IMPORTANT PSYCHOLOGY

EXPERIMENTS - PART 2

THE INVISIBLE GORILLA EXPERIMENT - In 1999 Simons and Chabris conducted their famous awareness test at Harvard University. Participants in the study were asked to watch a video and count how many passes occurred between basketball players on the white team. The video moves at a moderate pace and keeping track of the passes is a relatively easy task. What most people fail to notice amidst their counting is that in the middle of the test, a man in a gorilla suit walked onto the court and stood in the centre before walking off-screen. The study found that the majority of the subjects did not notice the gorilla at all, proving that humans often overestimate their ability to effectively multi-task. What the study set out to prove is that when people are asked to attend to one task, they focus so strongly on that element that they may miss other important details.

THE LITTLE ALBERT EXPERIMENT - Was a controversial study conducted by John B. Watson and his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, in 1920. Watson and Rayner wanted to learn more about healthy childhood development and emotional development. The study used classical conditioning and aimed to investigate whether a conditioned emotional response could be established in a human infant. Little Albert was an 11-month-old baby who was selected as the subject of the study. Initially, Albert was presented with various stimuli, including a white rat, a rabbit, a dog, and a monkey. Albert showed no fear or anxiety towards any of these stimuli. In the second phase of the experiment, Watson and Rayner paired the presentation of the white rat with a loud noise, creating a conditioned response of fear in the infant. After a few pairings, Albert began to show fear and distress when presented with the rat alone, as well as the physical appearance of other white, furry objects. This fear response was then generalized to other stimuli, including a Santa Claus mask, a fur coat, and a white laboratory rat. The Little Albert experiment has been criticized for ethical reasons. Many psychologists argue that the study was unethical because it caused unnecessary psychological harm to the infant. Moreover, the study's scientific validity has been questioned because the experiment lacked controls, and the results were not systematically measured.

THE MARSHMALLOW TEST - Conducted by: Walter Mischel in 1972 at Stanford University

Walter Mischel of Stanford University set out to study whether deferred gratification can be an indicator of future success. In his 1972 Marshmallow Experiment, children ages four to six were taken into a room where a marshmallow was placed in front of them on a table. Before leaving each of the children alone in the room, the experimenter informed them that they would receive a second marshmallow if the first one was still on the table after they returned in 15 minutes. The examiner recorded how long each child resisted eating the marshmallow and noted whether it correlated with the child’s success in adulthood. A small number of the 600 children ate the marshmallow immediately and one-third delayed gratification long enough to receive the second marshmallow. In follow-up studies, Mischel found that those who deferred gratification were significantly more competent and received higher SAT scores than their peers. This characteristic likely remains with a person for life. While this study seems simplistic, the findings outline some of the foundational differences in individual traits that can predict success.

THE SCHACHTER AND SINGER EXPERIMENT ON EMOTION - In 1962 Schachter and Singer conducted a groundbreaking experiment to prove their theory of emotion. In the study, a group of 184 male participants were injected with epinephrine, a hormone that induces arousal including increased heartbeat, trembling, and rapid breathing. The research participants were told that they were being injected with a new medication to test their eyesight. The first group of participants was informed the possible side effects that the injection might cause while the second group of participants were not. The participants were then placed in a room with someone they thought was another participant but was actually a confederate in the experiment. The confederate acted in one of two ways: euphoric or angry. Participants who had not been informed about the effects of the injection were more likely to feel either happier or angrier than those who had been informed.

What Schachter and Singer were trying to understand was the ways in which cognition or thoughts influence human emotion. Their study illustrates the importance of how people interpret their physiological states, which form an important component of your emotions. Though their cognitive theory of emotional arousal dominated the field for two decades, it has been criticized for two main reasons: the size of the effect seen in the experiment was not that significant and other researchers had difficulties repeating the experiment.

THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT - was a landmark study in psychology conducted by social psychology professor Philip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University and is one of the most famous psychology experiments of the 1900s. The study was designed to investigate the psychological effects of power dynamics and social roles in a simulated prison environment and is one the most controversial experiments in psychology. Zimbardo recruited 24 male college students to participate in the study. Each student participant was randomly assigned to play the role of either a prisoner or a guard. The participants were carefully screened for psychological and physical health before participating. The simulated prison was set up in the basement of the famous psychology department, with the cells, prison guards' quarters, and other facilities modelled on an actual prison.

The experiment was supposed to last for two weeks, but it was terminated after only six days due to the escalating abuse of power by the guards and the psychological distress experienced by the prisoners. The guards quickly became authoritarian and abusive, using physical punishment, psychological intimidation to exert their authority over the prisoners. The prisoners, in turn, became increasingly submissive and passive, often displaying signs of depression, anxiety, and helplessness.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is considered controversial for a number of reasons. Critics argue that the study was unethical and that the human subjects were subjected to undue stress and harm. Additionally, some psychologists have questioned the validity of the study, arguing that it lacked scientific rigor and was too heavily influenced by Zimbardo's own biases and expectations. The study remains a landmark in the history of the psychology of cognitive dissonance and continues to inspire further research into the psychology of power and social roles.

STANLEY MILGRAM EXPERIMENT - This 1961 study was conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. It was designed to measure people’s willingness to obey authority figures when instructed to perform acts that conflicted with their morals. The study was based on the premise that humans will inherently take direction from authority figures from very early in life. Participants were told they were participating in a study on memory. They were asked to watch another person (an actor) do a memory test. They were instructed to press a button that gave an electric shock each time the person got a wrong answer. (The actor did not actually receive the shocks, but pretended they did).

Participants were told to play the role of “teacher” and administer electric shocks to “the learner,” every time they answered a question incorrectly. The experimenters asked the participants to keep increasing the shocks. Most of them obeyed even though the individual completing the memory test appeared to be in great pain. Despite these protests, many participants continued the experiment when the authority figure urged them to. They increased the voltage after each wrong answer until some eventually administered what would be lethal electric shocks. This experiment showed that humans are conditioned to obey authority and will usually do so even if it goes against their natural morals or common sense. A key reason obedience studies fascinate people is Milgram (1974) presented them as a scientific experiment, contrasting himself as an “empirically grounded scientist” compared to philosophers. He claimed he systematically varied factors to alter obedience rates. However, recent scholarship using archival records shows Milgram’s account of standardizing the procedure was misleading. For example, he published a list of standardized prods the experimenter used when participants questioned continuing. Milgram said these were delivered uniformly in a firm but polite tone (Gibson, 2013; Perry, 2013; Russell, 2010). Perry’s (2013) archival research revealed another discrepancy between Milgram’s published account and the actual events. Milgram claimed standardized prods were used when participants resisted, but Perry’s audiotape analysis showed the experimenter often improvised more coercive prods beyond the supposed script. This off-script prodding varied between experiments and participants and was especially prevalent with female participants where no gender obedience difference was found – suggesting the improvisation influenced results.

Gibson (2013) and Russell (2009) corroborated the experimenter’s departures from the supposed fixed prods. Prods were often combined or modified rather than used verbatim as published. Analysing audiotapes, Gibson (2013) found considerable variation from the published protocol – the prods differed across trials. The point is not that Milgram did poor science, but that the archival materials reveal the limitations of the textbook account of his “standardized” procedure. The qualitative data like participant feedback, Milgram’s notes, and researchers’ actions provide a fuller, messier picture than the obedience studies’ “official” story. For psychology students, this shows how scientific reporting can polish findings in a way that strays from the less tidy reality.