The laws of the human psyche are still little studied. During psychological experiments, the results can baffle scientists, and sometimes they can shock.
The Kaczynski case
The CIA Psychological Experiment, Project MKULTRA, explored the way humans could be manipulated and spawned the environmental terrorist Unabomber.
Once, while studying, the successful Harvard student Theodore Kaczynski was offered to take part in an experiment by psychologist Henry Murray. The test students were told that they would discuss and defend their personal philosophy with their fellow students. However, they were deceived. When they arrived for the study, it turned out that they would not discuss with each other, but with a law student who was specially trained to defeat and humiliate these guys in verbal discussion, anger and ridicule their ideas. Moreover, Murray's team deliberately selected emotionally unstable students in order to maximize the effect of stress. The experiment was supposed to prove the theory of "causality of human behavior", or rather, how external pressure affects the personality.
The psychological experience broke the erratic Ted. He began to hate psychologists and science, which breeds such atrocities. While still at the university, he wrote a whole treatise on the unacceptability of this world, with all its orders and technologies, and then bought himself a hut in the forest and became a hermit. But now tourists, cars, planes began to annoy him. And Theodore began to take revenge by mailing homemade bombs. He has more than 16 explosions on his account. As a result, Kaczynski was surrendered by his own brother, and today Murray's former test subject is serving his four life sentences.
Hofling's experiment
Promotional video:
While the secret services were looking for a way to subjugate someone else's consciousness, psychiatrist Charles Hofling proved that it was enough to simply ask the right way. The main thing is that the object of the experiment itself does not know that it is being used. One fine day in 1966, he called several nurses in one of the city's hospitals. Introducing himself as the attending physician, he asked to administer 20 mg of Astroten to the patients, the permitted dose of which does not exceed 10 mg. It is surprising that such an experiment was given the green light, but even more terrible that 21 out of 22 nurses obeyed without question the first word of a doctor they did not know, which went against not only the hospital rules, but also with human life.
Child and rat
Not only students and adults, but also children became victims of psychology. In 1913, Doctor of Psychology John Brodes Watson announced the creation of a new direction - behaviorism, the core of which was human behavior. The scientist believed - everything can be explained by the influence of external stimuli and circumstances. To prove his case, he decided to deliberately evoke a psychological reaction through external stimuli, where it had not previously existed. For this he chose the 11-month-old baby "Albert B." He was a normally developed child, without any deviations.
The experimenters first tested Albert's reactions by showing him a white rat that did not cause him any fear at all. It was Watson's job to create it. At the same time as the child was allowed to play with the white rat, the experimenter hit hard with a hammer on a steel meter strip so that the baby could not see the hammer and the strip. The loud sound frightened Albert.
Of course, the child quickly became frightened of the rat itself - without being hit. The fear subsequently transferred to all similar objects - that is, soft and white - the child was terrified of a rabbit, a dog, the researcher's hair.
This ended the experiment, the child was taken from the hospital, and John Hopkins had to leave the university due to an ethical scandal. Subsequently, he wrote: “Give me a dozen healthy, normally developed babies and my own special world in which I will raise them, and I guarantee that by choosing a child at random, I can make him, at my own discretion, a specialist of any profile - a doctor, a lawyer, a merchant and even a beggar - regardless of his talents, inclinations, professional abilities and race of ancestors."
Jail game
To understand why the sadism of overseers and contempt for the public order of prisoners flourish in an American prison, despite improving conditions, the scientist Philip Zimbargo decided to conduct his own research. He placed ordinary students in prison conditions, dividing them into two groups - criminals and warders. Kutuzka did its job, a group of "prison officers" turned into notorious sadists, and the prisoners into downtrodden people. After the experiment, which turned into a scandal and was prematurely suspended, the imaginary overseers were sincerely surprised at their actions: “I never thought that I was capable of such a thing,” one of the “guards” argued, “but it was like a job, you were given a form and role and you have to fulfill it."
Boy girl
On August 22, 1965, two twin brothers, Bruce and Brian, were born into the Canadian Reimer family. After a while, for medical purposes, the children were prescribed circumcision. The operation was unsuccessful, as a result of the mistake of the doctors, Bruce was deprived of his penis. The inconsolable parents were advised to implant an artificial phallus in the boy, but they hinted that this would not save him from loneliness. The decision came unexpectedly. Dr. John Money came to the Rayners, who suggested making Bruce a girl, arguing from the height of his authority that the psychological sex does not have to correspond to the genetic one.
Of course, the doctor did not care about the fate of the boy, he needed to get proof that every child at an early age can change sex without consequences. Without hesitation, they made Brenda out of Bruce. Only you can't argue against nature, the "young girl" fought with her peers, played football and despised dolls. When Brenda grew up and the problems became more serious, her parents confessed everything. The girl demanded to make her a man again and this time became David Reimer. He even got married. Subsequently, David Reimer did his best to make the case public in order to warn others by his example. But that was the end of his normal life. They talked about him at every corner. They pointed a finger. At first, his wife could not stand it, leaving David, and after a while he could not stand it himself.