Some of the experiments that were proposed decades ago to study the behavior of human beings in certain situations were so important that today they are still counted in the faculties to explain social psychology. Did you know all of the following list?
At the dawn of mass communication, the legendary American broadcaster, Orson Wells, broadcast an adaptation of The War of the Worlds in 1938. Six million listeners were tuning in to the radio at the time, most of whom were carried away by the panic without confirming that it was a radio soap opera. At least that was what psychologists from Princeton University found out who, after interviewing 135 citizens of New Jersey, attested to the power of the media to manipulate human emotions.
A group of researchers set out to experiment in 1974 with the effectiveness of memory and the manipulative power of semantics. After 45 people watched a short film about a traffic accident, they were asked: How fast do you think the cars involved in the crash were going? Only in groups of 9, separately, and exchanging the word ‘shock’ for collision, impact, run-in and hit. Those who answered the word ‘shock’ appreciated greater speed than those who answered about the ‘encounternazo’.
After a week, they were asked again about a broken window in the accident. Despite the fact that it did not appear at any time in the video, those who had been challenged with stronger words claimed to remember it, which proves that the words chosen that denote a greater or lesser degree of virulence were capable of altering the memory of an event and his later story.
Researcher Muzafer Sherif convened two groups of 11-year-old boys in an Oklahoma park to demonstrate the existence of dynamics of exclusive belonging to a specific ‘clan’. The experiments also served to verify the ease of generating prejudice and hostility between different groups, without prior rivalry. In a first test, the groups joined together to rebuke a common enemy; in the second, they joined forces to harass the researchers; and finally, the psychologists managed to manipulate them into fighting each other.
Psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson led a curious experiment at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1973 with the aim of identifying the causes of altruistic behavior. They started from the hypothesis that believers and secular people would have a similar level of disposition to help others and that people in a hurry would be less willing to stop before someone else’s problem.
Participating subjects received religious training and were urged to go from one building to another to deliver a speech. Between both buildings, there would be a man lying on the ground with an obvious need for help. The result was influenced by two variables, whether or not there was a need for urgency to complete the speech and the theme of the speech.
While two-thirds of those told not to hurry stopped to help the man, only one in ten of those told to hurry did so. On the other hand, those who were going to give a speech about the importance of helping others were more likely to stop, showing that thoughts are a determining factor in human behavior.
