforcement in treatment approaches. Speech therapists and psychologists can use supportive techniques to help individuals overcome speech disorders and build self-esteem, enhancing the effectiveness of interventions.

On a broader societal level, the ethical lessons from the Monster Study Experiment have informed public policies that protect vulnerable populations from harmful research practices. These policies ensure that research involving children and other at-risk groups adheres to stringent ethical standards, safeguarding their rights and well-being.

Theoretical Contributions

The Monster Study Experiment has made enduring contributions to psychological theories, particularly in understanding the influence of feedback on behavior and development. It provided empirical support for the concept of self-fulfilling prophecies and highlighted the role of self-esteem in shaping responses to feedback.

The study also contributed to the broader discourse on child psychology, emphasizing the importance of nurturing environments in fostering healthy development. By elucidating the psychological mechanisms underlying stuttering and other behaviors, the Monster Study Experiment has informed theoretical frameworks and research on child development, motivation, and resilience.

The Monster Study Experiment conducted by Wendell Johnson and his team remains a seminal yet controversial work in the history of psychology. Through its provocative design and rigorous methodology, the experiment revealed the powerful impact of verbal feedback on child development, demonstrating how positive and negative reinforcement can shape speech patterns and self-esteem.

As we reflect on the legacy of the Monster Study Experiment, its lessons continue to resonate in various domains, from education to therapy to public policy. Its contributions to our understanding of speech disorders, child development, and the ethical responsibilities of researchers provide valuable guidance for fostering a more effective, humane, and empathetic approach to psychological research and practice.

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Watch CBS News

'Monster Study' Still Stings

August 6, 2003 / 9:08 AM EDT / AP

For six months, Mary Nixon and 10 other orphans were relentlessly belittled for every little imperfection in their speech to test the theory that children become stutterers because of psychological pressure.

Sixty-four years later, the experience still stings.

Nixon, now 76, and some of the other test subjects sued the University of Iowa earlier this year over lifelong psychological problems they say stem in part from the 1939 experiment.

The case has not only thrown a spotlight on an experiment some participants bitterly call the "Monster Study," it has also illustrated the way research ethics have evolved over the years.

"I don't think anybody today likes the idea of seeing orphans, children, used that way," said Jane Fraser, president of the Memphis-based Stuttering Foundation. "But it's really important to keep things in historical perspective."

The experiment was overseen by Wendell Johnson, a distinguished University of Iowa speech expert who set out to unravel the mystery of stuttering by trying to induce the disorder in orphans.

At the time, he believed stuttering was learned behavior attributable to external forces, such as parents' criticism of their children for even the slightest speech imperfections.

None of the test subjects became stutterers. But that has done little to temper the anger they have felt in the three years since they learned what was done to them.

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of three test subjects and the estates of three others, seeks unspecified damages.

The university issued an apology after the study was made public in news reports. But the state also asked a judge last month to dismiss the case, claiming that the state is immune from such lawsuits under 1939 law.

Many speech experts and therapists agree the experiment was highly unethical by today's standards, but not necessarily by the standards of the day. And they say the case has done little to diminish Johnson's pioneering achievements.

"From the 2003 perspective, he conducted a hugely unethical project," said Arthur Caplan, head of the University of Pennsylvania's bioethics center. But 60 years ago, ethical rules did not exist, and experiments were done using minorities, disabled children or prisoners "because you didn't think of them as morally equivalent to others."

"At the end of the day, how does that affect the historical standing of people who did these things?" Caplan asked. "I think we should not cover it up. I think we should be honest and forthright about the mistakes of our pioneers. Whenever they're honored, it should be discussed. Does it take down their standing as pioneers? No."

In recent years, other controversial studies have come to light that used unwitting subjects to test such things as radiation exposure or the progression of disease.

From 1932 to 1972, the federal government used poor blacks in Tuskegee, Ala., to see what would happen to men when their syphilis was left untreated. Congress passed rules in 1974 requiring informed consent for subjects of government-funded medical studies.

Johnson, who grew up a stutterer himself, was one of the nation's foremost experts in speech disorders when the field was in its infancy. He held a doctorate in psychology and speech pathology and was director of the university's speech clinic from 1943 to 1955. He died in 1965.

He wrote numerous books and more than 100 journal articles on the topic, served as editor of at least two prestigious journals and wrote the entry on speech disorders for the Encyclopedia of Mental Health.

The University of Iowa's institute on speech and hearing disorders carries Johnson's name.

Stuttering afflicts one in 100 people, and modern theories say it is has a mix of neurological and genetic causes. It typically appears in children between the ages of 2 and 5.

The Iowa study, led in part by graduate student Mary Tudor Jacobs, involved 22 youngsters — all of them considered normal speakers — from the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home. One group of youngsters received positive speech therapy; those in the other group were subjected to rapid-fire badgering and were repeatedly told were they were stutterers.

Nothing in the study indicated any of the subjects became stutterers. But researchers concluded that those in the negative therapy group showed a loss of self-esteem and other detrimental effects seen in adult stutterers.

In court papers, attorneys claim Nixon, widowed and living in a retirement home, spent her life believing that she had a speech problem and struggled with insecurities. She now is a recluse, attorneys say.

In addition to Nixon, those suing include Kathryn Meacham, 70, and Hazel Potter Dornbush, 79. All three women still live in Iowa. Their lawyers have rejected repeated requests to interview them.

The Iowa lawsuit accuses researchers and the university of hiding their findings, lying about the experiment to the orphanage and doing nothing to reverse the damage.

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Iowa to pay subjects $925K for stuttering study

The state has agreed to pay $925,000 to unwitting subjects of an infamous 1930s stuttering experiment — orphans who were badgered and belittled as children by University of Iowa researchers trying to induce speech impediments.

Johnson County District Court Judge Denver Dillard issued an order approving the settlement Friday morning; it still must be ratified by the State Appeal Board, which next meets Sept. 4.

The six plaintiffs, who said the experiment left lifelong psychological and emotional scars, had originally sought $13.5 million.

“We believe this is a fair and appropriate settlement,” Attorney General Tom Miller said in a statement. “For the plaintiffs, we hope and believe it will help provide closure relating to experiences from long ago and to memories going back almost 70 years.”

He said it was a prudent outcome for the state because of the high costs of litigation and the difficulty of finding witnesses to events so long ago. He noted that the settlement provides a resolution for plaintiffs who are now in their 70s and 80s.

‘The Monster Study’ The 1939 experiment has come to be known as “The Monster Study” because of its methods and the theory researchers set out to prove — that stuttering is a learned behavior that can be induced in children.

Over a six-month period, Dr. Wendell Johnson, a nationally renowned pioneer in the field of speech pathology, and his staff tested his theory on 22 children who were in the care of the state-run Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home. Some were subjected to steady harassment, badgering and other negative therapy in an attempt to get them to stutter; the rest served as a control group.

According to the study, none became stutterers, but some became reluctant to speak or self-conscious about their speech.

Hazel Potter Dornbush, 84, of Clinton, who was 15 when she was chosen for the study, said she is relieved the case is settled.

“It was awful stressful all these years. I’m just glad it’s over,” she said. “How would you like to have them turn over all your past for the last 80 years?”

Dornbush said she recalls 22 children being taken from the state-run Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home to be used in the research. She said many of the children were told they stuttered even if they didn’t, and the researchers said they were there to help them stop.

“I call that brainwashing. I don’t care what anybody else calls it, that’s my language. I was wise to it right away, but I cooperated. You know we weren’t in no position to argue with nobody. We had nobody to lean on to help us out.”

The university kept the experiment and its methods from the former subjects for decades. It was not until 2001 when the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News published an investigative story about the study and its methods did the former subjects learn about the experiment’s true purpose. The newspaper based its story on statements made by Mary Tudor, one of Johnson’s former research assistants, who lived in California at the time the story was published.

The university apologized for the experiment in 2001; the plaintiffs sued in 2003.

The settlement pays $900,000 to five of the plaintiffs, Dornbush, Kathryn Meacham, the Betty Romp estate, the Clarence Fifer estate and the Phillip Spieker estate. The state also will pay $25,000 to the sixth plaintiff, Mary Nixon.