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  • Studying the human mind is a tricky business.

  • There’s still so much we don’t know, and so many questions scientists are looking to answer.

  • But when researchers are working with human subjects, they have to balance getting answers

  • with protecting their subjects.

  • In the past, they haven’t always been good about taking care of the fellow human beings

  • theyre studying.

  • A lot of historical psychology experiments would be considered unethical by today’s

  • standards.

  • And the foundation of the ethical standards we use today comes from the 1970s, when scientists

  • came up with a list of rules to protect the security and privacy of human volunteers.

  • It’s known as the Belmont Report: basically, three key ethical principles to guide all

  • human research.

  • The first point is called respect for persons, and it means that subjects have to give informed consent.

  • Anyone who participates in human researchincluding psychological researchneeds

  • to know the risks and benefits of the experiment before signing up.

  • The second ethical principle is called beneficence, and it basically means that researchers should

  • try not to have any negative impact on the wellbeing of the people who participate in

  • their studies.

  • Basically, “do no harm”.

  • The final point, justice, involves making sure that subjects aren’t exploited.

  • Researchers should also make sure that the burdens of the study and the benefits of the

  • results are distributed fairly.

  • In early research studies, for example, the subjects would often be poor, while wealthier

  • patients would benefit from the results of the experiment, and that’s not okay.

  • These rules apply to human research in all fields, including psychology.

  • But the code of conduct hasn’t always been so clearly defined.

  • And before it was, there were a lot of questionable studies being done.

  • In the year 1920, a psychologist named John Watson wanted to show that humans can be classically

  • conditionedlike what happened to Pavlov’s dogs.

  • Basically, classical conditioning means pairing a stimulus, like food, that triggers a physical

  • response, like drooling, with an unrelated stimulus, like a bell.

  • Even though a ringing bell, of course, wouldn’t normally make dogs drool, when Pavlov paired

  • the sound with food, he conditioned the dogs to respond to the bell by drooling.

  • Watson and his team decided to prove that this could be done in humans by classically

  • conditioning a 9 month old baby named Albert using animals and scary noises.

  • First, the researchers presented Albert with a fuzzy white rat.

  • As he’d reach out to pet the animal, the psychologists would strike a hammer against

  • a metal bar behind his head, creating a loud noise to startle him.

  • Eventually, just the sight of the white rat was enough to make Albert start crying and

  • crawl away.

  • He’d began to associate the fear of the loud, scary noise with the fuzzy white rat.

  • So yeah, Albert had been conditioned.

  • But this study failed in a lot of ways.

  • For one thing, it used a single subject and no controls.

  • So Watson hadn’t really proved anything.

  • But then of course there were the ethical issues.

  • Watson never reconditioned Albert to not be afraid anymore, so he was permanently affected

  • by the experiment, and not in a good way.

  • We also don’t know if Albert’s mother fully consented to the research.

  • Which definitely violates the main ethical principles of the Belmont Report.

  • And this wasn’t the only horrifying psychology experiment conducted on children in the early

  • 20th century.

  • In the late 1930s, a psychologist named Wendell Johnson and his graduate student Mary Tudor

  • at the University of Iowa wanted to know how positive and negative feedback affected the

  • way children learned language.

  • They decided to test this directly, by giving kids positive and negative feedback on speech

  • disorders.

  • That might not sound so bad, but there’s a reason why their experiment is now known

  • as the Monster Study.

  • Tudor recruited 22 children from an orphanage, told them they’d be given speech therapy,

  • and split them into two groups.

  • Ten of these childrenfive in each grouphad early signs of stutters.

  • But, both groups also included kids with normal speech patterns.

  • The kids in one group were told they didn’t have a stutter.

  • They were given positive feedback: that they’d outgrow the speech difficulties, and that

  • they should ignore anyone who criticized the way they spoke.

  • Meanwhile, those in the other group were told that they did have a stutter, and that they

  • should never speak unless they could do it right.

  • As you can probably imagine, this didn’t go very well.

  • The encouragement and criticism didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the children’s

  • stutters.

  • But the different kinds of feedback did have a huge impact on their self-esteem.

  • The kids with speech issues who got positive feedback didn’t lose their stutters, but

  • they did become a lot more confident when they spoke.

  • Meanwhile, the children who were given negative feedback became more withdrawn, self-conscious,

  • and frustratedwhether or not they actually had a stutter to begin with.

  • So for that group of kids, this research was pretty damaging.

  • As minors, they couldn’t consent to the research, and the people who ran the orphanage

  • didn’t protect them from the potential harm of the study.

  • The children also weren’t debriefed after the project was over, and there was no real

  • follow up on how they may have been affected by the study long-term.

  • All of these things were later declared unethical by the Belmont Report.

  • Experiments of course can harm adult subjects, too.

  • In 1961, a researcher at Yale University named Stanley Milgram was interested in the psychology

  • of obedience.

  • He decided to see how subjects would react when a researcher pushed them to do things

  • that went against their morals.

  • The study he came up with is now called the Milgram Experiment.

  • And it had three separate roles:

  • The Experimenter, played by a scientist in a white lab coat, was the authority figure.

  • The Teacher was the role assigned to the experimental subject.

  • The final role was the Learner, a paid actor who the subject thought was actually another volunteer.

  • The Learner was sent to a separate room so they were out of sight while the Experimenter

  • observed the Teacher, the subject, instructing the Learner in a word-pairing task over an intercom.

  • Every time the Learner got the word pair wrong, the Teacher pressed a button to shock them,

  • with the voltage increasing by 15 volts for every wrong answer.

  • The subject believed they were shocking the Learner, but they were actually listening

  • to an actor pretending to be in pain, complaining of chest pains, shouting, pounding on the

  • wall, and eventually going silent.

  • The experiment only ended when the Teacher had given the maximum 450 volt shock three

  • times in a row, or when they refused to continue.

  • 65% of the subjects did give out those maximum voltage shocksjust because a scientist

  • in a white lab coat told them to.

  • Milgram concluded that people will obey authority figures even in morally questionable circumstances,

  • and the experiment has since led to many more studies on the psychology of authority.

  • But the subjects thought they were actually listening to someone being electrocuted on

  • the other end of the line, even though they were told by the Experimenter that there would

  • be, quote, “no permanent tissue damage”.

  • Leaving your subjects feeling like they may have just killed someone doesn’t protect

  • their wellbeing.

  • And they couldn’t have gotten informed consent, since warning participants about the experiment

  • would have changed how they reacted.

  • Since then, there have been other studies that led people to believe they might be hearing

  • someone get seriously injured.

  • In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was murdered.

  • At the time, newspapers reported that there were more than 30 witnesses to the murder,

  • and that none of them called the police.

  • We now know that those reports were flawed, but for a while, it seemed like dozens of

  • people just stood by while someone was murdered right in front of them.

  • So in 1968, psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané at Columbia University came up

  • with a way to learn more about why people might not act in a crisis, especially if there

  • are others around.

  • They placed college student volunteers alone in rooms, gave them headphones, and told them

  • that the study was about the emotional issues faced by students.

  • Each subject was told that they would be communicating with a few other students over intercom to

  • avoid any privacy issues that might come up if they were face-to-face.

  • But the other students on the line were actually recordingsand one of those recorded students

  • mentioned early on in the conversation that they had occasional seizures.

  • Later on in the experiment, that voice would start to have trouble speaking and ask for

  • help, saying that they were having a seizure.

  • The researchers then measured how long it took the subjects to go look for help.

  • They found that it took participants longer to respond when there were more people in

  • the conversation.

  • The subject was less likely to do something if they believed there were other people who

  • could intervene instead.

  • It’s called the Bystander Effect.

  • Understanding this response is important for investigating crimes and for protecting communities

  • by teaching people to act during a crisis instead of assuming that someone else will

  • do it.

  • But, like the Milgram Experiment, there are ethical concerns about how this research might

  • have affected the subjects after the study was over.

  • These days, it would be tough to convince a review board that the potential benefits

  • of this kind of study outweigh the risks.

  • Another study turned out to be so damaging that it had to be ended early.

  • In 1971, Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University, wanted to learn more

  • about how being placed in different social roles affected the way people behaved.

  • He decided to simulate a prison and cast volunteer subjects into the roles of guards and prisoners.

  • 24 white male college students were recruited into the study and separated into two groups:

  • prisoners and prison guards.

  • Zimbardo acted as the prison superintendent.

  • The prisoners were searched, then given ID numbers instead of names to dehumanize them.

  • Meanwhile, prison guards were given uniforms and clubs and told to do whatever they had

  • to do to maintain order, giving them power over the prisonersand a sense of superiority.

  • The study was supposed to last for 2 weeks but was actually called off after just 6 days

  • because the conditions in the prison went downhill so quickly.

  • One prisoner had to be released from the study even earlier because the conditions in the

  • jail made him panicked and disoriented.

  • Other prisoners started a revolt because the guards had treated them so badly.

  • After that, the guards became more and more abusive, giving the prisoners physical punishments

  • when they misbehaved, like forcing them to sleep on concrete and to strip naked.

  • In the end, Zimbardo concluded that the subjects had internalized their assigned roles.

  • The prisoners became submissive, while the guards became aggressive and abused their

  • power over the prisoners.

  • You could not do this study today.

  • By acting as the superintendent, it was impossible for Zimbardo to stay impartial.

  • That’s a pretty big flaw in the study’s designhe was invested in the outcome

  • of the research.

  • Zimbardo also allowed the guards to subject the prisoners to serious abuse, and may have

  • caused them real, permanent harm.

  • So, again, that whole wellbeing thing was not really taken into consideration for this study.

  • Like the rest of the studies on this list, the Stanford Prison Experiment would not

  • be considered ethical these days.

  • But psychology’s sometimes-dark past has helped scientists realize that they have a

  • responsibility to protect the public and the subjects of their research studieswhich

  • is why ethical standards are an important part of modern research.

  • We want to understand the human mind, but in the process, we also have to protect the

  • minds being studied.

  • The standards laid out by the Belmont Report help us do just that.

  • Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow, which was brought to you by our patrons on

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Studying the human mind is a tricky business.

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