Social Psychology Experiments

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Social Psychology Experiments
Table of Contents
1 Social Psychology Experiments
2 Asch Experiment
2.1 Asch Experiment Figure
3 Bobo Doll Experiment

4 Helping Behavior
5 Stanford Prison Experiment
6 Milgram Experiment - Obedience to Authority
6.1 Milgram Experiment Ethics
7 Bystander Apathy Experiment

8 Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment
9 Social Judgment Theory Experiment
10 The Halo Effect
11 Thought Rebound
12 Ross’ False Consensus Effect Experiments
13 Interpersonal Bargaining
14 Understanding and Belief
15 Hawthorne Effect
16 Self-Deception
17 Confirmation Bias
18 Overjustification Effect
19 Choice Blindness
20 Cognitive Dissonance Experiment
20.1 Cognitive Dissonance
21 Stereotypes and the Clark Doll Test

21.1 Social Group Prejudice
21.2 Intergroup Discrimination
21.3 Selective Group Perception
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1 Social Psychology Experiments
Social psychology experiments can explain how thoughts, feelings and behaviors are
influenced by the presence of others.
Typically social psychology studies investigate how someone's behavior influences a groups
behavior or internal states, such as attitude or self-concept.
Obedience to Authority
"I was only following orders"

Legal defence by a Nazi leader at the Nuremberg trial following World
War II
The aftermath of World War 2 made scientists investigate what to made people "follow orders"
even though the orders were horrible. The Stanley Milgram Experiment showed that also non-
nazi populations would follow orders to harm other persons. It was not a German
phenomenon as many thought.
Milgram's Lost Letter Experiment
Classic social psychology experiments are widely used to expose the key elements of
aggressive behavior, prejudice and stereotyping. Social group prejudice is manifested in
people's unfavorable attitudes towards a particular social group. Stanley Milgram's Lost Letter
Experiment further explains this.
Obedience to a Role - Dehumanization
The Abu Ghraib prison-episode was yet another example on the power of predefined roles.
The Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo, demonstrated the powerful effect our
perception of expectations in roles have.
Conformity
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Solomon Asch wanted to test how much people are influenced by others opinions in the
Asch Conformity Experiment.
Observational Role Learning
Behaviorists ruled psychology for a long time. They focused on how individuals learn by trying
and failing. Albert Bandura thought that humans are much more than "learning machines". He
thought that we learn from role models, initiating the (bandura) social cognitive theory. It all
started with the Bobo Doll Experiment.
Helping Behavior - Good Samaritan
Knowing the story of the Good Samaritan makes you wonder what made the Samaritan help
the stranger, and why did he not get help from the priest or the Levite? The Good Samaritan
Experiment explores causes of not showing helping behavior or altruism.
Cognitive Dissonance Experiment
The Cognitive Dissonance Experiment by Leon Festinger assumes that people hold many
different cognitions about their world and tests what happens when the cognitions do not fit.
See also the more in depth article about the Cognitive Dissonance Experiment.
Bystander Effect
The Bystander Apathy Experiment was inspirated and motivation to conduct this experiment
from the highly publicised murder of Kitty Genovese in the same year.
Groups and Influence On Opinion
Sherif's classic social psychology experiment named Robbers Cave Experiment dealt with in-
group relations, out-group relations and intergroup relations.
The Social Judgment Experiment was designed to explore the internal processes of an
individual's judgment and intergroup discrimination, how little it takes for people to form into
groups, and the degree to which people within a group tend to favour the in-group and
discriminate the out-group.
Halo Effect
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The Halo Effect was demonstrated by Nisbett and Wilson's experiment. It fits the situation of
Hollywood celebrities where people readily assume that since these people are physically
attractive, it also follows that they are intelligent, friendly, and display good judgment as well.
This also greatly applies to other well-known people such as politicians.
Wegner's Dream Rebound Experiment
According to studies, thoughts suppressed may resurface or manifest themselves in the future
in the form of dreams. Psychologist Daniel M. Wegner proves this in his experiment on effects
of thought suppression.
False Consensus
Everyone's got their own biases in each and every occasion, even when estimating other
people behaviors and the respective causes. One of these is called the false consensus bias.
Psychologist Professor Lee Ross conducted studies on setting out to show how false
consensus effect operates.
Interpersonal Bargaining
Bargaining is one of the many activities we usually engage in without even realizing it. The
Moran Deutsch and Robert Krauss Experiment investigated two central factors in bargaining,
namely how we communicate with each other and the use of threats.
Understand and Belief
Daniel Gilbert together with his colleagues put to test both Rene Descartes' and Baruch
Spinoza's beliefs on whether belief is automatic or is a separate process that follows
understanding. This argument has long been standing for at least 400 years before it was
finally settled.
Self-Deception
People lie all the time even to themselves and surprisingly, it does work! This is the finding of
the Quattrone and Tversky Experiment that was published in the Journal of Personality and
Psychology.
Overjustification Effect
The overjustification effect happens when an external incentive like a reward, decreases a
person's intrinsic motivation to perform a particular task. Lepper, Greene and Nisbett
confirmed this in their field experiment in a nursery school.
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Chameleon Effect
Also called unintentional mirroring, the chameleon effect usually applies to people who are
getting along so well, each tend to mimic each other's body posture, hand gestures, speaking
accents, among others. This was confirmed by the Chartrand and Bargh experiments.
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is also known as selective collection of evidence. It is considered as an

effect of information processing where people behaves to as to make their expectations come
true. People tend to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses
independently of the information's truthness or falsity.
Choice Blindness
Choice blindness refers to ways in which people are blind to their own choices and
preferences. Lars Hall and Peter Johansson further explain this phenomenon in their study.
Stereotypes
The Clark Doll Test illustrates the ill effects of stereotyping and racial segregation in America.
It illustrated the damage caused by systematic segregation and racism on children's self-
perception at the young age of five.
Selective Group Perception
In selective group perception, people tend to actively filter information they think is irrelevant.
This effect is demonstrated in Hastorf and Cantril's Case Study: They Saw a Game.
Changing Behaviour When Being Studied
The Hawthorne Effect is the process where human subjects of an experiment change their
behavior, simply because they are being studied. This is one of the hardest inbuilt biases to
eliminate or factor into the design.
How to cite this article:
Oskar Blakstad (Oct 10, 2008). Social Psychology Experiments. Retrieved from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/social-psychology-experiments
6
2 Asch Experiment
A series of studies conducted in the 1950's
The Asch Experiment, by Solomon Asch, was a famous experiment designed to test
how peer pressure to conform would influence the judgment and individuality of a test
subject.
The experiment is related closely to the Stanford Prison and Milgram Experiments, in that it
tries to show how perfectly normal human beings can be pressured into unusual behavior by
authority figures, or by the consensus of opinion around them.
For the experiment, eight subjects were seated around a table, with the seating plan carefully
constructed to prevent any suspicion.
Only one participant was actually a genuine subject for the experiment, the rest being
confederates, carefully tutored to give certain pre-selected responses. Careful experimental
construction placed a varying amount of peer pressure on the individual test subject.
The experiment was simple in its construction; each
participant, in turn, was asked to answer a series of questions, such as which line was longest
or which matched the reference line. (Fig 1)
The participants gave a variety of answers, at first correct, to avoid arousing suspicion in the
subject, but then with some incorrect responses added.
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This would allow Asch to determine how the answers of the subject would change with the
added influence of peer pressure.
The Asch Experiment results were interesting and showed that peer pressure could have a
measurable influence on the answers given.
The control group, those not exposed to peer pressure where everybody gave correct
answers, threw up only one incorrect response out of 35; this could probably be explained by
experimental error.
The results for the other groups were interesting; when surrounded by people giving an
incorrect answer, over one third of the subjects also voiced an incorrect opinion.
At least 75% of the subjects gave the wrong answer to at least one question, although
experimental error may have had some influence on this figure. There was no doubt,
however, that peer pressure can cause conformity.
It was debated whether this is because people disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes or if
it was just compliance, that people hide their opinions.
Follow ups to the Asch Experiment showed that the number of dissenting voices made a
difference to the results, as did the forcefulness of the confederates.
One incorrect confederate made little difference to the answers, but the influence steadily
increased if two or three people disagreed.
The figures did not change much after this point; more confederates made little difference.
The number of people in the group also made a difference; the influence of dissenting voices
leveled off for groups of more than six or seven people.
The experiments also showed that, even if only one other participant disagreed with the
confederates, the subject was more likely to resist peer pressure; it appears to be more
difficult to resist the majority if isolated.
The Asch Experiment showed that one voice can make a difference amongst many.
There have been a number of criticisms of Asch's experiments; the subjects were all young
males, and they tend to be much more impressionable than older men. More mature people
have had enough experience of life, and more mental strength; they are more likely to hold
true to their convictions.
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Another criticism, that the experiment lacks ecological credibility and does not relate to real-
life situations, is one that can be leveled at many psychological experiments, including the
Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Other follow up experiments, where the subjects were allowed to write down responses
anonymously, showed far fewer incorrect answers. The comfort of anonymity made sure that
looking foolish became much less of a pressure.
Martyn Shuttleworth (Feb 23, 2008). Asch Experiment. Retrieved from Explorable.com:
https://explorable.com/asch-experiment
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2.1 Asch Experiment Figure
Martyn Shuttleworth (Sep 27, 2008). Asch Experiment Figure. Retrieved from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/asch-experiment-figure
10
3 Bobo Doll Experiment
The Bobo Doll Experiment was performed in 1961 by Albert Bandura, to try and add
credence to his belief that all human behavior was learned, through social imitation
and copying, rather than inherited through genetic factors.
These findings are still debated about over 40 years later.
In the modern world, there are many concerns about the effect of social influences on the
development and growth of a child's personality and morality.
Television, computer games, food additives, music and the lack of role models are all cited as
reasons for a supposed breakdown in society, and an increased tendency towards violence.
These concerns have existed for many years, even before the media turned these factors into
sensationalist stories, to try and sell more newspapers. During the 1960's, there was a lot of
concern and debate about whether a child's development was down to genetics,
environmental factors or social learning from others around them.
For this purpose, Bandura designed the Bobo Doll Experiment to try and prove that children
would copy an adult role model's behavior. He wanted to show, by using aggressive and non-
aggressive actors, that a child would tend to imitate and learn from the behavior of a trusted
adult.
The Bobo doll is an inflatable toy about five feet tall, designed to spring back upright when
knocked over.
Children were chosen as subjects for the study, because they have less social conditioning;
they have also had less instruction and teaching of the rules of society than adult subjects.
Hypotheses and Predictions

Bandura had a number of predictions about the outcomes of the Bobo Doll Experiment, fitting
with his views on the theories of social learning.
1. Children witnessing an adult role model behaving in an overly aggressive manner would
be likely to replicate similar behavior themselves, even if the adult was not present.
2. Subjects who had observed a non-aggressive adult would be the least likely to show
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violent tendencies, even if the adult was not present. They would be even less likely to
exhibit this type of aggression than the control group of children, who had seen no role
model at all.
3. Bandura believed that children would be much more likely to copy the behavior of a role
model of the same sex. He wanted to show that it was much easier for a child to identify
and interact with an adult of the same gender.
4. The final prediction was that male children would tend to be more aggressive than
female children, because society has always tolerated and advocated violent behavior in
men more than women.
Setting Up the Experiment

For the Bobo Doll Experiment, Bandura selected a number of children from the local Stanford
Nursery School, varying in age from 3 to 6 years, with the average age being 4 years and 4
months.
To test the prediction that boys would be more prone to aggression than girls, he picked 36
subjects of each sex.
The control group, which would not see an adult role model at all, consisted of 24 children, 12
boys and 12 girls.
The second group, which would be exposed to an adult showing aggressive tendencies, was
similarly made up of 24 children of either sex. Both of the resulting groups of 12 were further
divided; half would be tested with a female role model, half with a male role model.
The third group was structured in exactly the same way as the second, the only difference
being that they would be exposed to a passive adult.
For the Bobo Doll Experiment, it was necessary to pre-select and sort the children, to try and
ensure that there was an even spread of personality types across the test groups; some
subjects already known to be more aggressive in personality than others.
For this, one of the teachers from the nursery worked with the experimenter, to rate each
child's personality and attempt to construct well balanced groups.
It must also be noted that each subject was tested alone and individually, to ensure that the
effects and reactions of their classmates would bear no influence on the final results or
findings of the experiment.
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The Bobo Doll Experiment proper began by placing one of the children from the test groups in
a room with an adult. The subject sat in one corner of the room, with a few appealing toys to
play with, such as potato prints and sticker activities.
The adult sat in the other corner of the room, with a few toys, as well as a Bobo doll and
mallet. The child was not permitted to play or interact with these toys.
For the children in group two, after one minute of playing with the toys, the adult would begin
to verbally and physically attack the doll for a period of 10 minutes.
For the third group tested, the adult would sit quietly and play peacefully with the toys for ten
minutes.
The control group, of course, sat in the room for ten minutes with no adult present.
The next stage of the Bobo Doll Experiment was to take the subject into another room, which
was filled with interesting toys. The child was not permitted to play with these toys, being told
that they were reserved for other children to play with. This was intended to build up the levels
of frustration within the subject.
The child was then taken into yet another room filled with interesting toys, some of an
aggressive type, some non-aggressive; the room also contained the Bobo doll and the mallet.
The subject was watched through a one-way mirror, and a number of types of behavior were
assessed.
The first factor measured was physical aggression, consisting of hitting the doll with the mallet
or punching, kicking or sitting on the doll.
Verbal aggression was also assessed, whether it was general abuse or an imitation of
phrases used by the adult role-model.
The third measurement was the amount of times the mallet was used to display other forms of
aggression than hitting the doll. The final behaviors studied were modes of aggression, shown
by the subject, which were not direct imitations of the role-model's behavior.
Results
The results for the Bobo Doll Experiment showed, as expected by prediction one, that children
who were exposed to the aggressive model were more likely to show imitative aggressive
behavior themselves.
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Prediction four was proved correct in that boys were nearly three times more likely to replicate
physically violent behavior than girls.
The measurements for verbally aggressive behavior again showed that children exposed to
aggressive role models were more likely to imitate this behavior. The levels of verbal
aggression expressed were about the same for boys and girls.
Subjects in the Bobo Doll Experiment exposed to the non-aggressive model, or no model at
all, showed little imitative aggressive behavior. This finding partially proved prediction two,
with children exposed to a passive role model showing less imitative aggression.
However, the results did not fully prove this prediction, as there was no discernible difference
in the imitative aggression levels between groups one and three.
Male subjects exposed to non-aggressive role models were less likely to use the mallet to hit
the Bobo doll. Strangely, male subjects placed with non-aggressive female models were more
likely to use the mallet than the control group.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdovKHDNU
Conclusion
The findings of the Bobo Doll Experiment proved to be a little inconclusive with most of the
predictions not being fully proved.
It is not certain that children learn socially, but it is likely that children observing an adult
model utilizing violence are more likely to believe that this type of behavior is normal. They
may, therefore, be more likely to use this type of action themselves when confronted by
similar situations.
Bandura found that girls were much less likely to be physically violent, but were equally as
prone to verbal aggression as boys. This is something often encountered in society, where
bullying at school, by boys, is more often of a physical nature; intimidation amongst girls tends
to be more verbal and social.
There were a few criticisms of the experiment; the Bobo doll springs back upright when it is hit
and there is a strong possibility that the children saw it as a game rather than anything else.
There was a follow up experiment, in 1963, which used the same methodology but showed
the subjects violence via video; this had a much less defined response than the initial
experiment.
Another refinement of the Bobo Doll Experiment, in 1965, tried to establish the effects of
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rewarding or punishing bad and violent behavior. Children, who witnessed the model being
punished for aggressive behavior, were much less likely to follow suit. Interestingly, there was
no change in aggression when the model was rewarded for bad behavior.
Martyn Shuttleworth (Mar 26, 2008). Bobo Doll Experiment. Retrieved from Explorable.com:
https://explorable.com/bobo-doll-experiment
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4 Helping Behavior
The Good Samaritan Experiment
Most people, in the Western and Middle Eastern worlds, understand the story of the
Good Samaritan, and how it relates to helping behavior.
In this famous parable, a Rabbi and a Levite ignore an injured man and pass by, with a
Samaritan being the only one to stop and help.
In the modern world, this parable is becoming increasingly relevant. There are many
examples of victims of crime being ignored and not helped; you just need to open a
newspaper or watch the news on television.
With this in mind, in 1978, an experiment was constructed, by Darley and Batson, to test the
possible facts behind this story and study altruistic behavior.
The variables to be tested were the relative haste of the participant, and how occupied their
minds were with other matters; it has been argued that, because the thoughts of the Rabbi
and the Levite were on religious and spiritual matters, they might have been too distracted to
stop and help.
The experiment was constructed as follows:
The experiment researchers had three hypotheses that they wanted to test;
1. People thinking about religion and higher principles would be no more inclined to show
helping behavior than laymen.
2. People in a rush would be much less likely to show helping behavior.
3. People who are religious for personal gain would be less likely to help than people who
are religious because they want to gain some spiritual and personal insights into the
meaning of life.
Religious studies students on a study course were recruited for this experiment, and had to fill
in a questionnaire about religious affiliations and beliefs, to help evaluate and judge the
findings of hypothesis 3.
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The students were given some religious teaching and instruction and then were told to travel
from one building to the next. Between the two buildings was a man lying injured and
appearing to be in desperate need of assistance.
The first variable in this experiment was the amount of urgency impressed upon the subjects,
with some being told not to rush and others being informed that speed was of the essence.
The relative mindset of the subject was also tested, with one group being told that they would
be giving lectures on procedures in the seminary, the others that they would be giving a talk
about the 'Good Samaritan'.
The experimenters constructed a six point plan of assessing helping behavior, ranging from
apparently failing to even notice the victim, to refusing to leave until help was found, and the
victim was in safe hands.
The results of the experiment were interesting, with the relative haste of the subject being the
overriding factor; when the subject was in no hurry, nearly two thirds of people stopped to lend
assistance. When the subject was in a rush, this dropped to one in ten.
People who were on the way to deliver a speech about helping others were nearly twice as
likely to help as those delivering other sermons, showing that the thoughts of the individual
were a factor in dictating helping behavior.
Religious beliefs did not appear to make much difference on the results; being religious for
personal gain, or as part of a spiritual quest, did not appear to make much of a noticeable
impact on the amount of helping behavior shown.
Conclusions
It seems that the only major explanation for people failing to stop and help a victim is how
obsessed with haste they are.
Even students going to speak about the Good Samaritan were less likely to stop and offer
assistance, if they were rushing from one place to another.
It seems that people who were in a hurry did not even notice the victim, although, to be fair,
once they arrived at their destination and had time to think about the consequences, they felt
some guilt and anxiousness.
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This, at least, indicates that ignoring the victim was not necessarily a result of uncaring
attitude, but of being so wrapped up in their own world that they genuinely did not notice the
victim.
Martyn Shuttleworth (Aug 8, 2008). Helping Behavior. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/helping-behavior
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5 Stanford Prison Experiment
This infamous Stanford Prison Experiment has etched its place in history, as a
notorious example of the unexpected effects that can occur when psychological
experiments into human nature are performed.
Like a real life ‘Lord of the Flies', it showed a degeneration and breakdown of the established
rules and morals dictating exactly how people should behave towards each other.
The study created more new questions than it answered, about the amorality and darkness
that inhabits the human psyche.
As a purely scientific venture, the experiment was a failure, but it generated some results that
give an insight into human psychology and social behavior. The ethical implications of this
study are still discussed in college and undergraduate psychology classes all across the world.
In the days of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo abuses, the Stanford Prison Experiment is
once again becoming relevant, showing that systematic abuse and denial of human rights is
never far away in any prison facility.
This study is so well known that a Hollywood movie about the Stanford Prison Experiment is
going to be released in 2009. The experiment has also been the basis of many similar studies,
over the years, but these have had much stricter controls and monitoring in place.
Background
In 1971, the psychologist Philip Zimbardo tried to show that prison guards and convicts would
tend to slip into predefined roles, behaving in a way that they thought was required, rather
than using their own judgment and morals.
Zimbardo was trying to show what happened when all of the individuality and dignity was
stripped away from a human, and their life was completely controlled.
He wanted show the dehumanization and loosening of social and moral values that can
happen to guards immersed in such a situation.
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Method
To conduct the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo constructed a mock correctional facility
in the basement of Stanford University.
Adverts were placed in local newspapers offering $15 per day for participants in this program.
Of the 75 responses, the 24 male subjects judged to be most mentally and emotionally stable
were selected. Mainly middle class and white, they were divided into two groups randomly, of
12 prisoners and 12 guards.
The group selected to be the guards were outfitted in ‘military-style' intimidating uniforms.
They were also equipped with wooden batons and mirrored shades, to prevent eye-contact
and make the guards appear less human.
In an initiation meeting, Zimbardo, who acted as the warden for the duration of the
experiment, informed the guards that the only rule was that no physical punishment was
allowed. Other than that, the guards were to run the prison as they saw fit, and would be
divided into regular working shifts and patterns.
Prisoners, by contrast, were dressed in cheap smocks and were allowed no underwear. They
were to be addressed by, and answer to, identity numbers only. They also had a small chain
around one ankle to remind them that they were inmates in a correctional facility. Conditions
were tough, with only basic sleeping mattresses and plain food being supplied.
The prisoners were instructed to wait at home "to be called" for the start of the experiment;
their homes were raided without any warning, arrested by the real local police department and
charged with armed robbery.
The Palo Alto Police had agreed to help with the experiment. As if they were real-life
suspects, the prisoners were read their rights and had their mug shots and fingerprints taken.
After being stripped, searched and de-loused, they were taken into the cells that would be
their homes for the next two weeks.
Zimbardo, acting as a prison warden, would be able to observe and make notes about what
happened during the course of the study.
Results
The Stanford Prison Experiment degenerated very quickly and the dark and inhuman side of
human nature became apparent very quickly.
The prisoners began to suffer a wide array of humiliations and punishments at the hands of
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the guards, and many began to show signs of mental and emotional distress.
On the second day of the experiment, the prisoners organized a mass revolt and riot, as a
protest about the conditions. Guards worked extra hours and devised a strategy to break up
and put down the riot, using fire-extinguishers.
No prompt for this action was given by Zimbardo; the guards used their own initiative to
formulate the plan.
Standard prisoner counts and roll-call became a trial of ordeal and ritual humiliation for the
prisoners, with forced exercise and physical punishments becoming more and more common.
Mattresses were confiscated from the prisoners and they were forced to sleep on cold, hard
floors.
Toilet facilities became a privilege, instead of a basic human right, with access to the
bathroom being frequently denied; the inmates often had to clean the toilet facilities with their
bare hands. Prisoners were often stripped and subjected to sexual humiliation, as a weapon
of intimidation.
The experiment showed that one third of the guards began to show an extreme and imbedded
streak of sadism, and Zimbardo himself started to become internalized in the experiment. Two
of the prisoners had to be removed early because they were showing real signs of emotional
distress.
Interestingly, none of the prisoners wanted to quit the experiment early, even when told that
they would be denied their participation pay. The prisoners became institutionalized very
quickly and adapted to their roles.
A replacement prisoner was introduced and was instructed to go on hunger strike as a protest
about the treatment of his fellow inmates, and as an attempt to obtain early release.
Surprisingly, his fellow inmates viewed him as a troublemaker rather than a fellow victim trying
to help them.
When the inmates were informed that, if the rest of their prisoners gave up their blankets, he
would be released from solitary confinement, all but one refused to give up their blanket.
The Stanford Prison Experiment carried on for six days until an outsider, Christina Maslach, a
graduate student who would later become Zimbardo's wife, was brought in to interview guards
and prisoners and was shocked by the scenes that she was witnessing.
Zimbardo terminated the experiment early and noted that out of over 50 external visitors, this
lady was the only one to raise concerns about what was happening.
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Conclusions
Zimbardo believed that the experiment showed how the individual personalities of people
could be swamped when they were given positions of authority.
Zimbardo has
acknowledged that some
guards did try to change
the system. He later
investigated the topic about
"heroes" - those who do
not succumb to the system.
Social and ideological factors also determined how both groups behaved, with individuals
acting in a way that they thought was required, rather than using their own judgment.
The experiment appeared to show how subjects reacted to the specific needs of the situation
rather than referring to their own internal morals or beliefs.
The results of the experiment have been used in many high profile court cases over the years,
to try and show that a prison must have clear instructions and guidelines from higher level
authorities, or prisoner abuse may occur.
Criticisms
The ethics of the Stanford Prison Experiment have long been called into question, and,
certainly, without stricter controls this experiment would not be sanctioned today; it could pose
a genuine risk to people disposed towards mental and emotional imbalances.
In fairness to Zimbardo, most of these discussions take place with a lot of hindsight, and he
could not have guessed the internalization and institutionalization that would occur during the
course of the study.
Other criticisms include the validity of the results. It was a field experiment, rather than a
scientific experiment, so there are only observational results and no scientific evaluation.
In addition, it would be very difficult for anybody to replicate the experiment conditions.
The selection of the subjects has been questioned extensively with the wording of the advert
stating ‘wanted for prison experiments', this may have caused people with more of a pre-
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disposition towards violence to apply.
In the aftermath of the study, many of the guards and prisoners indicated that they were only
acting out roles that they thought were expected of them, so there is no consensus on
whether the study really portrayed human nature or not.
Whether the Stanford Prison Experiment relates to real prisons is another matter. Although
maltreatment of prisoners undoubtedly takes place all across the world, in most facilities, the
guards are carefully screened and undergo a long and extensive training process. Zimbardo
screened both prisoners and guards for non-social tendencies in his experiment.
They also have rigid protocols to which they are supposed to stick. In addition, the study
studied only male subjects and most western prisons do have a mix of sexes on the guard
staff.
Zimbardo also glossed over the fact that not all of the guards showed sadistic tendencies, with
some seeking to actively help the prisoners and show sympathy towards them.
Later studies have concluded that abuse in prisons often comes from the top down and that
when orders are given these can affect the results. If the guards had been given stricter
guidelines from Zimbardo at the beginning then there may have been fewer sadistic
tendencies shown by the guards selected for the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Martyn Shuttleworth (Jun 22, 2008). Stanford Prison Experiment. Retrieved from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/stanford-prison-experiment
23
6 Milgram Experiment - Obedience to
Authority
The Stanley Milgram Experiment was created to explain some of the concentration
camp-horrors of the World War 2, where Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs and other
enemies of the state were slaughtered by Nazis.
Do as you’re told
Many war-criminals claimed they were merely following orders and could not be held
responsible for their actions, in the trials following the World War 2.
Were the Germans in fact evil and cold-hearted, or is this a group phenomenon which could
happen to anyone, given the right conditions?
Preparation of the Stanley Milgram Experiment

The psychologist Stanley Milgram created an electric ‘shock generator’ with 30 switches. The
switch was marked clearly in 15 volt increments, ranging from 15 to 450 volts.
He also placed labels indicating the shock level, such as ‘Moderate’ (75-120 Volts) and
‘Strong’ (135-180 Volts). The switches 375-420 Volts were marked ‘Danger: Severe Shock’
and the two highest levels 435-450, was marked ‘XXX’.
The ‘shock generator’ was in fact phony and would only produce sound when the switches
were pressed.
40 subjects (males) were recruited via mail and a newspaper ad. They thought they were
going to participate in an experiment about ‘memory and learning’.
In the test, each subject was informed clearly that their payment was for showing up, and they
could keep the payment “no matter what happens after they arrive[d]”.
Next, the subject met an ‘experimenter’, the person leading the experiment, and another
person told to be another subject. The other subject was in fact a confederate acting as a
24
subject. He was a 47 year old male accountant.
The two subjects (the real subject and the con-subject) drew slips of paper to indicate who
was going to be a ‘teacher’ and who was going to be a ‘learner’. The lottery was in fact a set-
up, and the real subject would always get the role of ‘the teacher’.
The teacher saw that the learner was strapped to a chair and electrodes were attached. The
subject was then seated in another room in front of the shock generator, unable to see the
learner.
Research Question
The Stanley Milgram Experiment aimed at getting an answer to the question:
“For how long will someone continue to give shocks to another person if they are told to do so,
even if they thought they could be seriously hurt?” (the dependent variable)
Remember that they had met the other person, a likable stranger, and that they thought that it
could very well be them who were in the learner-position receiving shocks.
The Experiment
The subject was instructed to teach word-pairs to the learner. When the learner made a
mistake, the subject was instructed to punish the learner by giving him a shock, 15 volts
higher for each mistake.
The learner never received the shocks, but pre-taped audio was triggered when a shock-
switch was pressed.
If the experimenter, seated in the same room, was contacted, the experimenter would answer
with predefined ‘prods’ (“Please continue”, “Please go on”, “The experiment requires that you
go on”, “It is absolutely essential that you continue”, “You have no other choice, you must go
on”), starting with the mild prods, and making it more authoritarian for each time the subject
contacted the experimenter.
If the subject asked who was responsible if anything would happen to the learner, the
experimenter answered “I am responsible”. This gave the subject a relief and many continued.
Results
During the Stanley Milgram Experiment, many subjects showed signs of tension. 3 subjects
had “full-blown, uncontrollable seizures”.
25
Although most subjects were uncomfortable doing it, all 40 subjects obeyed up to 300 volts.
25 of the 40 subjects continued to complete to give shocks until the maximum level of 450
volts was reached.
Conclusion - Obedience to Authority
Before the Stanley Milgram Experiment, experts thought that about 1-3 % of the subjects
would not stop giving shocks. They thought that you’d have to be pathological or a
psychopath to do so.
Still, 65 % never stopped giving shocks. None stopped when the learner said he had heart-
trouble. How could that be? We now believe that it has to do with our almost innate behavior
that we should do as told, especially from authority persons.
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZwk&hl=en_US&fs=1&
Pre-Taped Audio (Transcription)

What the learner said when the teacher triggered the shock at some levels.
75 volts: “Ugh!!!”
105 volts: “Ugh!!!” (Louder)
120 volts: “Ugh!!! Hey, this really hurts.”
150 volts: “Ugh!!! Experimenter! That's all. Get me out of here. I told you I had heart
trouble. My heart's starting to bother me now. Get me out of here, please. My heart's
starting to bother me. I refuse to go on. Let me out.”
165 volts: (Shouting) “Ugh!!! Let me out!”
180 volts: (Shouting) “Ugh!!! I can't stand the pain. Let me out of here!”
195 volts: “Ugh!!! Let me out of here. Let me out of here. My heart's bothering me. Let
me out of here! You have no right to keep me here! Let me out! Let me out of here! Let
me out! Let me out of here! My heart's bothering me. Let me out! Let me out!”
210 volts: “Ugh!! Experimenter! Get me out of here. I've had enough. I won't be in the
experiment any more.”
26
255 volts: “Ugh!!! Get me out of here.”
270 volts (Screaming) “Let me out of here. Let me out of here. Let me out of here. Let
me out. Do you hear? Let me out of here.”
285 volts: (Screaming)
300 volts: (Screaming) “I absolutely refuse to answer any more. Get me out of here. You
can't hold me here. Get me out. Get me out of here.”
315 volts: (Intense scream) “I told you I refuse to answer. I'm no longer part of this
experiment.”
330 volts: (Intense and prolonged screaming) “Let me out of here. Let me out of here.
My heart's bothering me. Let me out, I tell you. (Hysterically) Let me out of here. Let me
out of here. You have no right to hold me here. Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let
me out of here! Let me out. Let me out.”
345-435 volts: (Silence)
450 volts: (Silence)
The experiment was terminated by the experimenter after 3 shocks at 450 volts
(The Original Stanley Milgram Experiment)
Ethics
A psychological study like this would never be allowed in most countries today, due to ethical
considerations. Ethics today critique the study about misleading the participants. Critics also
frequently point out the possible harm the study did to the participants.
Read more about the ethics of the Milgram Experiment.
Further Studies Determined

Women are about the same obedient as men
Distance to the victim affects the obedience
Distance to the person ordering you affects the obedience
The appearance of the authority person and his rank can increase or decrease the
obedience
Original Literature - Stanley Milgram Experiment
27
Stanley Milgram, 1974: Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper & Row.
Explorable.com (Feb 6, 2008). Milgram Experiment - Obedience to Authority. Retrieved from

Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/stanley-milgram-experiment
28
6.1 Milgram Experiment Ethics
In recent years, psychologists and social scientists have begun to question the
Milgram experiment ethics, and whether the experiment should have been allowed at
all.
This notorious experiment was designed as a response to the notorious trials of Nazi war
criminals, who claimed that they were 'just following orders'. Milgram wanted to establish
whether people really would obey authority figures, even when the instructions given were
morally wrong.
The main thing to remember, when judging the experiment is that modern day criticisms have
the benefit of hindsight. A few decades ago, Europe had been mentally scarred by the
atrocities committed during the Second World War, and was looking for answers.
Even a few years later, in the 1960s, these wounds remained; as a Jew himself, Milgram was
trying to establish whether the claim of war-criminals, that they were just obeying orders, was
a reasonable defense or not.
At the time, the Milgram experiment ethics seemed reasonable, but by the stricter controls in
modern psychology, this experiment would not be allowed today. Milgram's generation
needed conclusive answers about the 'final solution', and some closure on this chapter of
human history. Was human nature inherently evil or could reasonable people be coerced by
authority into unnatural actions?
The Milgram experiment once again became relevant in the 1970s Mai Lai massacre, with
society questioning the motives behind the, as well as other atrocities committed by the
Americans in Vietnam. Whilst the actions of the soldiers concerned cannot be condoned, it
showed the horrible effects on the psyche, and morals, of young men when they are exposed
to death and suffering on a daily basis.
The main concerns raised about the Milgram Experiment ethics are based on a number of
factors.
29
Modern ethical standards assert that participants in any experiment must not be deceived,
and that they must be made aware of any consequences. In the interest of fairness, follow up
research, performed after the experiment, indicated that there were no long term
psychological effects on the participants.
However, the fact that these people thought that they had caused suffering to another human
being, could have caused severe emotional distress.
Whilst the Milgram experiment appeared to have no long term effects on the participants, it is
essential that psychological studies do have strict guidelines; the Stanford Prison Experiment
is an example of one such study that crossed the line, and actually caused measurable
psychological distress to the participants.
In some cases, this emotional scarring lasted for months and years after the study, so
questioning the Milgram Experiment ethics is a necessary part of science.
The long term effect of carrying on performing similar studies would be destructive for
research without deception. Much of psychology researches explore areas where the involved
subjects are more skeptical than the average of the population.
They might never agree to participate in research which is harmless or aimed to help the
subjects if it was well known that researchers commonly use deception.
In conclusion, whilst there is no doubt that the experiment, in its original format, would not be
allowed, it is important to remember that Stanley Milgram was not a bad person. He was
genuinely trying to uncover the reasons why humans could become embroiled in great evil.
In modern times, with questionable practices being carried out at Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo Bay, the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments are once again becoming
relevant.
Martyn Shuttleworth (Jul 4, 2008). Milgram Experiment Ethics. Retrieved from

Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/milgram-experiment-ethics
30
7 Bystander Apathy Experiment
Kitty Genovese Murder Explained
One of the classic experiments in social psychology is the one conducted by John
Darley and Bibb Latané in 1964 called Bystander Apathy Experiment.
The experimenters got their inspiration and motivation to conduct this experiment from the
highly publicized murder of Kitty Genovese in the same year.
The Murder of Kitty Genovese

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of her home. She parked her car a
number of feet from her apartment when all of a sudden, a man named Winston Moseley
chased her down and stabbed her in the back twice. Due to the excruciating pain, Kitty
screamed for help and a neighbor responded shouting at the criminal "Let that girl
alone!"Immediately after getting the attention of the criminal, Winston fled the scene and left
the girl crawling towards her apartment.
Several witnesses reported to have seen Winston fled the scene with his car and returned ten
minutes after the response of one of the neighbors. After seeing his prey lying on the ground
almost unconscious, he stabbed the already wounded Kitty Genovese several times more.
After this, he stole the money of the victim and sexually assaulted Ms Genovese. A neighbor
phoned the police and an ambulance arrived but was too late to help the assaulted Kitty
Genovese.
Shock to Psychology
Thirty-eight neighbors of Kitty Genovese were aware about the murder that was taking place
during that time and yet all of them chose to do nothing in rescue of the assaulted girl. Why
were such apathy, indifference and lack of concern observed from all the neighbors of Kitty?
Two social psychologists started asking questions why the witnesses demonstrated a lack of
reaction towards the victim's need for help.
Bystander Apathy Experiment

Darley and Latané thought of a social psychology experiment that will let them see through an
31
event similar to what took place during the murder of Kitty. First, they recruited university
students and told them that they will be participating in a discussion about personal problems.
Each participant will be talking to other participants of varying number in a discussion group
but each of the participants has separate rooms. This conversation will take place over
microphones and speakers just so the participants will not be able to physically see the other
participants that they are talking to. The topic upon which the conversations will revolve is
their college lives.
Each participant will be given two minutes to speak during their turn. All the microphones of
other participants will be turned off. The subject is unaware that all the voices that he will hear
are all pre-recorded voices. The number of voices that the subject will be 'talking to' depends
on the treatment condition that he is in. There are five treatment conditions. First is a solo,
one-on-one conversation and the last is a group of six participants (1 subject and 5 pre-
recorded voices).
One of the pre-recorded voices is that of an epileptic student who is having seizures. The
voice will first confess to the group that he is prone to seizures and it could be life-threatening
during its first turn. During its second turn, the seizure will start.
"I'm... I'm having a fit... I... I think I'm... help me... I... I can't... Oh my
God... err... if someone can just help me out here... I... I... can't breathe p-
p-properly... I'm feeling... I'm going to d-d-die if…"
The real subject can only hear the event and he cannot see the actual participant who is
having the seizures.
The actual response that the experimenters will be measuring during this event is the time it
will take for the subject to stand up, leave the room, look for the experimenters and ask for
help.
32
Bystander Apathy Experiment
Time it takes for the participant to seek

Dependent Variable
help
Number of participants within a discussion

Independent Variable
group
Results of the Bystander Apathy Experiment

Only 31% of the subjects tried to seek for help. This means that most of the subjects didn't
bother to look for the experimenters to help the suffering participant. Most of them were
obviously anxious but the reaction was not there.
However, the significant finding of this experiment lies on the results of the first treatment
condition. In a one-on-one conversation, 85% of the subjects actually asked for help. This
means that if the subjects think that they are the only one who knows about the incident, there
is a higher probability that they will ask for help. On the contrary, the bigger groups displayed
fewer reactions to the incident.
Analysis and Conclusion

The significantly higher percentage of subjects who asked for help in the first treatment
condition entails that people react more if there is less number of people around an
emergency or an event. On the other hand, the significantly lower percentage of subjects who
helped in the other treatment conditions entails that individuals are less likely to help in an
emergency when other people are present.
Two reasons were offered to explain the bystander apathy effect. First is diffusion of
responsibility. This occurs when other people think that another person will intervene and as a
result, they feel less responsible. The second explanation is pluralistic ignorance. This refers
to the mentality that since everyone else is not reacting to the emergency; my personal help is
not needed. Seeing the inaction of others will lead to the thought that the emergency is not
that serious as compared to perception when he is alone.
Criticisms
Individuals may be lead to thinking that other observers are more qualified to help. In
times of medical emergencies, people might think that maybe a doctor is present in the
scene and the patient will be better off with the help of the doctor.
Some people may be too self-conscious that they don't want to give off negative images
to other bystanders. For them to avoid this occurrence, these individuals simply do not
respond to the emergency.
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Fears associated to perception can also be an explanation of bystander effect. Such
fears include being outranked by a superior helper, or being rejected when offering one's
help, or having to deal with legal consequences of offering inferior or even worsening
assistance.
Explorable.com (Jul 15, 2009). Bystander Apathy Experiment. Retrieved from

Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/bystander-apathy-experiment
34
8 Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment
Sherif's classic social psychology experiment named Robbers Cave Experiment dealt
with in-group relations, out-group relations and intergroup relations.
The experiment focused heavily on the concept of a 'group' and what a perception of
belonging to a group can actually do to the relationships of members within it and their
relationships with people outside their group.
The same experiment also tried to observe conflicts or 'friction' between two groups and the
process of cooperation or 'integration' of two previously conflicting groups.
Background of the Experiment

Both in the fields of Sociology and Psychology, researchers have been fascinated with the
concept of 'group.' This particular concept can be defined as one of the basic social units a
person can have. It can consist of a number of individuals who has a definite status or role
relationship with other members of the group. Another key feature of a group is that members
have a set of norms or values that regulate the behaviour and attitudes of the members. This
can be the reason why we usually hear the statement: "Tell me who your friends are and I will
tell you who you are."
Along with this concept of belonging to a group are several concepts that are vital to the
understanding of this experiment. All the common attitudes, aspirations, hopes and goals that
all the members of a group share are social units that can be referred to as in-groups while all
the social units that is not part of the group and all the social units that he cannot relate to is
called out-groups. Correspondingly, the relation between two or more in-groups along with its
members can be called intergroup relations.
Three Phases of the Experiment

1. In-group Formation - this phase involves the experimental creation of in-groups through
activities that will promote group identification.
2. Friction Phase - this phase involves bringing two experimentally formed groups into
conflict with each other or forming intergroup tension.
3. Integration Phase - this phase involves bringing the two previously conflicting groups
into cooperation through the attainment of superordinate goals.
35
Phase 1 (In-Group Formation)
The subjects of the experiment were twenty-two eleven year-old boys of middle-class
socioeconomic standing, who have not experienced any unusual degree of frustration in their
homes, who are not school or social failures and who have similar educational level. These
boys were taken into a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. Before the
start of the experiment, the boys were randomly divided into two groups ending up with eleven
boys each.
The two groups were separately transported and housed in cabins within the same park.
Ultimately, the groups must not be aware of the existence of the other group during the first
phase of the experiment. Otherwise, any functional contact between the two groups would
certainly have unwanted consequences both for the in-group formation and for the later
phases of the experiment. It is these two groups that formed the basis of group interaction that
is the focus of the Robbers Cave Experiment.
During the first week of the experiment, the groups did not know the existence of the other
group. They basically spend time bonding with each other while hiking in the park or
swimming. Each group was tasked to coin a group name which was stencilled on their flags
and on their shirts. A group name is a good step to allow the members of each group to
identify with their respective groups. It grants the members belongingness and group spirit.
One of the groups chose Eagles as their group name while the other group chose Rattlers.
The chief aim of the first phase is to produce in-groups through the interaction of the members
within the two separate groups.
Phase 2 (Friction Phase)

During this phase, the two groups were allowed to find out about the existence of the other
group. The chief aim of this phase is the production of conflict between the two groups which
can be accomplished by a series of competitive activities in the form of a tournament of
events which will yield cumulative scores with a reward for the members of the winning group.
This step of the experimenters greatly increased the antagonism between the two groups.
This was significantly evident during the tally of the scores where the Rattlers won the overall
trophy. The Rattlers planted their flag in the play field as a reminder of their success. Later on,
name calling started and the singing of offending songs were also observed.
Furthermore, after these incidences, the groups refused to eat in the same dining together.
The experimenters were so successful at producing friction that they concluded that it was no
longer safe to conduct friction-producing activities and phase two was suddenly cut short and
36
phase three commenced.
Phase 3 (Integration Phase)

This stage constitutes the most crucial and significant aspect of the study. In this phase, the
experimenters will deliberately attempt to bring about cooperation between the two groups
following a stage of friction or conflict. This phase aims to study the process of reducing group
tensions.
The first activity for this phase was a problem wherein both the groups must cooperate to
solve because the resources and efforts of a single group are inadequate to attain the solution
to the problem. Both of the groups were taken to a new location and were told that they are
having drinking water shortage. The two groups had to repair the damage done by vandals to
their drinking water supply. During the successful repair of their water problems, cooperation
was observed between the members of the two groups. This activity was done by the
experimenters to create a state of real and tangible interdependence between the members of
the two groups.
The second activity was the group needed to interact with each other and they had to pay and
decide for a movie that they would like to watch. The groups successfully agreed upon a
movie all of them should watch and during the dinner after this activity, all the boys were
eating together once again.
Observations
Definite group structures and dynamics consisting of individual status and roles will be
formed when a number of individuals without previously established interpersonal
relations interact with one another under similar context and events.
During the Friction Phase, uneasy conflicts produce unfavourable stereotypes in relation
to the out-group and its members placing the out-group at a certain social distance.
In an event that a number of conflicting groups are brought together with a common
superordinate goal and the attainment of which cannot be achieved by the efforts of one
group alone, the groups will tend to cooperate towards the achievement of the
superordinate goal.
Explorable.com (Jun 25, 2010). Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment. Retrieved from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/robbers-cave-experiment
37
9 Social Judgment Theory Experiment
Social Judgment Theory Experiment was conducted by Henry Tajfel along with his
colleagues. This experiment was designed to explore the internal processes of an
individual's judgment, how little it takes for people to form into groups, and the degree
to which people within a group tend to favour the in-group and discriminate the out-
group.
Background of the Experiment

Man is a social being. This is one of the very basic concepts in the field of Social Psychology.
This same concept entails that man has an inherent desire to socialize and mingle with other
men. A consequence of this interaction between individuals is the tendency to bunch together
in groups, may it be completely inclusive of all individuals or highly exclusive and limited to a
select few.
Once we are a part of a group, we tend to do unexpected things like copying or adapting the
attitudes and images of the other members, find our place in the social hierarchy and our
individual role in the group, favour the in-group and look for a suitable leader within the group.
We can also differentiate the types of groups that we are a member of depending on the
degree and the depth of our membership.
First, consider a group of old professionals who have known each other since childhood, or
men within a fraternity, or a military unit. We can expect these groups to be long-lasting and
the attitudes that the members share are time-enduring.
Compare this to a group such as a school math club, a group of passengers riding the same
bus, or a group of golf players competing in a tournament. The later set of examples can be
considered as transient groups since the degree and depth of membership is miniscule when
compared to the first set of examples.
Social Identity Experiment

A sample of 48 boys, 14-15 years old, was initially divided into three groups of 16 boys each.
Each group was shown 12 slides portraying different painting. One half of the paintings were
by Kandinsky and the other half were painted by Klee. All the boys viewed the paintings
38
without the signatures of the painter. After the exposition of the paintings, the boys were
asked to express their preferences, which paintings did they like and which paintings did they
hate. Please keep in mind that the boys were not aware of the painters of the pieces that they
said were good or not.
After this initial stage of the experiment, the boys were seemingly allocated to two separate
groups. They were given the impression that this grouping was based on the impressions that
the experimenters received from them after the initial part of the experiment. The two groups
were named Kandinsky group and Klee group. The names that were given to the group added
up to the impression that the groupings were based on the expressed preferences of the boys
but the truth is, the grouping was completely randomized.
The last stage of the experiment is the rewards allocation task. Each boy was given a task to
award points to two other boys, one from his same group and one from the other group. The
only information that each boy was given were code numbers and the name of the group of
the two boys they were supposed to award. There were two systems of awarding points that
were employed by the researchers.
First, the point scores for each boy were tied together, so that the sum of the two scores is 15.
In this system of point awarding, when a participant chose a score (x) for one boy, the other
boy automatically got a score (15 - x). This means that as the score for the initial boy
increases or approaches 15, the score of the other boy decreases or approaches 0.
39
Klee Group Member 12 1 5 7 8 10 14
Kandinsky Group Member 6 14 10 8 7 5 1
In the second method of allocating points, Tajfel manipulated the grids so that the maximum
number of points the boys could give to their in-group meant that the out-group automatically
gets more points.
For example:
If a Klee member chose 19 for another Klee member, it would give the maximum points
for the in-group but it would also give a higher profit to the out-group. (Maximum in-
group profit)
If a Klee member chose 13 for another Klee member, it would give the same points for
the other group. (Maximum equality or fairness)
If a Klee member chose 17 for another Klee member, it would give the highest possible
profit to the other group (25) ensuring that the maximum cumulative number of points is
given to the two groups. (Maximum joint profit)
If a Klee member chose 7 for another Klee member, it would give the least number of
points to the other team (1). (Maximum profit difference favouring the in-group)
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Klee Group Member 12 19 13 17 7
Kandinsky Group Member 6 21 13 25 1
Results
In the first system of point awarding, the boys generally awarded more points to the members
of their in-group showing in-group favouritism. In the second system of point awarding, the
boys generally opted to maximize the difference between the profits of the two groups
favouring their in-group.
Conclusions
One of the most obvious conclusions that we can draw from this experiment is the natural
tendency of members of a group to favour their in-group. Despite the seemingly meaningless
groupings created by the experimenters, the subjects were able to identify with their
respective groups and create a positive social identity through giving their in-group more
points.
This phenomenon can be likened to "self-serving bias." Since every individual within a group
was able to identify themselves with their group, the group is now associated with one's self,
thus, benefit of the group identified with the self is prioritized.
Completely related to this study is a follow-up research done by Tajfel and Billig in the year
1973. In this study, they showed that even if the members of the groups were aware that
grouping was completely randomized and not based on the subject's expressed preferences,
the participants still showed in-group favouritism.
Explorable.com (Jun 6, 2010). Social Judgment Theory Experiment. Retrieved from

Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/social-judgment-theory-experiment
41
10 The Halo Effect
Nisbett and Wilson's Experiment
The Halo Effect perfectly fits the situation of Hollywood celebrities where people
readily assume that since these people are physically attractive, it also follows that
they are intelligent, friendly, and display good judgment as well. This also greatly
applies to other well-known people such as politicians.
Research Question
Nisbett and Wilson's experiment aimed to address and find an answer to the question
regarding people's awareness of the halo effect.
The researchers believe that people have little awareness of the nature of the halo effect, and
that it influences their personal judgments, inferences and the production of a more complex
social behavior.
The Experiment
In this experiment, college students as participants were asked to evaluate a psychology
instructor as they view him in a videotaped interview. The instructor will be evaluated on
several different dimensions.
The students were divided into two groups, and each were shown one of two different
interviews with the same instructor who is a native French-speaking Belgian who spoke
English with a fairly noticeable accent.
In one video, the instructor presented himself as someone likeable, respectful of his students'
intelligence and motives, flexible in his approach to teaching and enthusiastic about his
subject matter. In the other interview, he presented himself in an entirely different way, in an
unlikeable way to be specific. He was cold and distrustful toward the students and was quite
rigid in his teaching style.
42
After watching the videos, the subjects were asked to rate the lecturer on physical
appearance, mannerisms and his accent. It should be noted that the mannerisms and accent
were kept the same in both versions of videos.
Results
After viewing the interview, subjects were asked how much they think they liked the teacher.
The subjects will be rating him on an 8-point scale ranging from "like extremely" to dislike
extremely."
Subjects were also told that the researchers were interested in knowing "how much their liking
for the teacher influenced the ratings they just made. Other subjects were asked to identify
how much the characteristics they just rated influenced their liking of the teacher.
Surprisingly, after responding to the questionnaire, the respondents were puzzled about their
reactions to the videotapes and to the questionnaire items.
The students had no clue why they gave one lecturer higher ratings. Most said that how much
they liked the lecturer from what he said had not affected their evaluation of his individual
characteristics at all.
Conclusion
From the results, the subjects were obviously unaware of the halo effect and the nature of the
influence of global evaluation on their ratings.
The results also indicate that global evaluations alter evaluations of attributes about which the
individual has information fully sufficient to allow for an independent assessment. The
subjects were convinced that they made their judgment about the lecturer's physical
appearance, mannerisms and accent without considering how likeable he was.
Application
The halo effect has now become a business model; hence it has become well known in the
business world. Marketing specialists make use of associations to well known brands or
names to make their product appear better. Attaching a popular designer name to a simple
pair of jeans incredibly raises its market value.
What's fascinating about the halo effect is that, people may be aware of and understand the
particular phenomenon, but they have no idea when it is already happening. Without realizing
it, we naturally make judgments. And then, even when it's pointed to us, we still deny that it is
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a product of the halo effect phenomenon.
Sources
The Halo Effect: When Your Own Mind is a Mystery
Wikipedia.com: Halo Effect
The Halo Effect: Evidence for Unconscious Alteration of Judgments by Richard E. Nisbett and
Timothy DeCamp Wilson (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1977, Vol.35, No.4,
250-256)
Explorable.com (Jan 26, 2010). The Halo Effect. Retrieved from Explorable.com:
https://explorable.com/halo-effect
44
11 Thought Rebound
Wegner’s Dream Rebound Experiment
According to studies, thoughts suppressed may resurface or manifest themselves in

the future in the form of dreams. Psychologist Daniel M. Wegner proves this in his
experiment on effects of thought suppression.
Thought rebound is what happens when people try to suppress a thought or memory.
People’s minds’ immediate response to undesirable thoughts is to try and forget about them,
pushing them back into their subconscious. But instead of doing good, there is a tendency for
these thoughts to creep their way back into our minds in the form of dreams, thus sometimes
making the situation worse.
Professor Daniel M. Wegner and his colleagues centralized their experiment on the
phenomenon of thought rebound, elaborating Sigmund Freud’s well-known account of
dreams. His theory says that that wishes suppressed during the day find expression in
dreams manifesting thought rebound.
Method
Subjects were asked to try not to think about a white bear for a span of 5 minutes, then for the
succeeding 5 minutes to think about the white bear. During the experiment, participants said
aloud whatever thoughts they were having and each time they thought of the white bear, the
bell is rang.
Wegner and his colleagues then studied the dreams of 295 students. Before the subjects
went to sleep, they spent 5 minutes writing down their thoughts. The primary instruction is for
them to not think about a specific person whom they regard as a friend or have a crush on, do
think about that person or simply write the person’s initials.
Results
The results from the bear experiment is that, participants who first tried to suppress their
thoughts rang the bell almost twice as often as subjects in a control group. It seemed that the
very act of first trying to suppress a thought made it fight back all the stronger.
45
The subjects on the latter experiment reported that upon waking in the morning, they had
dreamed about the person they did think about before going to bed, or tried not to think about
the night before. Roughly a third of those who tried not to think about the person dreamed
about the particular person while only a quarter of those in the group encouraged to think
about the person or asked to write initials.
Conclusion
Thought rebound is manifested in other research studies of similar type. It was observed that
the same results were found even when people were not directly instructed to suppress
particular thoughts, and were instead just encouraged to do so through subtle forms of
manipulation. This was later termed as Post-Suppression Rebound Effect and is deemed
crucial to many aspects of our daily life experiences.
Application
People in so many kinds of situations use thought suppression, sometimes even without
knowing it. One example of this is when it comes to substance cravings. For those who are
trying to get over an addiction, or let’s say trying to quit smoking or going on a diet, the subject
may use thought suppression to fight the craving but this was proven to be counter-productive
because of thought rebound. A study found that smokers trying to suppress thoughts about
smoking were found to have higher cravings than those who didn’t try to suppress their
thoughts (Salkovkis & Reynolds, 1994). Other situations where thought suppression is present
are in cases of intrusive memories and depression.
Sources
Why Thought Suppression is Counter-Productive
Suppressed Thoughts Rebound in Dreams (link disappeared)
Dream Rebound: The Return of Suppressed Thoughts in Dreams by Daniel M. Wegner,

Richard M. Wenzlaff, and Megan Kozak
Explorable.com (Aug 6, 2010). Thought Rebound. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/thought-rebound
46
12 Ross’ False Consensus Effect
Experiments
Everyone’s got their own biases in each and every occasion, even when estimating
other people's behaviors and the respective causes. One of these is called the false
consensus bias. Psychologist Professor Lee Ross conducted studies on setting out to
show how false consensus effect operates.
The phenomenon of false consensus effect centralizes on people’s tendency to project their
way of thinking onto other people, thinking other people think the same way as they do. This
logical fallacy may involve a group or just a sole individual that assumes their own set of
opinions; beliefs and impressions are more prevalent amongst public than they actually are.
In the 1977, Stanford University social psychologist Professor Lee Ross conducted a research
that focuses on "biases in human inference, judgment, and decision making, especially on the
cognitive, perceptual and motivational biases that lead people to misinterpret each other’s
behavior and that create particular barriers to dispute resolution and the implementation of
peace agreements." (Lee Ross' Profile, Stanford)
First Study: Methodology

Professor Ross conducted 2 studies meant to show how the false consensus effect works.
In the first study, participants were asked to read about situations in which a conflict occurred
and then told two alternative ways of responding to the situation. They were asked to do three
things:
1. Guess which option other people would choose

2. Say which option they themselves would choose
3. Describe the attributes of the person who would likely choose each of the two options.
Results
The results evidently showed that most of the subjects had thought that other people would do
the same as them, regardless of which of the two responses they actually chose themselves.
This validates the phenomenon of false consensus effect, where an individual thinks that
47
other people think the same way they do when actually they often don’t.
Another observation that emerged from the study is that when participants were asked to
describe the attributes of the people who will likely make the choice opposite their own,
subjects made extreme predictions about the personalities of those who didn’t share their
choice.
Second Study: Methodology

A new set of subjects were asked if they would be willing to take a 30-minute walk around the
campus wearing a sandwich board that says “Eat at Joe’s”. To motivate the subjects, they
were told they will learn something useful by the end of the study, and that they are at the
same time free to refuse participating if they do not feel like it.
Results
The results of this study only reconfirmed what has already been found out in their previous
study. Among all those who agreed to wear the sandwich board, 62% thought other would
also agree like they did. Among those who refused, 33% thought others would agree to wear
the sandwich board.
Just like in the first study, subjects in this study made extreme predictions about the type of
person who will make a decision opposite to theirs.
Application
The phenomenon of false consensus effect validates the fact that people have the tendency
to judge how people make decisions based on how they would make their own. And if other
people do decide to do otherwise, they view them as someone defective or unacceptable.
Sources
Why We All Stink as Intuitive Psychologists: The False Consensus Effect
Wikipedia: False Consensus Effect
Lee D. Ross Professional Profile
48
Explorable.com (Jan 16, 2010). Ross’ False Consensus Effect Experiments. Retrieved from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/false-consensus-effect
49
13 Interpersonal Bargaining
Theory of Cooperation and Competition
Interpersonal bargaining is one of the many activities we usually engage in without

even realizing it. The Moran Deutsch and Robert Krauss Experiment investigated two
central factors in bargaining, namely how we communicate with each other and the use
of threats.
This social psychology experiment has been widely recognized by experts for being
successful in devising an explanation on why people oftentimes fail to effectively bargain with
one another.
The following experiment investigates the two major factors that determine the success of
interpersonal bargaining: threat and communication.
To resolve conflict, there are two basic orientations that people adhere to when engaging in
negotiations: cooperative or competitive. These two conflict styles differ in such a way that in
one style, both parties seem to get the advantage while the other one results to a win-lose
outcome.
In every conflict, to be able to arrive into a certain resolution, both cooperation and
competition are necessary. Morgan Deutsch and Robert Krauss investigated the use of
threats and how people communicate when it comes to interpersonal bargaining.
First Experiment: Methodology

In the first experiment, the participant is asked to play a game against another participant
where both will be running a truck company. The goal of the game is just like that of a real
trucking company, that is, to make as much money as they can.
The participant’s trucking company will be aiming to deliver as many goods as possible to a
particular destination as quick as it can. In the game, the player will only have a single starting
point, a single destination and a single opponent.
The following map shows how one truck has to travel across to its destination:
50
Map shown to Participants of Deutsch and Krauss Interpersonal Bargaining-Experiment
Both participants are presented to an identical problem. Both have two routes they can take
from the start to the destination - the short and the long way. The short route, which is the
quickest way to get to the destination, is one-way. Only one of the participants can travel
down it at a time. This is where interpersonal bargaining comes in.
There will be no communication between the two contenders during the experiment and will
both be seated in a cubicle from where one will only be able to see the control box for both his
own truck and the experimenter.
As you can see, there is a gate at each opponent’s own end of the one-way road. This will
serve as the contenders’ method of communication with each other. Each of them will be able
to control their own gate, which can only be closed when their own truck is on the main route.
This serves as the threat. It is reinforced by the experimenter that you are out to make as
much money as you can for yourself and your opponent’s profit is out of the question.
Results
In this experiment, each contender is expected to make no profit at all, if not a major loss. In
the first set of trials, both contenders will likely shut their gates forcing both trucks onto the
longer route which is 50% longer, causing you a great loss on the trip as a whole.
On the next set of trials, your trucks may meet head-on traveling up the one-way road, giving
them both the need to reverse, again costing you time and money. Towards the end, none will
be able to make profit.
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Second Experiment: Methodology
To further test the effect of communication in interpersonal bargaining, Deutsch and Krauss
introduced the use of headphones in the game. Everything else was the same, just this time
participants will be able to talk to each other with the use of headphones.
Results
Even with headphones, the result was not significantly any different to the results of the first
experiment when there was no means of direct communication between the two. Even with
communication, it did not really help the two manage having a better understanding of each
other.
Apparently, people’s competitive orientation was stronger than their motivation to

communicate.
According to the subjects, it was difficult to actually communicate to the other person to think
both are strangers to each other.
Third Experiment: Forced Communication

This time, Deutsch and Krauss decided to test the effect of forced communication. Everything
again remained the same, just that this time the participants were instructed that they have to
say something to the other. In the event they do not talk to each other, the experimenter shall
remind them to do so, regardless what their talk will be about as long as they do say
something at least.
Results
This time, there was a positive outcome and there was some success shown for
communication. Performance in the one-gate condition came close to that achieved in the no-
threat condition.
Forced communication did not have that much of an effect on the no-threat condition
compared to that of having none, and at the same time it did not improve the bilateral threat
condition that much.
It appears that people are so competitive when they both feel threatened that it’s difficult to
avoid both sides from being on the losing end.
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Limitations of the Experiment
The experiment covers a situation in which interpersonal bargaining is carried out under time
pressure. It also follows that the longer the subjects take to arrive to a certain resolution, the
less money they make. In real life, time constriction isn’t always present.
Another thing is that, the setting has a relatively simple solution compared to how things really
are in real life. In the experiment, participants need to make the most profit if they do share
the one-way road. In real life, solutions are rarely clear-cut.
Conclusion
Here are some of Deutsch and Krauss’ findings in their study:
People’s competitiveness tends to overcome effective communication between both

parties since both parties do not want to be on the losing end.
The cooperative style of negotiation is characterized by:
“Effective Communication” where ideas are verbalized, group members pay
attention to one another and at the same time accept their ideas and are then
influenced by them. These groups tend to have less problems communicating with
and understanding others.
“Friendliness, helpfulness, and less obstructiveness” is expressed in
conversations. Members tend to be generally more satisfied with the group and its
solutions as well as being impressed by the contributions of other group members.
“Coordination of effort, division of labor, orientation to task achievement,
orderliness in discussion, and high productivity” tend to exist in cooperative groups.
“Feeling of agreement with the ideas of others and a sense of basic similarity in
beliefs and values, as well as confidence in one’s own ideas and in the value that
other members attach to those ideas, are obtained in cooperative groups.”
“Willingness to enhance the other’s power” to achieve the other’s goals and
increases. As other’s capabilities are strengthened in a cooperative relationship,
you are strengthened and vice versa.
“Defining conflicting interests as a mutual problem to be solved by collaborative
effort facilitates recognizing the legitimacy of each other’s interests and the
necessity to search for a solution responsive to the needs of all.” This tends to limit
the scope of conflicting interests and keep attempts to influence each other to
decent forms of persuasion.
The competitive style of negotiation on the other hand is characterized by:

Communication obstruction for conflicting parties try to gain advantage by
misleading each other through false promises and misinformation. Communication
is ultimately reduced as the parties realize they cannot trust the other.
“Obstructiveness and lack of helpfulness lead to mutual negative attitudes and
suspicion of one another’s intentions. One’s perceptions of the other tend to focus
53
on the person’s negative qualities and ignore the positives.”
The parties are unable to effectively divide their work and end up duplicating
efforts. When they do divide it, they continuously feel the need to check each
other’s work.
Ongoing disagreement and critical rejection of ideas reduces participants’ self-
confidence as well as confidence in the other parties.
The conflicting parties seek to increase their own power and therefore see any
increase in the other side’s power as a threat.
The competitive process fosters the notion that the solution of the conflict can only
be imposed by one side on the other. This orientation also encourages the use of
coercive tactics such as psychological or physical threats and/or violence. This
process tends to expand the range of contested issues and turns the conflict into a
power struggle, with each side seeking to win outright. This sort of escalation
raises the motivational significance of the conflict for the participants and makes
them more likely to accept a mutual disaster rather than a partial defeat or
compromise.
Cited from: beyondintractability.org, a paraphrased version of excerpts from Morton Deutsch's

"Cooperation and Competition," in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice,
eds. Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000)
Sources
Competitive and Cooperative Approaches to Conflict by Brad Spangler
How to Avoid a Bad Bargain: Don’t Threaten
Explorable.com (Apr 21, 2010). Interpersonal Bargaining. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/interpersonal-bargaining
54
14 Understanding and Belief
The Gilbert Experiment
Daniel Gilbert together with his colleagues put to test both Rene Descartes’ and Baruch
Spinoza’s beliefs on whether belief is automatic or is a separate process that follows
understanding. This argument has long been standing for at least 400 years before it
was finally settled.
Does understanding and belief happen at the same time almost instantaneously? How does a
typical mind work when a new set of information is laid out for it to take in? Does it believe in
the new information right away soon as it enters it or does your mind process these bits of
information first before it accepts it?
People love to read because it furthers their knowledge and awareness regarding all matters
of life. However, not everything that we can read especially now that a lot of information can
be acquired through the Internet from non-credible sources, some information could be
outright false. Hence it’s critical that we should not believe everything we read. However it still
does happen for according to a classic psychology study, we can’t help but believe it at first.
Research Question
Two philosophers have contrasting views when it comes to understanding and belief. The said
argument has been going on for at least 400 years before a solution gave light to it. According
to Rene Descartes, a well-known French philosopher, mathematician and physicist,
understanding and belief are two separate processes. People take in some information first by
paying attention to it, before they actually decide what to do with that information, which
includes believing or rejecting it.
On the other hand, Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher and contemporary of Descartes,
believed that the very act of understanding information was already believing it. According to
him, after this we may be able to change our minds but until that time we do believe
everything.
Daniel Gilbert along with his colleagues wanted to find out the answer to this in a couple of
experiments to find out whether understanding and belief operate together or whether belief or
disbelief comes afterwards.
55
Method
The experiment studied 71 participants in totality. The subjects are to read statements about 2
robberies and will then be asked to give the robber a jail sentence. The statement varies in
such a way that would seem to tweak the severity of the crime.
For example: “The robber had a gun.”
Thus making the crime seem worse. While there are other statements as well that make the
crime look less serious.
For example: “The robber had starving children to feed.”
The twist was that not all statements that will be presented to them were true. Subjects were
informed that all the statements that were true would be displayed in green, while the false
ones would be in red.
To put both Spinoza’s and Descartes’ theory on the experiment, if we’ll be taking Spinoza’s
theory, then subjects who get distracted by the colored statements will find a hard time to
process the fact that statements written in red are therefore false, and would most likely be
influenced by this when they give the robber his jail sentence in the end. While if we are to
take Descartes’ theory, judgments made by those distracted by the color-coordinated
statements will be no different at all since they wouldn’t have time to believe it or reject the
false statements, so this would not make any difference to the jail term.
Results
Results showed that when the false statements made the crime seem much worse rather than
less serious, the subjects who were distracted by the color-coordination gave the robbers
almost twice as severe jail terms, from about 6 years to around 11 years.
On the contrary, the group in which participants didn’t find the colored statements distracting
at all, managed to effectively ignore the false statements. Consequently, there was hardly any
difference between jail terms given that depended on whether false statements made the
crime appear more severe or not.
Gilbert and his colleagues got the following results:
Not Interrupted
6.03 years when false statements made crimes less serious.
7.03 years when false statements made crimes more serious.
56
Interrupted
5.83 years when false statements made crimes less serious.
11.15 years when false statements made crimes more serious.
Conclusion
The results convey the idea that people, when given time to think, behave as though the false
statements were actually false. Otherwise, people just open-handedly believe whatever they
read.
To then answer the understanding/believing dispute between Descartes and Spinoza based
on the experiment, Spinoza was right. Believing is not a two-stage process that’s independent
of each other. Instead, understanding is already believing, although your mind might change
after a split second the moment your mind decides otherwise as it further interprets and
analyzes the new information.
Furthermore, Gilbert and his colleagues came about with these findings that explain other
behaviors people regularly display:
Correspondence bias – people’s tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-

based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational
explanations for those behaviors. In short, people tend to assume that other people’s
behavior automatically reflects their personality when in reality, it really reflects the
situation.
Truthfulness bias – tendency of people to assume other people’s statements to be true
even when they’re false.
Persuasion effect – when people are distracted it increases the likeliness that the
people will be persuaded or the message is more persuasive.
Denial-innuendo effect – tendency of people to positively believe in things that are
being categorically denied.
Hypothesis testing bias – people, when testing a theory, instead of trying to prove it
wrong, they tend to look for information that confirms it.
Sources
Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read
Wikipedia: Fundamental Attribution Error
57
Explorable.com (Apr 5, 2010). Understanding and Belief. Retrieved from Explorable.com:
https://explorable.com/understanding-and-belief
58
15 Hawthorne Effect
The Hawthorne Effect is a well-documented phenomenon that affects many research

experiments in social sciences.
It is the process where human subjects of an experiment change their behavior, simply
because they are being studied. This is one of the hardest inbuilt biases to eliminate or factor
into the design.
The History of the Hawthorne Effect

The name is not the surname of a researcher, but the name of a place where the effect was
first encountered.
In 1955, the researcher, Henry A. Landsberger, performed a study and analysis of data from
experiments performed between 1924 and 1932, by Elton Mayo, at the Hawthorne Works
near Chicago. The company had commissioned studies to determine if the level of light within
their building affected the productivity of the workers.
Mayo found that the level of light made no difference in the productivity, as the workers
increased output whenever the amount of light was switched from a low level to a high level,
or vice versa.
He noticed that this effect occurred when any variable was manipulated, and postulated that it
happened because the workers automatically changed their behavior. They increased output,
simply because they were aware that they were under observation.
The logical conclusion was that the workers felt important because they were pleased to be
singled out, and increased productivity as a result. Being singled out was the factor dictating
increased productivity, not the changing lighting levels, or any of the other factors that they
experimented upon.
The Hawthorne Effect and Modern Day Research
59
Many types of research use human research subjects, and the Hawthorne effect is an
unavoidable bias that the researcher must try to take into account when they analyze the
results.
Subjects are always liable to modify behavior when they are aware that they are part of an
experiment, and this is extremely difficult to quantify. All that a researcher can do is attempt to
factor the effect into the research design, a tough proposition, and one that makes social
research a matter of experience and judgment.
A 1978 study, to establish whether cerebellar neurostimulators could mitigate the motor
dysfunction of young adults with cerebral palsy found that the Hawthorne Effect adversely
affected the findings. Objective testing showed that all of patients reported that their motor
functions improved and that they were happy with the treatment.
Quantitative methods, however, showed that there was little improvement, and researchers
invoked the Hawthorne Effect as the main factor skewing the results. They believed that the
extra attention given to the patients, by the doctors, nurses and therapists, was behind the
reported improvements in the initial study.
The Hawthorne Effect and Industrial Psychology

Mayo's and Landsberger's work became one of the foundations of a field of social science
known as Industrial Psychology. Academics in this field understand that interpersonal factors
and the dynamic social relationships between groups must be assessed when performing any
type of social analysis.
If a group is isolated from their work colleagues, for the purpose of research, the individual
attention and the normal human instinct to feel 'chosen,' will skew the results.
Some researchers argue that the Hawthorne effect does not exist or is, at best, the placebo
effect under another name. Others postulate that it is the demand effect, where subjects
subconsciously change their behavior to fit the expected results of an experiment.
Whatever the truth, there is little doubt that many fields, from psychology through to business
management, must appreciate that social science subjects can, and do, change behavior.
Martyn Shuttleworth (Oct 10, 2009). Hawthorne Effect. Retrieved from Explorable.com:
https://explorable.com/hawthorne-effect
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16 Self-Deception
Quattrone & Tversky’s Experiment
People lie all the time even to themselves and surprisingly, it does work! This is the
finding of the Quattrone and Tversky social psychology experiment that was published
in the Journal of Personality and Psychology.
Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or

importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing
oneself of a truth or lack of truth so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the
deception. (Wikipedia)
Everyone is guilty of self-deception especially in the occasion where we don’t end up getting
what we wanted. We tend to rationalize ourselves and tell ourselves that what we instead got
is better than what we originally wanted anyway and then we learn to settle. Sometimes it can
be as obvious and direct as this, but there are also times when we do it to ourselves
unknowingly and without even being aware of it.
Quattrone and Tversky further explored this phenomenon of self-deception in their classic
social psychology experiment in 1984. It was then published in the Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology.
Method
The researchers recruited a total of 38 student respondents who were informed that they were
to participate in a study about the “psychological and medical aspects of athletics”.
The truth was, that the researchers were tricking the participants into thinking that the span of
time that they will be able to submerge their arms in cold water tells them their current health
status. This consequently allows researchers to find out how readily people deceive
themselves to achieve more desirable results for themselves.
First, subjects were instructed to submerge their arms into cold water for as long as they could
stand.
61
Next, the subjects were given some other tasks to do to make them think they were really
involved in a study about athletics. They were asked to do some bike exercises, among others.
The subjects were then given a short lecture regarding life expectancy and how this relates to
the type of heart each person has. They were informed of the two types of heart namely:
Type I heart which is associated with poorer health, shorter life expectancy and more
vulnerable to heart disease.
Type II heart, which is associated with better heath, longer life expectancy and lower risk
of contracting heart disease.
Half were told that people with Type II hearts are expected to have increased tolerance to cold
water after exercise, while the remaining half were told it decreased tolerance to cold water.
But these are not factually right anyway and were just made up lies to see whether
participants will be deceiving themselves to think this way or not.
Subjects where then asked to submerge their arms again into the cold water for as long as
they could stand.
Results
The results acquired by Quattrone and Tversky showed that the experimental manipulation
was effective. For the first half whom was told that cold tolerance is healthy, subjects were
able to submerge their arms in cold water much longer the second time compared to the first
time they did. At first, they averaged at 35 seconds but during the second attempt, they lasted
longer than 45 seconds.
On the contrary, the other half whom was told that cold tolerance is unhealthy,
correspondingly lessened their submersion time. On the average, when they first submerged
their arms in cold water, they lasted for around 45 seconds. But after being informed about
their heart type, their time went down on an average of 35 seconds.
Apparently, as results show, when people thought higher cold tolerance meant healthier heart,
they held their arms underwater much longer and those who believed the reverse did
otherwise and felt they couldn’t any longer tolerate the cold.
To further test whether subjects were self-deceiving, they were asked whether they
intentionally held their arms underwater longer or shorter as it indicates the health of their
heart. Among the 38 subjects, 29 denied they did and 9 confessed indirectly. Those 9 justified
that the water had changed temperature, thus explaining the change, but of course the water
just had the same temperature all throughout the experiment.
62
They were then asked whether they really do believe that they had a healthy heart or not.
More than half of the subjects that denied or 60% of them thought they had the healthier type
of heart. While among the 9 confessors, only 20% thought they had the healthier heart. This
only means that the deniers were more likely to be really deceiving themselves because they
thought that the test was really telling them that they had a healthy heart.
The subjects confused diagnostic effect with a causal one. Submerging their arms for more or
less time in the cold water is diagnostic of whether you have a healthy heart or not and does
not cause a change in your heart’s type. With this in mind, the subjects behaved as if they can
actually change their heart’s type.
Conclusion
The experiment shows the different graduations of self-deception. At the highest level, people
tend to imbibe the deception and therefore think and act as though their incorrect belief is
completely true, totally ignoring and rejecting any incoming hints from reality.
Sources
Quattrone and Tversky: Causal versus Diagnostic Contingencies
Wikipedia: Self-Deception
The Truth About Self-Deception
Explorable.com (Apr 8, 2010). Self-Deception. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/self-deception
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17 Confirmation Bias
...and the Wason Rule Discovery Test
Confirmation bias is also known as selective collection of evidence. It is considered as

an effect of information processing where people behaves to as to make their
expectations come true. People tend to favor information that confirms their
preconceptions or hypotheses independently of the information’s truthfulness or
falsity.
Can You Solve This?
Confirmation bias is a person’s tendency to favor information that confirms their assumptions,
preconceptions or hypotheses whether these are actually and independently true or not. The
phenomenon is also called confirmatory bias or myside bias.
Confirmation bias is a person’s tendency to favor information that confirms their assumptions,
preconceptions or hypotheses whether these are actually and independently true or not. The
phenomenon is also called confirmatory bias or myside bias.
So how does confirmation bias work? People already have preconceived assumptions at the
start and to confirm these, what people tend to do is gather evidence and recall information
from memory selectively and interpret these altogether in a biased way. These biases appear
in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs.
The term confirmation bias was coined by the English psychologist Peter Wason. He also
conducted a study that in the end demonstrated the phenomenon of confirmation bias.
Background of the Study

Peter Wason conducted series of experiments in the 1960s to demonstrate that people are
indeed biased towards confirming their existing beliefs. Another view of the phenomenon
suggests that people show confirmation bias because they are pragmatically assessing the
costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral and scientific way.
The Research Problem

Wason in his study aims to demonstrate that most people do not proceed optimally in testing
64
hypothesis. Instead of trying to falsify a hypothesis, people tend to try to confirm the
hypothesis. So in his experiment, Wason challenged subjects to identify a rule applying to
triples of numbers.
Methodology
The subjects were asked to identify a rule that applies to series of triples of numbers. Wason
made up a role for the construction of the given sequences of numbers. For instance, the
three numbers “2-4-6” satisfy this rule. To find out what the rule is, Wason said the subjects
may construct other sets of three numbers to test their assumptions about the rule the
experimented has in mind.
For every three numbers the subjects will be coming up with, the experimenter will tell them
whether it satisfies the rule or not, until the subject comes up with the right rule.
Results
Most participants in Wason’s experiment typically proceeded in the following manner:
Given the sequence of “2-4-6”, they first formed a hypothesis about the rule: A sequence of
even numbers.
Then they tried to test this rule by proposing more sequences of numbers that follow this rule.
They tried “4-8-10”, “6-8-12”, “20-22-24”. The feedbacks to all these sequences were positive.
The subjects give a few more tries until they felt sure about their hypothesis and stopped
since they thought they have already discovered the rule. The only thing is, this wasn’t the
rule. The rule was simply increasing numbers.
Conclusion
Almost all subjects formed this hypothesis and tried number sequences that only prove their
hypothesis and very few actually tried to make up a number sequence that might disprove
their hypothesis. The subjects did not ask questions to falsify their hypothesis because as
much as possible, they do not want to break their own rules.
Generally, people indeed find this difficult to do, for they do not want to face the possibility that
their beliefs could be wrong.
Wason’s Rule Discovery Test proves that most people do not try at all to test their hypotheses
critically but rather to confirm them. Other studies were also conducted to reconfirm this
opinion. One of these is Klayman and Ha’s in 1987, which disputed the view of humans as
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hypotheses con-firmers. They argued that the behavior of the participants in Wason’s study
might be interpreted as a positive test strategy.
Application
People’s tendency to succumb to the phenomenon of making confirmation biases may lead to
disastrous decisions. Since confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal
beliefs, these may dramatically strengthen beliefs that when faced with contrary evidence, the
result might be disastrous, especially in organizational, military and political contexts.
Sources
Confirmation Bias by Margit E. Oswald and Stefan Grosjean
Wikipedia: Confirmation Bias
Confirmation Bias, The Investor’s Curse
Explorable.com (Sep 4, 2010). Confirmation Bias. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/confirmation-bias
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18 Overjustification Effect
The Felt Tip Marker Study
The overjustification effect happens when an external incentive like a reward,

decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a particular task. Lepper, Greene
and Nisbett confirmed this in their field experiment in a nursery school.
Overjustification effect is manifested in cases where giving an external incentive to a person

decreases his intrinsic motivation to perform the task.
When we do a certain task, there are two types of motivation present: intrinsic and extrinsic. It
can be either or even be both, depending upon what causes or gives the person the drive to
do a particular task.
Lepper, Greene and Nisbett conducts an activity to find out if giving rewards which is a form of
extrinsic motivation, decreases the intrinsic motivation of a person.
The salience of extrinsic motivation, or the motivation to perform an activity because it leads
to something else like getting rewards and benefits, over intrinsic motivation, or the desire to
perform an activity out of the enjoyment derived from the activity itself, is the basis for the
overjustification effect.
To define the phenomena, the overjustification effect occurs when an external incentive like
money or prizes, decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task.
What will consequently matter more for the person is the incentive they receive, instead of the
enjoyment and satisfaction they get when they perform the activity. There will be a shift in
motivation to extrinsic factors and an undermining of preexisting intrinsic motivation.
Statement of the Problem

The problem originates from Deci's theory which led to the hypothesis that once an activity is
associated with an external reward, a person will be less interested or inclined to participate in
the activity in the future because of the absence of incentive.
Methodology
67
The researchers went to a nursery school and observed the children's intrinsic interest in
various school activities. The 3- to 5-year old children were made to play and draw using felt-
tipped pens and were at the same time, put into one of three different conditions for the
experiment. These are:
First Condition: The Expected Award Condition

In this condition, the children were promised to receive a "Good Player" ribbon for
participating in the activity where they will be drawing with the use of felt-tipped
pens. Take note that the kids have already been doing this activity ever since, and
with pure intrinsic interest.
Second Condition: Unexpected Award Condition
In this condition, the children were not told about the reward they would be getting
until they actually finished the activity.
Third Condition: No-Reward Condition
Lastly, in this third condition, the children were not told or given any kind of reward.
This group of kids served as the control group, since extrinsic rewards were not
involved either before or after the said activity.
Later on, the children were again observed in a free-play setting to find out whether there is a
significant difference in the number of children participating in the same activity, this time,
without any promise of a reward.
Results
The researchers found out that the children who were promised to get a reward during the first
part of the experiment played significantly less with the pens.
In accordance with the Overjustification Effect hypothesis, the children in the Expected-
Reward Condition noticeably lost their interest in their activities since the introduction of
rewards.
However, there was no change in the interest of the group who received the reward
unexpectedly since these children didn't know about the reward until after performing the
activity, and therefore attributed their behavior to an enjoyment of the activity. Coherently,
those who did not receive any reward at all also did not show any change or decline in
interested as a result.
Conclusion
The experiment proved that an individual's interest in an activity will most likely decrease by
inducing them to engage in the activity as an explicit means to some extrinsic goal.
Lepper, Greene and Nisbett then arrived at a conclusion that expected rewards undermine the
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intrinsic motivation of people in previously enjoyable or worthwhile activities.
Application
The researchers' findings are important especially for parents and educators, when it comes
to instilling intrinsic motivation and drive to children. They should rely on intrinsic motivation
and preserve feelings of autonomy and competence as much as possible.
When it comes to tasks that are undesirable or something not worthwhile, and intrinsic
motivation is insufficient, this is when extrinsic rewards are safe to be introduced. Examples of
such activities that individuals may not find pleasurable are household chores.
In conclusion, when control is imposed on individuals by offering them rewards and

incentives, the long term effect of this will be loss in intrinsic motivation followed by a decline
in performance. This is applicable in the classroom setting, in sports teams, and other
environment and settings. We should be reminded that when incentives and rewards are
present, we are most likely looking into a risk of losing the enjoyment of the activity for itself.
Sources
Wikipedia: Overjustification effect
Psychwiki.com: Overjustification effect
How Rewards Can Backfire and Reduce Motivation
Explorable.com (May 16, 2010). Overjustification Effect. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/overjustification-effect
69
19 Choice Blindness
Peter Johansson's Experiment
Choice blindness refers to ways in which people are blind to their own choices and
preferences. Lars Hall and Peter Johansson further explain this phenomenon in their
study.
Choice Blindness is type of a broader phenomenon called the introspection illusion. Here,
people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states, while
treating other’s introspections as unreliable.
Let’s look at choice blindness this way. We think we want A but when we are given B, we
make up all kinds of reasons that would persuade us into believing that B is a much better
alternative and how we actually wanted it all along.
Lars Hall and Peter Johansson further explain choice blindness in their study.
Statement of the Problem

Peter Johansson together with his colleagues collectively investigated subjects’ insight into
their own preferences using a new technique.
The researchers’ aim was to measure whether participants notice that something went wrong
with their choice, during and after the experimental task.
Methodology
The experimenters presented subjects two photos of female faces and were asked which they
found more attractive.
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Choice Blindness
(Photographer: Mark Hanion)
They were given a closer look at their "chosen" photograph and asked to verbally explain their
choice immediately.
The trial was repeated 15 times for watch volunteer, using different pairs of faces but in three
of the trials, unknown to the subjects, a card magic trick was used to extremely exchange one
face for the other after a decision has been made. The subjects end up with the face they did
not actually choose. And they were again, asked to explain why made them choose that
particular face, even though it wasn’t really their first choice.
Results
Majority of the participants failed to actually notice that the picture they were looking at wasn’t
their original choice. Many subjects confabulated explanations of their choice.
For example, the subject may say:
I preferred this one because I prefer blondes.
when he in fact his original choice was the brunette, but he was handed a blonde. These must
have been confabulated because they explain a preference that they did not really make to
begin with.
Common sense would tell that all of us would of course notice such a big change in the
outcome of a choice. But results showed that in 75% of the trials, the participants were blind
to the mismatch. What’s more interesting is that, not only were a large number of participants
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were clueless of the switch, when allowed to take a longer look at their choice, they were able
to make up a detailed explanation for why they chose that face when originally, they actually
rejected it. The experimenters coined the term choice blindness for this failure to detect a
mismatch.
A few, less than 1/10 of the manipulations were easily spotted by the participants. Not more
than 20% of all manipulations were actually exposed, towards the end of each experiment.
After the experiment, the participants were presented a hypothetical scenario:
Suppose you were involved in an experiment where the faces you chose were switched.
Would you notice?
84% of the participants said in the post-test interview that they would. Researchers called this
choice blindness. When the truth was revealed to some, they expressed surprise and even
disbelief.
Johansson further explains that when individuals were asked to reason out their choices, they
remained confident in their verbal reports and had the same state of emotionality and
expressed the same level of detail for faces they have and have not chosen.
Another important finding is that the effects of choice blindness go beyond snap judgements.
Depending on what the participants say in response to the mismatched outcomes of choices
(whether they give short or long explanations, give numerical rating or labelling, and so on), it
was found that this interaction could change their future preferences to the extent that they
come to prefer the previously rejected alternative. This gave the researchers a rare glimpse
into the complicated dynamics of self-feedback ("I chose this, I publicly said so, therefore I
must like it"), which is suspect as to what lies behind the formation of many everyday
preferences.
Conclusion
The researchers did not know how or why choice blindness occur but they think it gets to the
very heart of how we make decisions in our everyday life. According to Hall, one of the
researchers, choice blindness doesn’t always happen. Therefore the concept of intention
needs to be re-evaluated and investigated more closely.
There are several theories about decision-making that assume that we recognize when our
intentions and the outcome of our choices do not match up but Johansson’s study shows that
this assumption is not always the case. His experiment challenges both current theories of
decision-making and common sense notions of choice and self-knowledge.
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Application
Experiments on choice blindness can be used to provide a way to study subjectivity and
introspection, topics once considered by scientists to be extremely difficult or even impossible
to measure or evaluate scientifically.
Why does this happen? According to Jonah Lehrer, these confabulations are sometimes
necessary half-truths that preserve the unity of oneself. Lehrer further explains: “just as a
novelist creates a narrative, we create a sense of being. The self, in this sense, is our work of
art, a fiction created by the mind in order to make sense of its own fragments.”
Sources
Introspection Illusion
‘Choice Blindness’ and How We Fool Ourselves
Confabulations by Jonah Lehrer
Explorable.com (Mar 20, 2010). Choice Blindness. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/choice-blindness
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20 Cognitive Dissonance Experiment
The Cognitive Dissonance Experiment is based on the theory of cognitive dissonance

proposed by Leon Festinger in the year 1957: People hold many different cognitions
about their world, e.g. about their environment and their personalities.
In an event wherein some of these cognitions clash, an unsettled state of tension occurs and
this is called cognitive dissonance.
Within the same theory, Festinger suggests that every person has innate drives to keep all his
cognitions in a harmonious state and avoid a state of tension or dissonance. If a person
encounters a state of dissonance, the discomfort brought by the conflict of cognition leads to
an alteration in one of the involved cognitions to reduce the conflict and bring a harmonious
state once again.
The Classic Experiment of Leon Festinger

Deception is the cornerstone of the experiment conceived by Leon Festinger in the year 1959.
He hoped to exhibit cognitive dissonance in an experiment which was cleverly disguised as a
performance experiment.
Initially, subjects will be told that they will be participating in a two-hour experiment.
Participants will be briefed that the experiment aims to observe the relationship between
expectations and the actual experience of a task. With no other introduction about the
experiment, the subject will be shown the first task which involves putting 12 spools into a
tray, emptying it again, refilling the tray and so on.
The subject will be instructed to do this for thirty minutes. After the said time, the experimenter
will approach the subject and ask him to turn 48 square pegs a quarter turn in a clockwise
direction, then another quarter, and so on. Bored to hell, the subject must finish the task. The
subjects will be advised to work on both experiments on their own preferred speed. While the
subject is doing the tasks, the experimenter acts as if recording the progress of the subject
and timing him accordingly.
After finishing the two tasks, the subjects will be debriefed.
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The experimenter will tell the subject that the experiment contains two
separate groups. In one group, the group you were in, subjects were
only told instructions to accomplish the tasks and very little about the
experiment. The other group however, was given a thorough
introduction about the experiment. Subjects in the other group were
also briefed by a student we've hired who also finished the task so they
have accurate expectations about the experiment.
Up to this point of the experiment, all the treatment conditions were identical. Divergence
occurs after this point; conditions divide into Control, One Dollar and Twenty Dollars.
The following step of the experimenter is the master deception of all. After debriefing the
subject, he then acts as if he is very nervous and it is the first time that he will do this.
He then tells the subjects that the other group needs someone who will
give them a background about the experiment. For some reason, the
student the experimenters hired was not available for the given day. The
subject will be told that he will be given (One Dollar or Twenty Dollars) if
he will do the request. After agreeing, the subject will be handed a piece
of paper containing the vital points that he needs to impart to the next
subjects of the other groups. The notes include: It was very enjoyable,
very exciting, I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed myself. It was very interesting.
It was really intriguing.
After this part, all the treatment conditions will be proceeding similarly again.
After briefing the subjects in the other group, the subject will be interviewed to know his
thoughts about the experiment. The questions include:
1. Were the tasks interesting and enjoyable? Would you rate how you feel about them on a
scale from -5 to +5 where -5 means they were extremely dull and boring, +5 means they
were extremely interesting and enjoyable, and zero means they were neutral.
2. Did the experiment give you an opportunity to learn about your own ability to perform
these tasks? Would you rate how you feel about this on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0
means you learned nothing and 10 means you learned a great deal.
3. Do you think the results of the experiment may have scientific value? Would you rate
your opinion on this matter on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 means the results have no
scientific value or importance and 10 means they have a great deal of value and
importance.
4. Would you have any desire to participate in another similar experiment? Would you rate
your desire to participate in a similar experiment again on a scale from -5 to +5, where -
5 means you would definitely dislike to participate, +5 means you would definitely like to
participate, and 0 means you have no particular feeling.
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Results of the Experiment
76
Questions in Interview Control One Dollar Twenty Dollars
How enjoyable tasks were -0.45 1.35 -0.05
How much you learned 3.08 2.80 3.15
Scientific importance 5.60 6.45 5.18
Would participate in similar experiment -0.62 1.20 -0.25
The most relevant of all these data is the first row, how enjoyable the tasks were since we are
looking at cognitive dissonance. Since the tasks were purposefully crafted to be monotonous
and boring, the control group averaged -0.45. On the other hand, the One Dollar group
showed a significantly higher score with +1.35. The resulting dissonance in the subjects was
somehow reduced by persuading themselves that the tasks were indeed interesting.
Comparing this result to the results from the Twenty Dollar group, we see a significantly lower
score in the Twenty Dollar group -0.05.
Conclusions
Two conclusions were obtained from the results.
First, if a person is induced to do or say something which is contrary to his private opinion,
there will be a tendency for him to change his opinion so as to bring it into correspondence
with what he has done or said.
Second, the larger the pressure used to change one's private opinion, beyond the minimum
needed to change it, the weaker will be the above-mentioned tendency. This is clearly evident
in the results of the Twenty Dollar group, the experimenters obtained a lower score since they
used a large amount of pressure compared to One Dollar which can be considered as the
minimum pressure needed to make the change of opinion.
Explorable.com (Jan 13, 2009). Cognitive Dissonance Experiment. Retrieved from

Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/cognitive-dissonance-experiment
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20.1 Cognitive Dissonance
Festinger & Carlsmith's Study
Every individual has his or her own way of evaluating their own selves and usually this
is done by comparing themselves to others. This is manifested in the phenomenon
called cognitive dissonance. This is further explained in Leon Festinger and James
Carlsmith's study in 1954.
Cognitive dissonance is one form of social comparison. The Social Comparison Theory was
originally proposed by Leon Festinger in 1954. According to the social psychologist, the social
comparison theory is the idea that there is a drive within individuals to search for outside
images in order to evaluate their own opinions and abilities. The said images can be a
reference to physical reality or in comparison to other people.
In the process, people look at the images portrayed by others as something obtainable and
realistic, and subsequently, make comparisons among themselves, others and the idealized
images.
Generally speaking, the social comparison theory explains how individuals evaluate their
opinion and desires by comparing themselves to others.
The Sample
Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith conducted a study on cognitive dissonance investigating
on the cognitive consequences of forced compliance. In the study, undergraduate students of
Introductory Psychology at Stanford University were asked to take part of a series of
experiments.
It was explained to them that the Department of Psychology is conducting the study and they
are therefore required to serve in the experiments. They were told that the study aims to
evaluate these experiments to help them improve these in the future. The students will be
interviewed after participating in the experiment and were encouraged to be completely
honest in these interviews.
The participants were 71 male students in totality.
78
Methodology
The 71 subjects were informed that the experiment focuses on the "Measures of
Performance." The participants were asked to carry out series of monotonous tasks that were
meant to be boring and nonsensical. Specifically, subjects were asked to put spools onto and
then off the try with the use of only one hand for half an hour, and then for the next half hour,
turn square pegs clockwise in quarter turns, and then start all over again once the whole
cycle's been finished for all 48 square pegs.
The subjects were divided into two groups, A and B, where Group A was provided no
introduction regarding the tasks they will be performing and Group B was. Group B was given
introduction by an experimenter, presenting the tasks in an interesting and enjoyable tone.
After performing the tasks, each of the subjects was then interviewed regarding how
enjoyable the tasks were to him. Festinger and Carlsmith then investigated whether there's a
standing evidence of cognitive dissonance where boring tasks were seen as enjoyable.
A fraction of the subjects were thanked and let go after being interviewed by another
experimenter regarding ways on how the presentation of the boring tasks can be improved for
future purposes. The said group served as the control group of the experiment.
The remaining subjects were asked to take the place of an experimenter, if they would want
to. Their job is to give the next group of participants a delightful introduction of the tasks they
have previously performed. Half of them were offered $1 to do the job, while the remaining
half was offered $20.
The subjects were then again interviewed afterwards and were asked to rate four different
areas of the experiment. The first area is whether the tasks were interesting and enjoyable at
all. Subjects rated this using a scale of negative 5 to positive 5 (-5 to +5).
The second area is whether the experiment gave the participant an opportunity to discover
their own skills, using the scale of 0 to 10. The third asks whether that subject finds the activity
important, again using the scale of 0 to 10. And lastly, participants were asked whether they
would want to participate again in the future in a study the same as this, using the scale -5 to
+5.
Results
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Like in every other study, there are some responses that are deemed to be invalid. In
Festinger and Carlsmith's experiment, 11 of the 71 responses were considered invalid for a
couple of reasons.
Among the paid participants, 5 had suspicions about getting paid for the designated task.
These made them question what the real purpose of the study is. In addition to these 5
exceptions, another 2 of the paid participants told the girl the truth that the tasks she will be
performing are boring and uninteresting, and that they were just being paid to say otherwise.
Three other participants declined the offer and another one, though he gave the girl a positive
briefing, he asked for the girl's number afterwards so he can, according to him, explain to her
further what the study is about.
Putting these 11 in exception, the 60 remaining responses are the following:
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Experimental Condition
Question on Interview One Dollar Twenty Dollars
Control (N=20)
(N=20) (N=20)
How enjoyable tasks were (rated

-0.45 +1.35 -0.05
from -5 to +5)
How much they learned (rated

3.08 2.80 3.15
from 0 to 10)
Scientific importance (rated from

5.60 6.45 5.18
0 to 10)
Participate in similar exp. (rated

-0,62 +1,20 -0,25
from -5 to +5)
One of the questions that Festinger and Carlsmith were aiming to answer is how enjoyable
were the tasks for the participants. Results of the experiment showed that even though the
tasks were indeed boring and uninteresting, the unpaid control group rated the activity a
negative 0.45 (-0.45). Those who were paid $1 rated the activity a positive 1.35 (+1.35), while
those who were paid $20 gave it a rating of negative 0.5 (-0.5). The results, according to the
researchers, display the cognitive dissonance phenomenon.
According to Festinger and Carlsmith, the participants experienced dissonance between the
conflicting cognitions of telling someone that a particular task is interesting when the truth is,
they found it rather uninteresting and boring. Those who were paid $1 were forced to
rationalize their own judgments and convinced themselves that what they were doing is
enjoyable because they had no other justification. On the other hand, the ones who were paid
$20, apparently had the money as their primary justification for carrying out their task.
The researchers further concluded, with the help of the said results, that with $1, participants
found no significant justification thus the occurrence of cognitive dissonance. When they were
asked to lie about how they truly feel about the task, they force themselves to feel what they
were induced to feel and express. This hypothetical stress brings the subject to intrinsically
believe that the activity is indeed interesting and enjoyable.
Conclusion
In conclusion, people, when persuaded to lie without being given enough justification, will
perform a task by convincing themselves of the falsehood, rather than telling a lie.
While it is true that the experiment took place in the 50s, the results are still being recognized
up to this date. It has received widespread attention after recently being published in an
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academic journal.
Sources
Wikipedia: Social Comparison Theory
Festinger and Carlsmith - cognitive dissonance , Cognitive consequences of Forced

Compliance
Festinger, L. and Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). "Cognitive consequences of forced compliance".

Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 203-211.
Explorable.com (Nov 21, 2010). Cognitive Dissonance. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/cognitive-dissonance
82
21 Stereotypes and the Clark Doll Test
The Clark Doll Test illustrates the ill effects of stereotyping and racial segregation in
America. It illustrated the damage caused by systematic segregation and racism on
children's self-perception at the young age of five.
Experiment Background
The Clark Doll test was conducted by Dr. Kenneth Clark and his wife Mamie Clark for her
master's degree thesis. The study focused on stereotypes and children's self-perception in
relation to their race. The results of Clark's study were used to prove that school segregation
was distorting the minds of young black kids, causing them to internalize stereotypes and
racism, to the point of making them hate themselves.
The Clark Doll Test is well known due to its social relevance and impact although some say
that the results lack experimental weight. It found contrasts among children attending
segregated schools in Washington, DC versus those in integrated schools in New York.
In 1954 in Brown v Board of Education, the experiment helped to persuade the American
Supreme Court that "separate but equal" schools for blacks and whites were anything but
equal in practice and is therefore illegal or against the law. This made the experiment even
more controversial. It marked the beginning of the end of Jim Crow.
Methodology
In the experiment, Clark showed black children with ages ranging from 6 to 9, two dolls, one
white and the other black, and were asked the following questions in order:
Show me the doll that you like best or that you would like to play with.
Show me the doll that is the 'nice' doll.
Show me the doll that looks 'bad.'
Give me the doll that looks like a white child.
Give me the doll that looks like a colored child.
Give me the doll that looks like a Negro child.
Give me the doll that looks like you.
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Results
The researchers found that black children often chose to play with the white dolls more than
the black ones. When the kids were asked to fill in a human figure with the color of their own
skin, they frequently chose a lighter shade than their actual skin color. The children also gave
the color 'white' positive attributes like good and pretty. On the contrary, 'black' was attributed
to being bad and ugly.
The last question asked by the researchers was considered the worse since by that point,
most of the black children had already identified the black doll as the bad one. Among the
subjects, 44% said the white doll looked like them. In past tests however, many of the children
refused to pick either doll or just started crying and ran away.
The results were interpreted as good and reliable evidence that black children had
internalized racism caused by being discriminated against and stigmatized by segregation.
The study shows the stereotyping of black people as bad and white as nice and more
desirable.
Criticisms of the Study

The study has been criticized for being well known only for the reference in the court case as
opposed to the intrinsic and experimental value of the work. Many argue that the study lacks
theory and control of variables. According to critics, given that an African American couple
was the team who conducted the studies, the desirable outcome of wanting to prove African
Americans were negatively stereotyped may have caused some partiality or biases, and may
have skewed the results.
Sources
The Classic Experiments of Aggression, Prejudice and Stereotypes in Social Psychology by
Bec Blair
The Clark Doll Experiment
Kenneth and Mamie Clark
84
Explorable.com (Jul 3, 2010). Stereotypes and the Clark Doll Test. Retrieved from
Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/stereotypes
85
21.1 Social Group Prejudice
Milgram's Lost Letter Experiment
Classic social psychology experiments are widely used to expose the key elements of
aggressive behavior, prejudice and stereotyping. Social group prejudice is manifested
in people's unfavorable attitudes towards a particular social group.
Stanley Milgram's Lost Letter Experiment displays this prejudice towards a social group and
its members.
Research Problem
Stanley Milgram's Lost Letter Experiment is a technique Milgram devised to examine the
prejudice toward socially undesirable groups. Milgram developed this to measure and find out
how helpful people can be to strangers who are not present, as well as their attitudes towards
different groups.
Methodology
Stanley dispersed 400 sealed, stamped and self-addressed envelopes in public places. The
'lost letters' were addressed to various entities including individuals like Mr. Walter Carnap,
favorable organizations such as medical research institutes, and others like friends of the
Communist party and friends of the Nazi Party. A hundred envelopes were addressed to each
of the groups.
The envelopes presumably containing letters or donations are 'lost' throughout the designated
area but nevertheless abandoned. They were dispersed in the streets, under car windscreen
wipers, telephone booths, and in shops. Those who found the letters could post it, ignore it or
even destroy it.
Results
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Since the rate of return is the focus of Milgram's study, it was recorded that more people
mailed letters addressed to the socially desirable groups, which included those of the medical
associates and the personal letter, than the socially undesirable groups like the Nazi party and
the Communist party.
The medical research associates had the rate of return of 72%, the personal letter 71%, and
only 25% for each for friends of the Nazi Party and friends of the Communist Party. Most of
the letters for the friends of Nazi Party and friends of the Communist Party were never seen
again.
One interesting finding in Milgram's experiment is that 40% of the letters to the Communist
Party, 32% of the Nazi Party, 25% of the Medical Research letters, and 10% of the letters to
Walter Carnap had been opened.
Conclusion
The results of the experiment suggest that there is an existing prejudice between different
social groups. The experiment is significant as it allows prejudice to be investigated through
an everyday task, where people do not realize that their prejudice is being examined, thus
making it more valid and reliable.
Social group prejudice and stereotyping are actually difficult to evaluate due to social
desirability, and people are not usually willing to share and express or even admit their
discriminatory views of other social groups.
Milgram's Lost Letter Experiment provides for an easy evaluation and assessment of the
phenomenon social group prejudice by hiding the motivation behind the lost letter. This
technique was used to predict the Johnson-Goldwater election. To date, this technique has
become widely used as a non-reactive measure of societal attitudes.
Sources
The Classic Experiments of Aggression, Prejudice and Stereotypes in Social Psychology by
Bec Blair
Wikipedia: Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram
Explorable.com (Sep 14, 2010). Social Group Prejudice. Retrieved from Explorable.com:
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https://explorable.com/social-group-prejudice
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21.2 Intergroup Discrimination
The Henri Tajfel Experiments
Intergroup discrimination refers to the phenomenon where factions of a single group

develop conflicts against each other as by-products of competition and prejudice.
Different social and psychological factors become roots of conflicts between groups. However,
within a group, conflicts mostly root from psychological prejudice then developing into a more
serious form of intergroup discrimination. Though not all conflicts between different groups
stem from competition, it still cannot be avoided that people automatically discriminate against
those who are not part of their own group. It also follows that since we instantly discriminate
against the outsiders, we can also discriminate against others for no apparent reason aside
from developed prejudice.
Different social and psychological factors become roots of conflicts between groups. However,
within a group, conflicts mostly root from psychological prejudice then developing into a more
serious form of intergroup discrimination. Though not all conflicts between different groups
stem from competition, it still cannot be avoided that people automatically discriminate against
those who are not part of their own group. It also follows that since we instantly discriminate
against the outsiders, we can also discriminate against others for no apparent reason aside
from developed prejudice. This is the focus of Henri Tajfel’s experiments.

Henri Tajfel conducted a series of experiments on intergroup discrimination in Bristol City in
1970. Tajfel’s idea came from a Slovene friend who spoke about stereotypes that existed
regarding immigrant Bosnians who originated from a poorer region of Yugoslavia. This was
then related to the stereotypes that existed for our own immigrants and their British-born
children. The paper questions the reasons that attributed to these negative stereotypes.
Tajfel’s experiments focused on the behavior of an individual towards both other in-group
members and outgroup members. The subjects in the study were presented with a clear
alternative to discriminating against the outgroup.
Methodology
All of the participants in Tajfel’s study were aged 14 to 15 and attended the same educational
89
institution in Bristol – same year group and occupied a common school house. A total of 64
individuals were asked to participant in the study.
The experiment consisted of 2 distinct parts. The first part aimed to establish an intergroup
categorisation while the second part aimed to assess the effects of the said categorisation on
intergroup behavior.
In the first part of the experiment, the group was randomly divided into two where each group
consisted of 8 participants. The experimenters however told the participants that they were
categorised according to their scores in tests they just previously took.
In the test, each of the participants was to allocate amounts to another group member without
awarding any money to himself. They were next asked to allocate amounts to two members of
the out-group. In the experimental condition, the participants were given a matrix where the
top row contained the amounts they will be awarding to a fellow group member, and the
bottom row contained amounts that will be awarded to members of the other group. The
results later on showed whether subjects ended up discriminating against the out-group or not.
From the first part of the experiment, it was found that majority of the participants significantly
allocated greater amounts to members of their own group compared to the outsiders. In the
other two conditions, amounts were allocated in a fair manner.
On the second part of the study, the experimenters were aiming to find out the type of strategy
used by the boys when allocating points.
Results
The primary aim given to the boys was to maximise the profit. However, they were given the
choice whether to maximize the profit for everyone to enjoy, or for just their own group to
enjoy. The results showed that a significant majority chose to allocate money for the good of
only their own group.
It was also found that the boys were more concerned in creating as much difference as
possible between the amounts allocated to each group than consolidating a greater amount
for everyone altogether; of course favouring their own respective groups. Tajfel infers that this
is in itself an obvious form of discrimination caused by the segregation or categorisation.
Sources
Most of this article is based on this article: "Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination" on
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gary.sturt/tajfel.htm
90
Intergroup Discrimination Experiments of Henri Tajfel (1970)
Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination by Tajfel H. (1970)
Explorable.com (Jul 10, 2010). Intergroup Discrimination. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/intergroup-discrimination
91
21.3 Selective Group Perception
The Hastorf and Cantril Case Study
In selective group perception, people tend to actively filter information they think is
irrelevant. This effect is demonstrated in Hastorf and Cantril’s Case Study: They Saw a
Game.

Hastorf and Cantril’s case study analyzed what proved to be selective group perception of a
football game contested between the Dartmouth Indians and Princeton Tigers. The football
game the students watched had been played in 1951, and in that game Princeton won. It was
a tough game, with a lot of penalties and caused uproar in series of editorials in campus
newspapers.
The Princeton quarterback, who is an All-American, in his last game for college, left the game
in its second quarter with a broken nose and a mild concussion. When third quarter came,
Dartmouth quarterback ended up with a broken leg after being tackled in the backfield.
Methodology
A week after the game, Hastorf and Cantril asked both Dartmouth and Princeton students of
psychology to answer a questionnaire. The researchers then analyzed and interpreted the
answers of those who had seen the game either in real or in a recorded movie.
They had two other groups view a film of the game and then tabulated the number of
infractions seen.
Results
The Dartmouth and Princeton students noticeably had varying responses. When asked who
started the rough play, almost no one said that Princeton did. Furthermore, 36% of the
Dartmouth students and 86% of the Princeton students said it was Dartmouth who started it.
On the other hand, 53% of the Dartmouth students and 11% of the Princeton students that
both did start it.
In detail, here are the questions and the respective tallied answers from Dartmouth students
92
and Princeton students:
"Which team do you feel started the rough play?"
93
Percent Dartmouth Students Percent Princeton Students
Princeton started it 2 0
Both started it 53 11
Dartmouth started it 36 86
Neither / no answer 9 3
"Do you believe the game was clean and fairly played or that it was unnecessarily rough and
dirty?"
94
Percent Dartmouth Students Percent Princeton Students
Clean & Fair 13 0
Rough & Fair 39 3
Rough & Dirty 42 93
don't know 6 4
After showing a film of the game, Princeton students ‘saw’ the Dartmouth team make over
twice as many rule violations as were seen by Dartmouth students. The researchers
interpreted this as a manifestation of selective group perception. They interpreted these
results overall as indicating that, when encountering a mix of occurrences as complex as a
football game, we experience primarily those events that fulfill a familiar pattern and have a
personal relevance to us.
For the students of each school, the selective group perception and memory of what might
seem to be the same event involved a very active construction of different realities. Our
membership in a group often provides us a frame and a filter through which we view social
events, skewing our perceptions.
The said game definitely left a mark on the students from both schools, marked by different
views also to those people who felt no allegiance to either of the teams. And even those
belonging to the same group, the game meant different things to the team members and their
fans. This particular case study demonstrates the crucial role of values in shaping one’s
perception and judgment.
Conclusion
Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril’s case study was published in the Journal of Abnormal and
Social Psychology in 1954. In conclusion, the experiment was used as evidence that ‘out of all
the occurrences going on in the environment, a person selects only those that have some
significance for him from his own egocentric position in the total matrix, that ’the game actually
was many different games’ and that each version of the events that transpired was just as true
and real to a particular person, as other versions were to other viewers and fans.
In this study, it was found that the participants’ perceptions were skewed and were easily
influenced by their motives, unawaringly. It just proves that people sometimes only see what
they want to see.
The researchers arrived at the following conclusion: "In brief, the data here indicate that there
is no such 'thing' as a 'game' existing 'out there' in its own right which people merely 'observe.'
The game 'exists' for a person and is experienced by him only insofar as certain happenings
95
have significances in terms of his purpose."
Application
How does the phenomenon of selective group perception apply to our daily lives? While it is
difficult to control our biases, it is imperative that we become knowledgeable at least of
tendencies such as this. We need to become aware as well, that the impact of such social
influence may be held to take the form of a shift in perspective.
A good way of countering this is to be sympathetic or to try and put ourselves into someone
else’s shoes so as to see their own perspective. This way, we can see situations more
comprehensively, objectively and more justly.
Sources
Selective Group Perception. They Saw a Game: A Case Study by Hastorf and Cantril
Selective Group Perception. They Saw a Game: A Case Study by Hastorf and Cantril
Explorable.com (May 7, 2010). Selective Group Perception. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

https://explorable.com/selective-group-perception
Thanks for reading!

Explorable.com Team
Explorable.com - Copyright © 2008-2015 All Rights Reserved.
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Social Psychology Experiments

3 Bobo Doll Experiment

7 Bystander Apathy Experiment

21 Stereotypes and the Clark Doll Test

Cover design by Explorable / Gilli.me.

"I was only following orders"

Milgram's Lost Letter Experiment

Obedience to a Role - Dehumanization

Observational Role Learning

Helping Behavior - Good Samaritan

Cognitive Dissonance Experiment

Groups and Influence On Opinion

Wegner's Dream Rebound Experiment

Understand and Belief

Confirmation bias is also known as selective collection of evidence. It is considered as an

Selective Group Perception

Changing Behaviour When Being Studied

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The experiment was simple in its construction; each

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These findings are still debated about over 40 years later.

Hypotheses and Predictions

Setting Up the Experiment

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The experiment was constructed as follows:

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Martyn Shuttleworth (Aug 8, 2008). Helping Behavior. Retrieved from Explorable.com:

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Preparation of the Stanley Milgram Experiment

Conclusion - Obedience to Authority

Pre-Taped Audio (Transcription)

(The Original Stanley Milgram Experiment)

Read more about the ethics of the Milgram Experiment.

Further Studies Determined

Original Literature - Stanley Milgram Experiment

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Explorable.com (Feb 6, 2008). Milgram Experiment - Obedience to Authority. Retrieved from

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Martyn Shuttleworth (Jul 4, 2008). Milgram Experiment Ethics. Retrieved from

The Murder of Kitty Genovese

Bystander Apathy Experiment

Time it takes for the participant to seek

Number of participants within a discussion

Results of the Bystander Apathy Experiment

Analysis and Conclusion

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Explorable.com (Jul 15, 2009). Bystander Apathy Experiment. Retrieved from

Background of the Experiment

Three Phases of the Experiment

Phase 2 (Friction Phase)

Phase 3 (Integration Phase)

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Background of the Experiment

Social Identity Experiment

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Explorable.com (Jun 6, 2010). Social Judgment Theory Experiment. Retrieved from

Wikipedia.com: Halo Effect

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According to studies, thoughts suppressed may resurface or manifest themselves in

Suppressed Thoughts Rebound in Dreams (link disappeared)

Dream Rebound: The Return of Suppressed Thoughts in Dreams by Daniel M. Wegner,