Unethical Experiments

Unethical Experiments in the Past 

1.     Classical Conditioning

In this experiment, John B. Watson a professor at John Hopkins University conducted an experiment testing classical conditioning. He used a 9-month old child as a test subject in order to measure a conditioned stimulus produced within the child. At first the child loved animals and would enjoy playing with the white rat that was given to him. Watson then associated the loud sound of the hammer with the rat by banging it every time the child would approach the rat. Eventually the child grew fearful of the rat and avoided it.

2.     Asch Conformity Experiment

At Swarthmore College Solomon Asch conducted a conformity experiment testing the extent that a person would deny evidence in order to conform to a group. In the experiment, two men were placed in a group with 3 others serving as actors who were asked to participate in an experiment. They were asked to look at a board with 3 lines and match the length of the reference line to one of the choices beginning with the actors. The first two rounds all of the men got the correct answer, although by the third round, the actors were asked to say the incorrect answer and the other men – knowing that this was incorrect – gave the same response. This occurred 74% of the time.  

3.     The Bystander Effect

John Darley and Bob Latane decided to conduct an experiment at Columbia University after the recent murder of a woman called Kitty Genevase in front of 38 witnesses that did not come to her aid. To test the bystander effect, they placed a person alone in a room to fill out a questionnaire, smoke began to seep out from under the door and the participant reported the smoke quickly. Later another person was placed with 2 others with the same occurrence. However, it took a much longer time for anyone to report the incident. This is attributed to what is called the bystander effect, when witnesses see other people able to help around in an incident they are much less likely to help themselves and look around at what other people are doing.

4.     The Milgram Experiment

Determined to understand how so many people took part in the atrocities of the Holocaust Stanley Milgram performed an experiment testing whether people are inclined to follow orders from authoritative figures. Two participants were asked to play the role of a teacher and a student in what they believed was a memory experiment, although one participant was in fact an actor and was made to be student each time. If the student got a question wrong the teacher was ordered to shock them with increasingly higher voltages. Although the teacher could not see the student, they could hear the distressing screams and complaints. It was observed that the participants tended to continue administering the shocks.

5.     Harlow’s Monkey Experiment

To test infant mother dependency Harlow used isolated infant babies placed with two artificial “mothers” one was soft and comforting and made of cotton, the other was made of hard and cold wire. Only the wired monkey was able to feed the infant while the other served no purpose, however, Harlow realized that the monkey spent most of its time with the cotton mother and when frightened would also run to her.

6.     Learned Helplessness

In this experiment a group of dogs were placed in one half of a room, separated with a low barrier from the other half. The dogs were then shocked and discovered that they could avoid the shock by jumping over the barrier to the other side. Another group of dogs in a completely closed room with no escape were also shocked but had no way to avoid it. These dogs were then placed into the same room that was split in half with a barrier that allowed them to avoid being shocked. However, when they were shocked they made no attempt at escaping.

7.     Robbers Cave Experiment

Testing group dynamics in the face of conflict Muzafer Sherif conducted an experiment with preteen boys who were being taken to a summer camp. Although the counselors were actually psychologists. The boys were split into two groups and were divided and only met for competitions. Tension was built between them by keeping scores close. Planned disasters such as water shortages were put in place that required teamwork to solve them, eventually after a number of these problems, the groups became united and worked together well.

8.     The Monster Study

In order to study the act of stuttering by attempting to make orphans stutter, 22 orphans were participating in an experiment, 12 of which were non stutterers. Half of the group was given positive teaching, while the other half received negative teaching and was constantly told that they had stutters. None of the non stutterers began to stutter, however, they developed many of the self esteem issues faced by stutterers.

9.     Brown eyed vs Blue eyed

In order to demonstrate the effects of discrimination, a teacher divided her students by eye color. One group was blue eyes and another was brown eyes. Every day she cited fake evidence showing that one group was superior to another, and were treated accordingly. It only took a day for the superior group to become cruel and the inferior group to become insecure. Later she made the opposite group superior and the other inferior in order for both groups to have the same experience and the same occurred.

10.  Stanford prison Experiment

A group of college boys were split in two groups and participated in an experiment that tested the importance of authority roles in the context of prison. One group was made prisoners, another was the guards. The guards were told not to be violent but stay in control. The first day passed without incident, but by the second day the prisoners rebelled and tension beggar rising between the two groups and the guards began punishing the prisoners with pushups, solitary confinement and humiliation. The guards became sadistic and the prisoners became depressed, even though they knew that it was role play.  

Human Sciences

Early human science has developed a reputation for being, unreliable and inconclusive due to the unpredictable nature of humans themselves. However, recently this ideology has changed and the human sciences have become an important part of science and discoveries. Although, the question remains, are the findings of human sciences as reliable as those of natural sciences? In fact, it has been found that the human sciences can be as reliable or even more reliable than the natural sciences on some occasions. This is mainly due to the fact that experiments relating to human science do not only rely on theories and basic facts; they rely heavily on statistical observations in addition to facts and theories on order to come to conclusive results. One such example is the selective attention test conducted by Daniel Simons. In the experiment the video begins by asking the viewers to count the number of time the ball is passed between a group of people. Halfway through the video a gorilla walks and dances amongst the group. At the end, the viewers were surveyed and asked if they saw a gorilla? Most of the participants admitted that they did not. This finding cannot be disputed as it is a physical observation and thus is reliable information.

New methods of testing in the human sciences has also led to the ability to quantify information to a great extent. One such example is statistical information, observations in an experiment can be quantified and expressed in terms of numbers and data. In fact, data gathering is an essential part of human science testing and is relied upon heavily.

The world of human sciences has truly progressed and has become a major part of modern society. However, many social claims investigated in the human sciences actually apply to periods throughout history. For example, the claim that growing up with a single mother as opposed to a complete family consisting of both parents causes the child to lead a life of crime. This is an issue that we face in modern society, however, Elvis Presley had written a song decades ago named “in the ghetto” discussing the same social issues and ideas. 

Language and Thinking

Believe it or not, language plays a massive role in shaping our minds and thoughts. 

To investigate this, we must first explore the meaning of language, what is it? is it just a means of communication? Well, the basic definition of language is a system of words or signs that people use to express thoughts and feelings to each other. However, I believe that languageis more than what meets the eye. Think of body language, sign language, etc. These are all languages that do not use words nor signs and yet they communicate thoughts and feelings. This is why I have been led to believe that language has no rigid definition and is a more flexible term that can be used to refer to multiple means of interaction.

Then again, I look back and ponder about the theory that language is more than just communication and interaction. Then suddenly it hits me, as I am thinking I realize that I have an inner voice, somewhere I had heard that bilinguals do not possess an inner voice and yet I realize that I think to myself in both of my languages. This is when I began to wonder if there truly was a strong connection between language and the way we think. My first step to discovering more about this relationship was to understand why we even think of an inner voice, and what the language bilinguals speak to themselves in says about the way that person thinks. Well according to Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, inner speech is developed by the internalization of external speech. However, it has become very difficult – even in recent years – to understand why inner speech occurs and where it stems from due to the inability of capturing the spontaneity of inner speech in a scientific environment. As for what the language of the inner voice is, not much has been proven, although trends have shown that depending on the situation different languages are used. For example, for motivation and logic people often went with a second language or a new language that was learned, however, at times of trouble and bad situations, people would look towards their mother tongue.

While on the topic of bilingualism I wanted to know more about how people see the world depending on the language they speak. Do people that speak different languages inhabit different worlds? It is common knowledge that different languages have words that don’t have translations in other languages or define a phenomenon that is not defined in another language. If someone does not possess the words to describe a concept, will they not have the ability to understand it? For example, a tribe named the Piraha tribe do not have words for colors, or numbers, and when one scientist attempted to teach them how to count, after days of trying they could not understand the concept. On the other hand, in German, there is a word that defines feeling homesick for a place you have never been, which I definitely have felt before. However, I feel that the language we speak can still limit us in this sense as there are things that we feel that we cannot explicitly express in its fullest meaning. This may be one of the most common reasons of misunderstandings or miscommunication.

Languages also play a major role in shaping a person’s identity. this is due to the fact that with language comes the culture, the emotion, and the relationships with people. different languages can produce different meanings within the same context and of course, varying traditions and cultures. A person cannot translate poetry from one language to another - but even on a more relatable level – jokes can also lose their meaning when translated.

Overall I think that I have delved into the study of language and attempted to understand it to my fullest abilities. I think it is safe to conclude by saying that language is definitely not just a means of communication and that it plays a large part in the way we know and think. 

The 5 Senses

Sure, everyone knows the 5 senses; taste, touch, smell, see and hear. But I’m talking about the other 5 senses. I can already feel the disapproving looks as I say these words, but stick with me and you’ll see, I’m actually onto something. For as long as I can remember I have been taught about the basic 5 senses that everyone learns in kindergarten, although recently in TOK I have learned that in addition to this, there are another 5 sense. These include the following:

·       Nociception – the sense towards things that are damaging or harmful

·       Chronoception – sense of time

·       Proprioception – sense of one’s self

·       Equilibrioception – sense of balance

·       Thermoception – sense of temperature

At first, you might think that this is a bunch of nonsense and that there is no true knowledge to support this. However, if you really think about it, you can relate to some of these senses. In my case I was thinking about chronoception – the sense of time – and I remembered a game I would play with either my brother or a friend where we would try to guess the time after a long period of being indoors, without being exposed to any watches or other methods of timekeeping. The remarkable thing was that we were able to gauge the time and guess – relatively accurately – what time it was. The same applies to nociception, proprioception, etc. All of the senses relate to our lives but we usually don’t notice them because of how instinctual they are. 

This really was an eye opener for me to be able to realize how little we really know about the way our own brain functions. this leads me to another article, published in the Guardian which was titled "Memory Contaminates Perception". This article was highly intriguing and discussed how imagery that is retained in the mind can affect visual perceptions. In fact, as the author put it, "our perception of the world is the brain's best guess at what is actually happening, based on the information it receives through the senses". We also know that the brain can sometimes perceive visual information incorrectly as discussed in the previous blog post about optical illusions. so i decided to apply some of the information learned in class about 1st order and 2nd order claims to evaluate the knowledge from this article

1st order claim:
          2nd order claim:

Visual working memory can influence our perceptions
          what we see is not necessarily what everyone else sees or what is actually there

optical illusions are not what they seem
          the perception of the mind can be tricked

how we feel affects what we see and music also affects how we recognize facial expressions.
          perception can be influenced by temporary factors acting on the mind

          

Optical Illusions

Metaphors and Knowledge

What is knowledge? that was what I - in addition to the rest of the class - were greeted with first thing in the morning in TOK. The question seemed simple enough which led me to believe that the answer would be the same. however, as I even began to think of a definition I came to the same conclusion I knew most students were thinking of; knowledge is knowledge. There was no direct way to describe it. That was how our topic for today was introduced....knowledge. we were given a worksheet that discussed the correlation between knowledge and countless other materialistic objects through metaphors. Our task was to take a look at the 6 metaphors provided and find: the benefits or values of this metaphor, and the limitations of the same metaphor in contributing to a definition of what knowledge is. After the brief discussion on our table, we began an activity that consisted of a group of three acting out the metaphor. I found this particularly interesting as it gave us a more visual understanding and interpretation to some of the metaphors. Another bonus was that it was actually fun to act out and enjoy other students acting. Overall I felt that today's topic was interesting and that I was able to fully understand it, well understand it as much as anything can be understood in TOK.