There are many interesting and unique experiments in psychology. Psychologists have carried out those experiments based on their curiousness. Some of them were scary, and even a few of them were dangerous. Let’s take a look at three shocking experiments.
The first one is ‘Stanford Prison Experiment’. It was conducted by Philip George Zimbardo, the psychology professor in Stanford University. He recruited 24 normal university students for the experiment. He randomly separated them into two groups. One was ‘prison guard’, and the other was ‘prisoner’. Both groups should act as if they were really ‘prison guard’ or ‘prisoner’, and they had to stay in fake prison. This experiment was carried out in reality. The ‘prisoner’ was captured by ‘prison guard’, and ‘prison guard’ was given weapons, sunglasses, and guard uniforms. However, this experiment was ended only after 5 days. It was because the participants were absorbed in their roles too much. Normally, the participants never showed violence in their manners. Nevertheless, when they became ‘prison guard’, they abused their authority harshly. Therefore, ‘prisoner’ felt severe depression and emotional instability, although it was only a few days. This experiment shows that our attitude and mental condition changes if appropriate situation is provided.
Next one is ‘Little Albert Experiment’. It was carried out by John Watson. He wanted to see conditioning. ‘Little Albert’ was a baby who was only 9 months old. Watson used Albert as a tool to see the result of stimulation and reaction. At first, he left a white mouse next to Albert. Then, each time Albert touched it, he made a huge noise that can surprise Albert enough. This was repeated for many times, so Albert felt fear about white mice. This fear developed into white color and everything that had fur. The experiment was successfully ended, however, Albert’s fear was not cured. In the end, Watson was criticized by a lot of people for moral reasons.
The last experiment is ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’. This experiment was designed by David Rosenhan. He made 5 men and 3 women enter a mental hospital. All of them had very healthy mental state. Every participant was asked to act as if they hear hallucinate sounds. Therefore, the participants were hospitalized for schizophrenia. After they went into the hospital, the participants stopped acting. They did good things in hospital and behaved really normally. However, the hospital did not let them out easily. Even a participant had to live in the mental hospital for 52 days. When the result of the experiment was announced, the mental hospitals’ reliability decreased a lot. To recover their honor, the director of a mental hospital challenged Rosenhan. He was sure that his hospital could separate real insane people and fake insane people. Rosenhan accepted this proposal, and he sent people to the hospital for a few weeks. The hospital pointed out that 41 people were fake patients. However, to their surprise, there was no fake insane people.
These amazing experiments were conducted to satisfy people’s curiousness. These experiments show people’s minds can be easily changed by the atmosphere and condition. Therefore, the standard to divide normal and abnormal is unclear. In conclusion, we should consider many aspects when we judge a person.