7 Unbelievable Psychological Experiments That Will Change Your Perception of Human Behavior. You may have been Part Of #7

3 Carlsberg Social Experiment

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. 

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4 A Class Divided Experiment

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. 

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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. 

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5 The Invisible Gorilla Experiment

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. 

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