EP05. The Monsters Study: Authority, Identity & The Stories We Inherit About Ourselves
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The Monster Study is frequently described as one of the most unethical psychology experiments in American history.
The familiar version of the story goes something like this: in 1939, researchers at the University of Iowa deliberately tried to make orphaned children stutter by convincing them there was something wrong with their speech.
The actual story is more complicated, and, in some ways, more interesting.
Psychologist Wendell Johnson had grown up with a severe stutter himself. At a time when researchers were looking for neurological explanations for stuttering, Johnson became increasingly interested in a different possibility: could adults inadvertently make a child's speech worse by repeatedly identifying normal childhood disfluencies as a problem?
Graduate student Mary Tudor was tasked with testing the idea.
Twenty-two children at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home participated. Six children whose speech had been considered normal were repeatedly told they were beginning to stutter and instructed to monitor and control their speech. Adults caring for them were also encouraged to reinforce those concerns. Contemporary summaries of Tudor's research confirm that the study involved 22 children and that six normally fluent children were assigned to the group told they stuttered.
Decades later, researchers reexamined Tudor's thesis, and this is where the popular telling becomes shaky. The experiment did not demonstrate that labeling fluent children as stutterers could create developmental stuttering. Modern understanding of stuttering also bears little resemblance to Johnson's original diagnosogenic theory. Johnson nevertheless continued developing that theory after the experiment, arguing that diagnosis and a child's social environment could contribute to the development of stuttering as a clinical problem.
But Tudor's contemporaneous observations raise another question entirely.
Some children became reluctant to speak. One young girl who had previously been talkative eventually expressed fear that she would stutter. The intervention may not have created the disorder researchers were measuring, but the episode asks whether that means nothing happened—or whether the researchers simply lacked a measurement for the kind of harm they actually caused.
The study remained unpublished and largely obscure until reporter Jim Dyer investigated it for the San Jose Mercury News in 2001. The University of Iowa subsequently apologized. In 2007, Iowa agreed to a $925,000 settlement involving six plaintiffs connected to the study, without admitting liability.
And then there's Mary Tudor herself.
She returned to the orphanage after the formal experiment and attempted to undo some of what had been done. Decades later, she expressed regret about her participation. Her role complicates the easy version of this story in which unethical research simply requires unethical people.
Because the Monster Study eventually becomes about something more ordinary than experimental psychology: authority, labeling, identity, and our tendency to internalize other people's descriptions of who we are.
If you're told you're shy often enough, do you become more reluctant to speak?
What happens to the child who's always "the difficult one"? Or "the smart one"? Or "the anxious one"?
At what point does an observation become an expectation—and an expectation become part of someone's identity?
The Monster Study couldn't manufacture a stutter.
What it may have demonstrated instead is how easily an authoritative voice can change someone's relationship with themselves.
Topics Covered
Wendell Johnson, Mary Tudor and the 1939 Monster Study
The diagnosogenic theory of stuttering
Labeling and self-perception
Authority and childhood development
Research ethics and informed consent
Psychological harm
How labels can become part of identity
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Primary Research & Academic Analysis
Mary Tudor — An Experimental Study of the Effect of Evaluative Labeling of Speech Fluency (1939 master's thesis, University of Iowa) — The original research underlying what later became known as the Monster Study. Tudor's thesis is particularly important because Johnson and Tudor never published the experiment as a peer-reviewed study.
Nicoline Grinager Ambrose & Ehud Yairi — "The Tudor Study: Data and Ethics" (American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2002) — A major scholarly reanalysis of Tudor's original study and its results. DOI: 10.1044/1058-0360(2002/018).
Wendell Johnson — "The Indians Have No Word for It: Stuttering in Children" (Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1944) — Johnson's own explanation of his emerging "diagnosogenic" theory, including his argument that labeling and parental evaluation could contribute to stuttering as a clinical problem. Read a digitized copy through Minnesota State University, Mankato
Wendell Johnson — "The Onset of Stuttering: Research Findings and Implications" (JAMA, 1959) — Johnson's later discussion of stuttering onset and the theoretical framework that grew from his research. DOI: 10.1001/jama.1959.03010330112027.
Minnesota State University, Mankato — "The Monster Study–Diagnosogenic Theory" — An accessible overview of the study design, ethical controversy, instructions given to the children, and subsequent disagreement over what the results actually demonstrated.
Ethics & Historical Context
"Contextualizing Contemporary Research Ethics Policies and Practices in Significant Historical Events" — Academic overview placing the Tudor study alongside other important cases in the development of modern human-subject research ethics. Read via PubMed Central
Ethos / University of Hong Kong — "The Ethical Implications of the 'Monster Study'" — Discussion of the study's methodology, legacy, ethics, and later scholarly reassessment, with an extensive bibliography for further research. Read the analysis
Nuremberg Code (1947) — The postwar research-ethics principles establishing voluntary consent as fundamental to ethical human experimentation. The Monster Study predates the Code by eight years, making it useful context for understanding both what formal protections did not exist in 1939 and why historical context alone doesn't resolve the ethical problem raised by the experiment.
Reporting, Lawsuit & Aftermath
Jim Dyer — San Jose Mercury News investigation (2001) — The reporting that brought the long-obscure experiment to widespread public attention more than six decades after it occurred.
University of Iowa apology (2001) — Following publication of Dyer's investigation, the university formally apologized for the research and contacted surviving participants. Contemporary coverage reported that the university described the experiment as regrettable regardless of the standards prevailing in 1939.
State of Iowa Monster Study settlement (2007) — Iowa agreed to pay $925,000 to settle claims brought by surviving participants and representatives of deceased participants. Contemporary reporting notes that six plaintiffs were represented in the settlement.
Documentaries & Interviews
ABC Radio National — All in the Mind: Unethical Experiments — The Monster Study — A useful audio examination of Johnson, Tudor, the study's ethical problems, and Tudor's complicated reaction after the experiment became public. Listen to the episode and read the transcript
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This episode examines several recurring themes in psychology, research ethics, and human behavior:
Labeling and identity
Self-perception
Internalized beliefs
Authority and suggestibility
Childhood development
Social reinforcement
Self-fulfilling expectations
Speech anxiety
Stuttering and speech pathology
Diagnosogenic theory
Research ethics
Informed consent
Vulnerable research populations
Power imbalances
Quantitative measurement versus lived experience
Psychological harm
Obedience to authority
Professional hierarchy
Responsibility and regret
Feedback versus identity
The stories we inherit about ourselves
The Central Question
The Monster Study began with a question about speech: Could adults cause stuttering by convincing a normally fluent child that something was wrong with the way they talked?
The experiment failed to prove that.
But what happened to the children leaves behind a more interesting question:
How much of who we become is a reflection of what other people repeatedly tell us we are?
The Monster Study: The Unethical Psychology Experiment That Made Children Question Their Own Voices
In 1939, University of Iowa graduate student Mary Tudor arrived at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home with an experiment.
Twenty-two children were divided into groups. Some already stuttered. Others spoke normally. Six of those normally speaking children were told something that wasn't true: experts had determined they were developing a speech problem.
For months, adults monitored their speech, corrected their mistakes, and warned them about signs of stuttering.
The experiment failed to do what researchers had hoped. The children did not develop developmental stutters. But Tudor's own notes documented something the study wasn't designed to measure: children becoming quieter, more hesitant, and increasingly afraid to speak.
In this episode of Pretty Evil, we revisit the infamous "Monster Study," the controversial theory of psychologist Wendell Johnson, the young graduate student who carried it out, and the six children who wouldn't learn the truth about what had happened to them until decades later.
But the experiment leaves behind a question much larger than speech:
How much of who we become is shaped by what other people repeatedly tell us we are?
