Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Monster Study

Episode Date: October 3, 2026

In 1939, researchers at a prominent American university began an experiment involving children at an orphanage in Iowa. The children were divided into groups, subjected to very different forms of speech therapy, and in some cases told that something was wrong with the way they spoke. The study was never formally published, and for decades, few people outside a small academic circle knew what had happened. Learn more about the Monster Study, one of the most controversial experiments in the history of psychology, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. ⁠Shop the store at ⁠⁠Shop.Everything-Everywhere.com⁠ Sponsors Hexclad Get 10% off your order at ⁠hexclad.com/DAILY⁠ Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at ⁠MintMobile.com/EED⁠ Quince Go to ⁠quince.com/daily⁠ for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! DripDrop Go to ⁠dripdrop.com⁠ and use promo code EVERYTHING for 20% off your first order! Square Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at ⁠square.com/go/daily⁠ Babbel Go to ⁠babbel.com/daily⁠ for up to 60% off Subscribe to the podcast!  ⁠https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/⁠ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere⁠ Discord Server: ⁠https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/⁠ Facebook Group: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/everywheretrip⁠ Website: ⁠https://everything-everywhere.com/⁠  Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1939, researchers at a prominent American university began an experiment involving children at an orphanage in Iowa. The children were divided into groups, subjected to very different forms of speech therapy, and in some cases told that something was wrong with the way they spoke. The study was never formally published, and for decades, few people outside a small academic circle knew what had happened. Learn more about the Monster Study, one of the most controversial experiments in the history of psychology on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Visit BetMgmgm casino and check out the newest exclusive.

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at the University of Iowa, led by researcher Wendell Johnson. Born in 1906 in Kansas, Johnson grew up as the youngest child of Swedish immigrants on a farm. Around the age of five or six, Johnson developed a stutter, which caused him to be sent to schools to try to fix his speech impediment. Despite his speech impediment, Johnson was a force in everyday life. He was the captain of multiple sports teams at his school, president of his high school class, and Valid Victorian.

After graduating, he spent two years at a local college before attending the University of Iowa. Johnson is considered one of the earliest and most influential speech pathologists. He dedicated his life to researching stuttering and trying to find its cause and a cure. He was the first to introduce general semantics into the field of speech pathology. His data remains the largest collection of scientific information on statistics, stuttering onset and fundamentally changed how stuttering research is approached and taught. However, today he is probably best known for a controversial study he conducted in 1939. Johnson proposed that studying is a learned behavior, not a biological one.

This idea came from his own childhood experiences. He stated, quote, Stuttering often begins not in the child's mouth, but in the parent's ear. If he could prove the hypothesis, it would have massive implications for speech therapy and, of course, his career. To conduct the experiment, in 1938, Johnson recruited one of his graduate students, Mary Tudor, as his assistant. They decided to conduct the experiment at the Iowa Soldier's Orphans Home in May of 1939. The experiment aimed to induce stuttering in non-stuttering children. They believe that they could do this by telling the children that, that they could do this by telling the children that,

they stuttered. For children who already stuttered, they believe they could eliminate the speech disorder by telling them that they spoke fine. Tudor and five other graduate students screened 256 kids for the experiment. The group listened to the children speak and created them on a scale of one to five, with one indicating poor speech fluency and five indicating fluent speech. After the initial screening, the researcher selected 22 children as subjects. They ranged from 5 to 16 years old. The orphanage staff and the subjects were not told about tutors' research and believed that they were attending speech therapy sessions. Of the 22 kids, 10 were marked as stutterers and 12 were deemed to be normal speakers before the experiments start.

The 10 children who were stutterers were then divided into two different groups. The first group was 1A, or the experimental group. Five stuttering children were told that their speech had no problems and that they did not stutter. The second group of five was called group 1B and was the control group. The five kids were told that their speech was just as bad as they were told previously and received traditional speech therapy. The 12 non-stuttering children were also split into two groups. Group 2A was the experimental group where the controversies surrounding the experiment lay. Six of the fluent children were told that their speech was absolutely horrible and that they starting to develop a stutter. They were told that this was an urgent issue and must be corrected

immediately and that they could not speak unless they spoke without a stutter. The second group, 2B, was another control group. The six fluent children in this group were told that they did not stutter and were complimented on their pronunciation. During the children's first visit with Tudor, she tested their IQ and whether they were right or left-handed. They tested handedness because at the time a popular theory held that a cerebral imbalance caused stuttering. The theory was that if a person was born left-handed but used their right-hand, their nerve impulses would misfire. Because of the misfiring, the person's speech would be impacted. Johnson was not a believer in the left-hand right-hand theory, but did want Tudor to test each handedness to see if there was anything to the idea. To test

their handedness, Tudor had them drawn a chalkboard and then squeeze a dynameter, which physical therapists used to measure hand and muscle strength. Most of the kids were right-handed, but both groups included left-handed kids. Researchers gave these kids special numbers to identify them. Tudor's intervention occurred every few weeks. When she arrived at the orphanage, she would speak to each child for 45 minutes. During these 45 minutes, she followed a previously agreed-upon script. She told the children who were stutterers in Group 1A that they would outgrow their stuttering and speak significantly better than they do right now. She told them not to pay attention to what other people said about their speaking ability, and that stuttering was just a phase. As for the non-stuttering

experimental group 1B, she told them that they stuttered and that the staff agreed they were having trouble with their speech. They were told they were showing symptoms of kids who were beginning to stutter. From there, the children were given negative speech therapy. This made them hyper-aware of how they spoke. The kids were told to take a breath if they were, they thought that they would stutter, stop speaking if they thought that they were going to stutter, place their tongues on the roof of their mouth, do anything to prevent stuttering, and watch their speech at all times. She then told the children to try to stop stuttering immediately with all their willpower and not speak unless they were confident that they were speaking correctly.

The non-stuttering experimental group responded almost immediately. For example, after Tudor's second session with a five-year-old girl, she found it difficult to get her to speak, despite speaking freely in their prior meeting. Another child, a nine-year-old girl, refused to talk, and a 15-year-old girl reportedly became self-conscious, spoke significantly less, and snapped her fingers in frustration. When Tudor asked the 15-year-old girl why she kept saying the word, ugh, so much, the girl reported being scared she couldn't say the next word

and snapped her fingers to stop saying, uh. Additionally, the group's overall schoolwork worsened. Some children refused to speak in class and began constantly correcting their own speech. When asked why, one child said that their words felt stuck. The children receiving negative speech therapy showed increased self-consciousness, reluctance to speak, and other changes in their communication, and some later reported lasting psychological and speech-related difficulties. As for the kids who had a stutter and were told their speech was fine,

they were given positive reinforcement. There was some improvement in fluency and stability, but overall, their impediment was not cured. Mary Tudor was personally affected by the experiment and felt bad about the negative speech therapy that she subjected the children to. She returned to the Orpnage three times after the experiment to give follow-up care, fearing that she could not reverse their effects. Tudor's master's thesis was never formally published as a journal article, and the study remained obscure outside the speech pathology community for decades. However, it was an open secret in speech pathology, as the University of of Iowa attracted leading researchers into the field. The center came to call the experiment

the monster study in the 1940s and 50s. It's believed they gave it this name because academic peers at the University of Iowa were horrified by the experiment's unethical methods. Wendell Johnson died in 1965 before the public became aware of the experiment. A 1988 article published in the Journal of Fluency Disorders suggests that the experiment was never published because its conclusions were embarrassing. The experiment remained hidden from the public eye for 62 years until 2001. Reporter Jim Dyer brought it to light in 2001 with an investigative series in the San Jose Mercury News, exposing the monster study after examining Mary Tutor's long-overlooked 1939

thesis and locating surviving participants. Dyer was reportedly horrified by the experiment and reached out to the test subjects to better understand what had happened and its impact on the children. Several of the children who were involved had already died, but some were still alive and shared with dire their experiences. Through his interviews, it was discovered that some of the children involved in the experiment had long-lasting psychological effects. For example, one woman involved in the experiment was horrified to learn that she had been a part of it. She was never told it was conducted without her knowledge or consent. Having spent her entire life under the impression that she stuttered, the same woman reportedly pulled back from various aspects of her life.

Other participants likewise described becoming reserved and deeply self-conscious regarding their speech. Some subjects, after learning about the experiment, believe that it had ruined their lives. They said believing that they stuttered made people make fun of them, which led to their grades failing and them feeling stupid. They believe that the experiment took away opportunities to become something better in life due to their anxiety over their speech. Mary Tudor was also interviewed about her part in the experiment. She said she carried deep guilt about it and that if she were tasked with conducting the experiment today, she wouldn't do it. However, she defended her actions by saying that she was just following orders. After the articles were released, the University of Iowa issued an apology.

Despite the unethical experiment, the University of Iowa still has the Wendell Johnson's Speech and Hearing Clinic, which remains a leading educational center for stuttering research. The monster study became notorious primarily for its ethical problems rather than for establishing the cause of stuttering. Johnson's theory that stuttering could develop largely through parents or others labeling normal childhood disfluencies as stuttering was influential for a time but is no longer considered an adequate explanation for the disorder. Modern research indicates that developmental stuttering is a complex neurodevelopmental condition involving both genetic, neurological and other factors. Defenders of Johnson have argued that research standards were very

different in 1939 and that the experiment should be evaluated in the context of the ethical norms of its era. The surviving children from the experiment, along with the families of those who had passed away, filed a lawsuit against the state of Iowa for the monster experiment. The state initially tried to dismiss a lawsuit, but the Iowa Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. In August of 2007, the state of Iowa agreed to pay a total of $925,000 to six plaintiffs, including surviving participants and representatives of deceased participants. In the years that have passed, the American Speech Language Hearing Association has prohibited experimentation on children where there is a chance of lasting harmful consequences. Children can still be studied, but researchers must provide strong

justification before exposing any child to research risks. The Monster's study remains, one of the most infamous examples of a scientific curiosity can collide with basic ethical responsibilities. The experiment was hidden from the public for decades, but its eventual exposure helped turn it into a cautionary tale about informed consent and the limits they have to be placed on human experimentation. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Olivia Ash. My big thanks go to everyone who supports a show for on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone

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