Human nature and behavior is complex. This is why the study of psychology is such a vast subject that has involved eminent personalities and psychoanalysts like Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud to write volumes on the subject. As individuals, we are complex to ourselves which is why we need psychiatrists and physiotherapists to help us understand and sort out our own emotional disturbances.
Over the years there have been several intriguing psychological experiments conducted with dramatic results. Although many were interesting, some however stand out for the incredible nature of the experiment and the unbelievable results that will redefine your perspective of human nature and yourself perhaps. Here are 7 such mind-boggling psychological experiments you never thought could have happened.
On 12th January 2007, hundreds of commuters passed violin virtuoso Joshua Bell who performed as a street performer in a Washington DC subway. He played for 45 minutes performing classical pieces like Bach on his Stradivarius violin that cost him $3.5 million. Yet no one noticed him and only 6 people stopped to listen. In fact some also gave him money and he collected $32.
Image Source: www.thumbor.unica.ro
His concert three days later was a sellout
The experiment was conducted by Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten “as an experiment in context, perception, and priorities” It sought to observe public taste and whether something beautiful would be valued in a banal setting an inconvenient time. In such ordinary circumstances “would beauty transcend?” The experiment raised many eyebrows about how setting and presentation make a huge difference in the way humans value beauty. Just three days later Joshua Bell played at a sellout concert at the Boston Symphony Hall. The cost of each seat??? Well over a $100.
Image Source: www.naomisimson.com
This experiment was initiated by Volkswagen named “The Fun Theory”. It was conducted to prove how people’s lives could be impacted positively by making boring everyday routines more fun. They installed musical piano steps on the staircase of a subway station in Sweden to observe if people would choose the healthier option of climbing stairs rather than using an escalator.
The results were phenomenal where 66% more commuters used the stairs on that particular day. This goes to show that we do like a little diversion from our mundane lives and we are also kids at heart. If cities were more fun, we would all be healthier.
Image Source: www.gloriousa.com
Danish brewery Carlsberg conducted an interesting social but thoroughly mind-boggling experiment on unsuspecting couples walking into a crowded cinema hall to catch a movie. In the movie hall, only 2 seats were empty, the rest were filled with tough tattooed male bikers.
This was intended as an advertisement but also proved to be an interesting experiment in human nature where not every couple decided to stay. Upon seeing the bikers, they left immediately. Some couples, however, actually did take the seats and the moment they did so, they were greeted with loud cheers and a free round of Carlsberg beer. The experiment proved that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
Image Source: www.hbpl.co.uk
Following the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King in 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliot tried to create awareness on the impact of discrimination, prejudice and racism among her third-grade students in Riceville Iowa but made little headway.
Image Source: www.ytimg.com
The unusual blue eyes/brown eyes experiment.
Ms. Elliott then conducted an experiment where she began a “two-day blue eyes/brown eyes ‘exercise to show how discrimination and racism treated people unfairly. Students with blue eyes were given preference over everything and were made to feel superior to their classmates who had brown eyes. This was repeated in reverse the next day with brown-eyed students gaining the preference.
It was found that whichever group Elliott favored performed better in class, answered questions correctly and did well in tests. The discriminated group performed badly felt downcast, hesitated in answering questions and got poor results in tests. When you discriminate, you deprive a human being of much more than his equal rights.
Image Source: www.online-psychology-degrees.org
Imagine this! You are watching a short video where there are six people. Three wearing white shirts and the other three black. The two groups are passing around basketballs and you are asked to keep a count of the number of passes made between those wearing white shirts. Suddenly a gorilla strolls into the room, thumps its chest for nine seconds and leaves. Would you notice?? You may say yes, but here’s what happened and it will surprise you.
The experiment was actually conducted at Harvard University several years ago. Half the people watching the video and counting the passes actually missed seeing the gorilla because they were too engrossed with what they were doing. The primate was invisible to them. The experiment revealed two things. That people miss out on a lot taking place around them and that we also have no idea how much we are missing in life.
Image Source: www.thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com
How many of you realize that your baby is actually following your moves? This was a genius experiment conducted by psychologist Robert Fantz who decided to observe a baby’s eye movements. He set up a display board above the baby and attached two pictures to it. One was a bull’s eye and the other was a human face. He then observed the baby from a hole behind the board which was invisible to the baby. You’ll be surprised to know what happened.
He found that his subject, a two-month-old baby looked twice as much at the human face rather than the bullseye. This then suggested that a human baby has powers of pattern and form selection meaning it chose to look at what it related to the most and that was a human face. Previous to this, experts thought that babies just looked at nothing in particular and could only see a chaotic world of random images that made no sense. In fact, it means that your baby knows you are there and looks at you the most because she knows it’s you.
Image Source: www.ars.els-cdn.com
Among all the mind-boggling experiments, this was the most questionable. Did you know that you may have been the subject of a Facebook experiment in 2012? Yes!! Facebook conducted a huge experiment on users without their knowledge. They wanted to prove that they could make users feel happy or sad based on their newsfeeds. Facebook then manipulated the news feeds of 689,003 people for a week and gave priority to either positive or negative emotional content. After that, they tracked the updates that the users posted to see how those newsfeeds impacted their mode of thought which, of course, was revealed in the nature of their updates.
The experiment concluded that Facebook could indeed make users feel happier or sadder through a process called “Emotional Contagion”. It said, “Emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods, constituting, to our knowledge, the first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks.” The subsequent study was also published as a research paper that you can read here.
Image Source: www.memesbot.com
The experiment invited mixed response and some experts even questioned the ethics of the experiment but the fact is that it was considered legal because we all sign up for Facebook voluntarily. It also proved how much influence social media exerts on our lives where the big question is, can Facebook be trusted enough to look after your interests or are you opening yourself up to emotional manipulation for the benefit of advertisers?
Image Source: www.cbsistatic.com