Why people behave in certain ways? Philologists have been asking this question since ancient times. Great part of what we know today about human mind comes from precisely those experiments that were conducted during last century.
To come to more complete and detailed explanations, often STRANGE SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS were conducted over children. The fact that Americans since 1930 and to the end of fifties conducted a sequence of unacceptable, and sometimes monstrous experiments, became known to the public only many years after. How that justified and what is the moral side of these experiments you can judge for yourself.
10ROBBER´S CAVE EXPERIMENT
1954 22 boys are sent to a summer camp. The experimenters wanted to see how much conflict thez could start resulting in fistfights, looting and arson.
09THE THIRD WAVE
A class project where a fascist methodology was taken in the classroom. Students became malevolent. After four days it was seen to be out of control and stopped.
08LITTLE ALBERT
An 11 month infant was given various objects. A hammer was banged next to his head whenever he interacted with the objects conditioning him to be terrified of them.
07THE VISUAL CLIF
Babies were placed above an illusion of a sheer drop. Their mothers tried to coax them to crawl over the “cliff” and it was concluded that babies shouldn’t be left near night edges.
06BROKEN TOY EXPERIMENT
Children were given a “special” toy, rigged to break. When it did the examiner would say “Oh my” and stare at the child. Done to explore guilt, it traumatized several children.
05HOME ECONOMICS
At universities in the 1950s, 100s of babies were loaned from orphanages. Students could then practice the latest child-rearing theories on live subjects.
04THE MONSTER STUDY
Within a group of children, negative reinforcement was used on those who stuttered and praise on those who didn’t. All the children ended up developing stutters.
03DAVID REIMER
During his circumcision Reimer´s penis was burned off. A psychologist advised a sex change, an opportunity to prove nurture vs. nature. David rejected his new identity and eventually committed suicide.
02BOBO DOLL EXPERIMENT
A group of children were shown a video of adults punching, kicking and hitting a clown. Put in a room with a clown, they immediately began to assault it.
01ANTESTHETIC
Until 1985 it was standard practice to operate on babies without anesthetic even open heart surgery. Doctors were of the opinion that “babies, unlike adults, don’t go into shock no matter how much agony they suffer.”
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