Why do people do what they do? Is it possible to intentionally inspire a person with various feelings? Over the years, psychologists have studied these and other issues by conducting experiments.
And although some of these studies cannot be repeated today due to violation of ethical boundaries, this does not detract from the significance of their conclusions. We present you the top 10 most famous psychological experiments in history.
10. Experiments with Pavlov’s dog, 1904
It is unlikely that there will be a man in Russia who, at least out of his ear, has not heard about the experiments of the scientist Ivan Pavlov. Some consider them sadistic, while others emphasize that the discovery of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes advanced both physiology and psychology.
We will not give an emotional assessment of the scientist's activity and tell about the essence of his experiments.
- Through the hole (fistula) in the animal’s gastrointestinal tract, gastric juice was brought out, collected in a container and its quantity was estimated.
- A light signal was given and at the same time the dog was offered food. At this time, saliva was released from her, and gastric juice flowed through the fistula.
- After some time, the signal was given as before, but the food was not given at the same time. But the dog still saliva and gastric juice. This was a conditioned reflex to an irritant coming from outside.
Conclusions: Pavlov’s experiments made it possible to establish a close relationship between mental and physiological processes that occur in the body of living things, including humans.
9. The Little Albert experiment, 1920
For the experiment conducted by Dr. John B. Watson, a nine-month-old baby from the orphanage, named “Albert B,” was selected. He played with white fluffy objects (a skein of yarn, a white rabbit, a handmade white rat, etc.), and at first showed joy and affection for his toys.
Over time, when Albert played with these items, Dr. Watson made a loud noise behind the child's back to scare him. After numerous trials, Albert began to fear one kind of white fluffy object.
Research Findings: a person can be “programmed” for fear or pleasure of something.
8. Conformism experiment, 1951
What do you do if you know you're right, but the rest of the group disagrees with you? Do you submit to group pressure or defend your point of view? The psychologist Solomon Ash decided to answer these questions.
During his experiment, Ash selected 50 students to participate in a "vision test." Each of them was placed in their own group, 18 pairs of cards with vertical lines were shown and asked to determine which of the three lines on the second card corresponds to the length of the line shown on the first card.
However, the participants in the experiment did not know that there were actors in the group with them who sometimes specially gave the wrong answer.
It turned out that on average over 12 trials, almost a third of the participants in the experiment agreed with the wrong answer of the majority, and only 25 percent of the subjects never agreed with the wrong answer.
In the control group, in which only the participants of the experiment participated, and not the actors, there were less than 1% incorrect answers.
Asha experiment showedthat most people will obey the opinion of the group, because of the belief that the group is better informed than the person himself.
7. Milgram experiment, 1963
Yale University professor Stanley Milgram wanted to test whether people would obey commands, even when it was against their conscience.
The study participants were 40 men aged 20 to 50 years. They were divided into two groups - students and teachers. At the same time, the actors hired by Milgram were always selected as students, and unsuspecting subjects were always teachers.
- The student was tied to a chair with electrodes in one room, and the experimenter and teacher were in another.
- It was stated that the student had to memorize a couple of words from a long list, and the teacher had to check his memory, and in case of an incorrect answer, apply current to the chair.
- The teacher believed that electric shocks ranged from mild to life-threatening. In fact, a student who intentionally made mistakes did not receive electrical discharges.
When the student made a mistake many times, and the teachers knew about the severe pain they allegedly caused, some refused to continue the experiment. However, after verbal persuasion of the experimenter, 65% of teachers returned to “work”.
Milgram's theory emerged from the study, which suggests that people allow others to lead their actions because they believe that an authoritative figure is more qualified and will take responsibility for the result.
6. An experiment with a Bobo doll, 1965
Using a Bobo doll, which is a full-size bowling skittles toy, Stanford University professor Albert Bandura and his team tested whether children were copying aggressive adult behavior.
Bandura and his two colleagues selected 36 boys and 36 girls aged 3 to 6 years and divided them into three groups of 24 people.
- One group watched adults behave aggressively towards a Bobo doll (hit it with a hammer, throw it into the air, etc.)
- Another group was shown an adult playing with a Bobo doll in a non-aggressive manner.
- And the last group was not shown a model of behavior at all, only a Bobo doll.
After each session, the children were taken to a room with toys and studied how their game models changed. Experimenters noticed that children who watched aggressive adults tried to imitate their actions in games.
Study results showhow children learn behavior by watching other people.
5. Foot at the door, 1966
This was the name of a series of experiments conducted at Stanford by Jonathan Friedman and S. Fraser. They involved two groups of housewives, randomly selected.
- Each housewife from the first group was asked during a telephone conversation to answer several questions about the use of detergents (small request). Three days later, those who agreed to answer the questions were asked for a big concession: to allow a group of men to enter their house and take an inventory of their household items.
- The second group of women immediately received a big request without a previous small survey.
- More than half of the subjects from the first group who agreed to answer the petty request agreed with the “bigger request”. But from the second group, less than 25% gave consent to the big request.
The door-to-door experiment demonstratedthat a small concession made by a person increases the chance that he will agree to fulfill further requests.
4. Experiment on learned helplessness, 1967
One of the most famous psychological experiments of all time was conducted by American psychologist Martin Seligman. The subjects were dogs, which were divided into three groups.
- Dogs from the first group received light electric shocks, but could stop its effects by pressing their nose on the panel.
- Dogs from the second group also received an electric shock, but its effect stopped only when the dog from the first group pressed the panel.
- Dogs in the third group did not receive electric shocks.
Then the dogs from all three groups were placed in boxes with low partitions. Jumping them, animals could easily get rid of electric shock. Dogs from the first and third groups did just that. However, the dogs from the second group simply lay on the floor and whined.
Experiment showedthat some subjects will not try to get out of a negative situation, because past experience has led them to believe that they are helpless.
3. The effect of an outsider (aka the effect of a witness), 1968
The idea of this experiment is rooted in the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese, which occurred in 1964 in New York. The crime was watched by 38 people, but not one of them intervened.
Researchers John Darley and Bib Latane conducted 3 experiments in which the subjects acted either alone or with a group of people. An emergency occurred before them (for example, the fall of an elderly woman), and psychologists watched whether the participants in the experiment would come to help or not.
It turned outthat the more information (the name of the victim, why he was in trouble, etc.) the “witness” receives, the higher the likelihood that he will come to the rescue. In addition, people may feel less responsible for interference when there are many other people around. And if no one else responds or takes action to help the victim, the situation is not perceived as an emergency.
2. Stanford Prison Experiment, 1971
Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo chose 24 students for this world-famous psychological experiment, who were appointed either prisoners or security guards.
- The prisoners were held in an impromptu prison equipped in the basement of the Stanford Department of Psychology.
- The guards “worked” an eight-hour shift, had wooden batons and uniforms.
Both the guards and the prisoners quickly adapted to their roles; but the experiment had to be interrupted after 6 days, because it became too dangerous. Every third "guard" began to show sadistic inclinations, and people who performed the role of prisoners were morally suppressed.
“We understood how ordinary people can easily be transformed from a good Dr. Jekyll to an evil Mr. Hyde,” Zimbardo wrote.
What the experiment showed: people's behavior will fully correspond to the social roles imposed on them.
1. Experiment on Facebook, 2012
Not all of the most famous psychological experiments are the brainchild of the last century. Some of them were held recently and, perhaps, you participated in one of them. An example is an experiment conducted on Facebook in 2012.
About 700,000 Facebook users quietly participated in psychological tests so that researchers could see the impact of emotionally colored posts on the “likes” and “statuses” they published.
The details of the experiment were disclosed in a scientific article, and it turned out that over a week the social network showed hundreds of thousands of users only negative or only positive news in the feed.
Why research is useful: it turned out that users of social networks are prone to “emotional infection”, because of which they mimic the emotional response of other people.
