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.