Download Famous Experiments

Famous
Experiments
Lessons about memory and human social
behavior
Memory: how reliable is it?
1. Eye Witnesses: Why aren’t they always right?
 Stress sets off “flight or fight” neurotransmitters that may inhibit
formation of memories
 People “see” what they expect to and “remember” what they want to
 Stressful situation skews perception of time
 People have a harder time distinguishing between people of different
races than their own when identifying a suspect
Topic: Recovered memories
Experiment: Dr. Elizabeth Loftus “Lost in the Mall”

Research question: How reliable are people’s memories?

Procedures: Tell people a fictitious story about time they were lost in the mall as
a child. Have sibling or parent corroborate the story. Measure how many people
believe the story and start to “remember” the event

Findings: 25% who listened to story and had story confirmed by “eye witness”
remembered being lost in mall as child

Similar experiment: After reading story of being lost in mall or picked on by bully,
50% believed it had happened to them (compared to 27% not exposed to story)

Paul Ingram’s Story: Man accused of molesting daughters, after hours of
interrogation and description of the events, confesses to the abuse and
“remembers” details

Conclusion: It is possible to implant false memories in people, therefore we
should not always believe people’s memories, especially not “recovered” ones

SO WHAT?
Topic: Drug Addiction
Experiment: Bruce Alexander’s “Rat Park”
 Research question: Is it the drugs or the environmental
circumstances?
 Procedures: Put ½ group of rats in colonies in stimulating, fun
environments with choice of morphine laced water and plain water
Put control group alone in non-stimulating environment with choice
of morphine or plain water
 Findings and Conclusion: Rats in control group get addicted to
morphine; rats in stimulating environment reject morphine
THEREFORE the environment creates the addict, not the drug
 What if you get Rat Park rats “addicted” to morphine first?
 So what?
Topic: Authority and Obedience
Experiment: Dr. Stanley Milgram’s “shock” experiment

Research question: Will people do things they find morally objectionable if an authority figure asks
them to do so?

Procedures: Subject is told to deliver increasing voltage of electric shock to “memory test subject” in
adjacent room. As screams and pleads of “stop” are heard, subject is told by authority figure
(psychologist in labcoat) to “please continue.”

Findings: 63% if subjects continue delivering shocks to end

Conclusion: People will go against their own conscious
(moral code) when pressed to do so by someone in authority
Show Milgram redo video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6GxIuljT3w&feature=fvw
, play audio of French repro of experiment
SO WHaT?
Topic: Authority and Obedience
Experiment: Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment
 Research question: How does being in a position of authority vs. being in a
possession of oppressed change people’s behavior?
 Procedure: Randomly assign half of college volunteers role of prisoner, half
role of prison guards. Have volunteers role play and live in mock prison for
week.
 Findings: People assigned role of guard became sadistic, authoritative, took
advantage of authority role; people assigned role of prisoner became
submissive, fearful, depressed
 Conclusions and applications?
 Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmwSC5fS40w&feature=related
Topic: Conformity to social pressure
Experiment: Dr. Solomon Asch line experiments
 Procedures: 1 subject in room full of
“plants”. Plants give obviously incorrect
answer. Will subject trust his/her own
perception and give honest answer or bend
to norm?
 Findings: 76% of subjects will go with group
at least once; 25% never bent to group’s
opinion; 5% always bent to group’s opinion
 Conclusions and applications?
Topic: Bystander Apathy
 Darley and Latane (1968)
 Subjects are in separate rooms engaged in discussion over intercom
 1 of the people in discussion starts to have epileptic seizure and pleads
for help
 What happens?
 Greater # of people in group, slower people are to respond to help
 Conclusions & Practical applications? Kitty Genovese story, other true
stories
Classical Conditioning
Pavlov and “Pavlovian Response”
 Who? Russian Dr. Ivan Pavlov, M.D. (1849-1936) studied affects of
external environment on reflex responses
 Procedures: Pavlov had already discovered that dogs have an
instinctual reflex to start salivating when they smell food. Pavlov
paired a stimulus (sound of bell ringing) with the non-conditioned
response of salivation upon the sight of food
 Findings: After repeatedly exposing a dog to the sound of a bell at
exact same time as presentation of food, Pavlov was able to get dogs
to salivate just by ringing the bell without any food around
Procedures in more technical terms: The science of “classical
conditioning”
 Pair an unconditioned stimulus (UCS—dog food because it naturally
causes a dog to reflexively salivate) with a neutral stimulus (NS—in this
case the bell) in order to cause neutral stimulus (bell) to produce the
desired reflex response (salivation)
 UCS
UR (Unconditioned or natural/reflexive Response)
 Food
 UCS + NS
 Food + bell
salivation
UR (repeat many times)
salivation
 NS becomes CS (Conditioned Stimulus)
 Bell
salivation
CR (Conditioned Response)
Practical applications of Pavlovian Response
 In simple terms: you can train an animal (and a person) to
respond in a desired way (perform a behavior or extinguish a
behavior!) by training the person to associate desired (or
undesired) behavior with a simple stimulus
 Used to help people stop wetting the bed
 Used to stop coyote from eating sheep by associating eating
sheep meet with stomach ache by poisoning sheep carcasses
 Used to eliminate phobias (pair the feared stimulus with a
positive stimulus)
 1920 John Watson experiment “Baby Albert” video
Operant Conditioning
B.F. Skinner
 Skinner (died 1990) was a behavioral psychologist
 Designed the “Skinner Box” to prove that animals (rats, pigeons) could be
trained to do non-instinctual behaviors if rewarded for the desired
behavior
 “Reinforcer” can be a positive outcome (reward like money or food) or
negative such as the removal of a negative stressor (loud noise, bright
light, shock) (NOTE: This is not the same as punishment!!)
 Skinner Box also proved that animals could be trained to extinguish (stop
doing previously learned behaviors) if punished for performing the
behavior or if reinforcement stops
 Show video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA
Skinner’s additional findings
 Skinner found that desired behavior is most often
performed when the reinforcer appears after random
amounts of correct behaviors and in random intervals
instead of every time the behavior is performed
 Shaping: Skinner found animals could be trained to do
difficult, multi-step tasks (such as navigating through a
maze or operating a complex machine) if taught the steps
incrementally and reinforced along the way
 Practical applications?
Social Learning (Observational Learning) Theory
Bandura
 Bandura wanted to know how much social modeling and
reinforcement of behaviors affects individual’s behaviors
 Bobo Doll experiment (see video link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt0ucxOrPQE&feature=related
 Practical applications? Media, older peers, parents set standards for
behavior
 “Do as I say, not as I do” does NOT work!!