In 1879, physician and physiologist Wilhelm Wundt created the Institute of Experimental Psychology at the University of Leipzig. Now 1879 is considered the year of birth of psychology as a science. Since then, psychological experiments - like Pushkin for writers - are "our everything", because with their help a lot of things have been discovered that people would not want to know about. We will tell you about the most interesting ones.
Little Albert
Many have heard of this psychological experiment. This is understandable: despite the fact that the experiment was carried out almost a hundred years ago - in 1920 - it is still considered one of the most scandalous in history. Its author is an American psychologist and, by the way, the future founder of behaviorism John Brodes Watson, who decided to find out where emotions come from. Watson believed that we are born with a ready-made set of three components: love, fear and rage. But the frequency of their manifestation, as well as the circumstances under which they will be applied, depends on the personal experience of each.
It seems obvious today, but a hundred years ago it was only a theory, and to test it, Watson conducted a series of experiments on an infant named Albert. The experiments began when the child was only nine months old and ended when he was 14 months old. Little Albert's mother worked as a nanny in a children's hospital, so she did not refuse a dollar a day for the torment of her son. And she hardly realized what such experiments could lead to.
But what did Watson do with the unfortunate baby? First of all, he scared. The psychologist wanted to investigate the emergence of phobia and fear - and he succeeded. To begin with, they, along with an assistant named Rosalie Rayner, showed the boy various objects: a white rat, burning matches, a clown mask and other frightening props. And the kid liked everything: he happily reached out not only to the rat, but also to the burning matches.
But the next time, the insidious Watson, showing the rat to the boy, unexpectedly hit a metal pipe with a hammer. The child was frightened by the sharp sound and began to cry. The experimenter thought this was not enough, so he repeatedly "consolidated" the boy's fear of the rodent. In the end, I got my way. s began to shy away in horror not only from the white rat, but also from any white fluffy objects, be it a fur coat or Santa Claus's beard.
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So Watson proved that phobia is not something innate, but acquired through life experience. True, as it turned out later, the experiment could not be called pure, because the boy was not completely healthy: he suffered from hydrocephalus, from which he died at the age of six. Today, such a study cannot be carried out for ethical reasons, therefore, it is impossible to fully test Watson's hypothesis.
Study of conformism
It was this topic that interested the American psychologist Solomon Asch in the first place. In 1951, he published the results of experiments that amazed the scientific world. They were simple: they involved groups of students who were warned about being tested for vision. In fact, Asch's job was to track their reaction to the mistaken majority opinion.
The group of eight students usually consisted of "decoy ducks" (except for the control group). All of them were shown two cards in order. One had one vertical line, and the other had three, only one of which was the same length as the line on the first card. The students' task was extremely simple - to determine which line on the second card corresponds to the length of the line on the first.
It would seem that even a child should cope with this. But the students named their answers out loud, while the cunning Ash persuaded the "decoy ducks" to answer the question incorrectly. The unsuspecting student was always the last to answer and, completely bewildered … agreed with the group.
Of course, not everyone did this, but the lion's share of the subjects. According to the experiment, 75 percent of students submitted to the mistaken opinion of the majority, unable to bear the discomfort of thinking that their opinion would be different. Moreover, this effect was not observed in the students from the control group, who gave different answers: when the "conspirators" were not unanimous in their answers, the subjects did not agree with the majority much more often.
Milgram's experiment
Perhaps the most famous psychological experiment in history was conducted by American social psychologist and student of Solomon Ashe Stanley Milgram of Yale University in the 1960s. The scientist investigated how people submit to authority, namely, asked the question: how much suffering people are willing to bring to others, completely innocent, if causing pain is part of their work duties. Thus, the psychologist tried to find out how ordinary Germans during the Nazi regime could participate in the extermination of millions of people in concentration camps. At first, Milgram even wanted to go to Germany, but after conducting a test experiment in Connecticut (USA), he realized that this was unnecessary: people are the same everywhere (later, however, the experiment was nevertheless repeated in Germany and other countries occupied by the Nazis).
The study always involved three: the subject, the experimenter, and the actor who played the role of another subject. The experimenter required the subject to set simple memorization tasks to the actor. If he answered incorrectly, the subject pressed a special button - and the actor was electrocuted (as the subject thought - in fact, the actor, of course, was pretending). With each new mistake, the experimenter demanded that the subject increase the current strength, convincing him with various arguments, for example: "Although electric shocks can be painful, they will not lead to long-term tissue damage."
It ended with the fact that, starting with 15 volts, 26 out of 40 subjects reached - it's scary to say - 450. Only five of them were able to stop at 300, four at 315, two at 330, one person at 345, 360 and 375 volts. Milgram concluded: "This study showed an extremely strong willingness of normal adults to go unknown how far, following the directions of authority."
Diffusion of responsibility
Many experiments are devoted to the phenomenon. But the first and most famous was the 1968 study of American social psychologists Bibba Latane and John Darley. The original experiment was done in New York, and it was very simple: one college student simulated an epileptic seizure, and psychologists watched it happen. It turned out that if there was only one passer-by nearby, the student received help in 85% of cases, if there were several - only in 35%.
Later, the researchers complicated the experimental conditions a little. Specially trained people were introduced into groups of casual witnesses, demonstrating with all their appearance that in a critical situation nothing special happens. This time, the scientists launched smoke into the auditorium where the subjects were. The results were the same: if people were not in a group with others, then in 75% of cases they reported smoke to the fire department, if three saw the smoke, they called firefighters only in 38% of cases. But if in a group of three people two "decoy ducks" did not pay attention to him, they reported about smoke only in 10% of cases.
Pygmalion effect
This interesting phenomenon was discovered in the 1960s by the American psychologist Robert Rosenthal in an experiment with students and laboratory rats. He divided both the first and the second into two parts, instructing students to train animals. He told one group that they had come across stupid rats, and the second, on the contrary, were smart. It is clear that all the rodents were the same.
Nevertheless, the students managed to train "smart" animals much faster than "stupid" ones. Professor Rosenthal called this the "Pygmalion Effect," or self-fulfilling prophecy. The effect is that if you tell a person some information, for example, about an event, he will behave in such a way that it really happens. No wonder many are convinced that “thoughts are material”: what we believe in really tends to happen.
And this is a scientific fact that other psychologists - Rebecca Curtis and Kim Miller - proved in 1986. For the experiment, they no longer needed rats - only students who were not familiar with each other and whom they paired. One person from each pair, chosen at random, was told that the other liked him before meeting the other. Some, on the other hand, were warned that they did not like it. The couples were then given the opportunity to meet and socialize. The researchers found that those students who were informed
that their partner liked them, behaved more courteously with the interlocutor: they were more frank, did not agree with his opinion less, the manner of their communication was more pleasant than those of those students who learned that their partner did not like them. The most interesting thing: the one who believed that he was sympathetic to the other, in the end he really liked him much more than the one who was sure that his partner disliked him.
Foot in the door
In 1966, American psychologists Jonathan Friedman and Scott Fraser conducted an experiment that became a classic not only in the history of psychology, but also in the field of trade, management and service. The researchers randomly selected 156 housewives from the telephone directory and randomly divided them into groups. The authors' task was to find out how many of them would agree to let strangers into their home for two hours to see how effective their detergents were. Friedman and Fraser called this a "big request."
First, one of the groups was asked to answer a few questions by telephone about the detergents women use, and after three days they made a “big request”. Another group was voiced a "big request", as they say, head-on, without first making any small requests. It turned out that those who had already agreed to answer questions over the phone met twice as often.
The experiment was repeated several times under different circumstances and with different people, but the results did not change: in order to get something meaningful from a person, you first need to get his consent to fulfill a minor request. Psychologists have called this phenomenon “foot in the door”. Now it is actively used not only by marketers, but also by the leaders of the sects, luring out of the pockets of the "parishioners" first a penny, and then the last thing they have.
Third Wave
This experiment can also be associated with another attempt to comprehend the behavior of the German people during the time of National Socialism. It was conducted by a simple American history teacher Ron Jones in 1967, but the experience became so famous that the novel "The Wave" was published about him, and in 2008 a feature film called "Experiment 2: The Wave" was shot. It all started when a 10th grade student asked Jones how ordinary people in Germany could pretend not to know about the horrors of the Third Reich. The class was ahead of the curriculum, and the teacher decided to visually show the students how. It took only a week to turn innocent children into villains.
Still from the film Experiment 2: Wave.
Jones came up with a plan to follow, and on the first day of school, Monday, demonstrated the "power of discipline" to the children. The teacher told everyone to sit at attention, stating that this would help to better master the subject. After that, he asked the students to leave the audience, and then silently enter and sit in their place, actively and vividly answer his questions. The teenagers did everything with great enthusiasm - even those who usually did not show interest in learning. The schoolchildren liked the "game".
On Tuesday, Jones showed the guys "the power of community", telling them to chant: "Strength in discipline, strength in community." At the end of the lesson, he showed them a greeting that the students from now on were to use when meeting each other - a raised and bent right hand to the shoulder. He called this gesture the "Third Wave" salute. The children followed all the teacher's commands with great interest.
Thirteen more voluntarily joined the class of 30 on Wednesday. The teacher gave the children "membership cards" and talked about the "power of action." Jones convinced them that individual rivalry often brings only chagrin, but group work allows them to achieve great heights in learning. So, he instructed the guys to develop a draft banner for the "Third Wave". At the same time, it was necessary to convince 20 students from a neighboring elementary school that in the classroom one should sit exclusively "at attention". It was also necessary to find one reliable schoolchild, who could join the "game". Some of the students were instructed by the teacher to report all disturbances and criticisms. It is interesting that the three most successful excellent pupils were not in demand under the "new orders" and told their parents about the experiment. As a result, the headmaster found out about the "game", but,Much to Jones' disappointment, he did not mind at all - and he himself greeted him with the "Third Wave" salute.
On Thursday, he explained to the children the "power of pride", calling them part of a nationwide youth program, whose task is to transform the country for the benefit of the people. Jones ordered four students to remove from the audience those three girls who had complained to the elders. Then he told the stunned children that hundreds of Third Wave branches had already been created in other regions of the country, and on Friday the leader of the movement and the new presidential candidate would tell about this on television.
Is it any wonder that the next day about 200 students, including representatives of youth subcultures, crammed into the classroom. Jones asked his friends to pretend reporters with cameras circling the class. A few hours later they turned on the TV, but the students did not see the promised programs. The teacher admitted that there is no movement, and showed the children footage of newsreels from the Third Reich. The students easily recognized themselves in the behavior of the German people. Jones explained to them that they felt like the chosen one, but in reality they were simply used. The audience was silent, some even cried.
The experiment was so overwhelming that Jones hesitated for a long time to make it public (information about the experience was published only in the school newspaper), which contributed to the shame of its participants. Only in the late 1970s did he talk about this in the pages of his pedagogical book.
Author: Olga Ivanova