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.
