Relevant Social Experiments
Many of these listed experiments are older and first performed before the 2000s; however, they have since been performed many times after their first appearance well into modern research. However, several of these experiments were labeled unethical years after they were performed, but have since been adapted into different ethical experiments.
Read more here
Watch the experiments:
The Doll Test (College Edition) Note: contains some offensive language
The Doll Test By Kenneth and Mamie Clark
This study from the 1940s first became significant to look at during the Brown vs the Board of Education Supreme Court case. The experiment, designed to highlight the effects of segregation on black elementary age children, gave the participants identical dolls with the exception of skin color. Then the children were asked a series of questions regarding which doll had positive traits (pretty, nice) and which had negative (ugly, bad). The results showed that the white doll was given the majority of the positive traits.
This experiment has since been recreated many times and with both white and black children with similar results each time. It is also important to note that this experiment was conducted by a black couple who were psychologists.
Segregation By Eye Color By Jane Elliott
This experiment took place in a third grade classroom promptly following the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The teacher divided the class based on eye color-blue and brown- then told the class that the blue eyed children were all around better than the brown eyed children. She then gave the blue eyed children certain privileges throughout the school day while the brown eyed children were marked by collars and met with harsh humiliation and criticism. The next day the roles were reversed. Results found that the group deemed inferior on any day was quick to take on the role of less-than–like performing poorly during the day–while the superior group of the day was equally quick to be mean to or push the inferior group away from them. Elliott still performs this experiment in group settings but with adults.
Read more here
Watch the experiments:
Note: some offensive language
Read more here:
Watch the experiments:
Experimenter (2015) on Hulu (dramatized)
Obedience Study (1963) by Stanley Milgram
Milgram’s interest in obedience to authority was sparked after the post-WWII Eichmann trial in 1961 (more information about this trial can be found here). He often studied how far participants would follow orders given to them by an authority figure even causing harm to others. A man with a lab coat would instruct participants to administer electric shocks to a person in another room (the learner) each time the learner failed to accurately repeat a string of words. The person administering the shocks was asked to increase the voltage with each wrong answer. Unbeknownst to the participant, the person receiving the shock, however, was not actually being shocked. They were actors hired to pretend to be in pain after a certain voltage point. While this is a very brief and shallow overview, the results showed that all participants were willing administer volts up to 300 and roughly two-thirds of the participants would go up to the highest voltage (450 volts) despite the learners cries to stop. Milgram went on to conduct this experiment with many different variables tested. Milgram’s experiments are a hot topic of debate today just as much as they were then. It has sparked many ‘spin-off’ experiments since its publication in 1963.
Read more here:
Watch the experiments:
Note: Offensive language used
The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015) on Netflix (dramatized)
The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) by Philip Zimbardo et al.
This experiment was designed to study how power influences an individual’s behavior and attitude, such as police brutality. This experiment studied 24 college men separated into two groups--the guards and the prisoners. Zimbardo created a mock jail in the basement of Stanford University and in the quest to make this as real as possible, recruited an ex-con to help create the experience. He had the prisoners ‘arrested’ and taken to the mock jail where they were given prison attire. They were also given numbers which were to be referred to in place of their names. The guards were made to wear sunglasses with uniforms and had actual shift rotations set into place so the prisoners were under constant guard supervision. This experiment showed on both sides they were fast to settle into the roles they were assigned. The guards became aggressive and the prisoners began to bow to the aggression and believe that they had to summit to the humiliation. The experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but had to be cut short on the sixth day as it was quickly getting out of hand. One prisoner had to be released early due to a mental breakdown resulting from guard treatment. There was a lot that occurred in these 6 days, so it would be to your benefit to really investigate the links included.
Read more here:
Watch the experiments:
TedxTalk (Kelly Charles-Collins)
Trigger warning: talks about blood, death, and sexual assault
Kitty Genovese and the
Bystander Effect
The Bystander Effect came out of a study in 1964 sparked by the case of Kitty Genovese, who was chased, sexually assaulted, then murdered just across the street from her house. There were reportedly 38 witnesses/neighbors that did not intervene or call the police. This sparked the curiosity of John Durley and Bibb Latané who conducted the Bystander Apathy experiment. The results of this experiment found that when more people are present when an individual needs help, witnesses are less likely to help that individual. With more people around, people tend to believe that someone else will help or will be better equipped to do so. People are also less likely to take action if no one else is because people read the behaviors and social interactions around them to understand how to respond. This experiment has been recreated often and the Bystander Effect can also be seen in The Good Samaritan experiment, which showed that depending on how busy or hurried a person is can affect how willing they are to stop and help someone in need.