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When Scientists Hid Under Beds To Spy On Kids · Ridiculous History

0:24
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. Not only is
0:27
Speaker 1: my name Ben, but you have my absolute guarantee that
0:31
Speaker 1: I will not conduct an experiment on you in this episode.
0:35
Speaker 1: Scientists be creeping creep Ben, while you sleeping. Yeah, man,
0:42
Speaker 1: this is about creepy scientists. So this one's about My
0:45
Speaker 1: name is Noel and this is ridiculous history, and you
0:48
Speaker 1: know it's it's a tough one, Ben, to you know,
0:51
Speaker 1: conduct research on people who don't know that you're doing
0:57
Speaker 1: that thing right right now. In the past, sometimes when
1:01
Speaker 1: you and I are hanging out outside of work or
1:05
Speaker 1: with our super producer Casey Pegram, I have been wont
1:09
Speaker 1: to do a little social experiments you. So that's why
1:14
Speaker 1: I had to promise I wouldn't do anything in this episode.
1:17
Speaker 1: And I do really appreciate you humoring me with that stuff.
1:20
Speaker 1: Yeah man, the ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors. To
1:24
Speaker 1: take a quote from my my dear friend Ben Bolan,
1:26
Speaker 1: there will be times where I will turn up to
1:28
Speaker 1: a place like a bar, restaurant or what have you,
1:31
Speaker 1: and I'll be waiting around for Ben to show up,
1:33
Speaker 1: only to realize that he's been under the table the
1:35
Speaker 1: whole time with a tiny mole skin notebook observing my
1:39
Speaker 1: every move and tick. Yeah, and I apologize for that.
1:43
Speaker 1: I bought the next round. That's fair, and we learned
1:45
Speaker 1: a lot. It's for science, Well, that's the thing. It's
1:48
Speaker 1: it's it's a conundrum, right, because it's like this ethical
1:54
Speaker 1: quandary where in order to do behavioral research and really
1:58
Speaker 1: get to the heart of what makes people tick and
2:01
Speaker 1: more or less conduct these experiments, a little deception is
2:05
Speaker 1: sometimes required, right, right, And we'll dive into this, but
2:10
Speaker 1: the top level of it is essentially that people's behavior
2:14
Speaker 1: changes when they know that they are being observed. There's
2:16
Speaker 1: a reason why security cameras have a monitor that you
2:20
Speaker 1: can see at a bank or at a gas station.
2:23
Speaker 1: It's because of this same psychological principle. Have you ever
2:26
Speaker 1: even you've ever gone into a grocery store and you
2:28
Speaker 1: see the monitor up there and you kind of look
2:29
Speaker 1: at yourself and realize how unnatural and strange you look.
2:33
Speaker 1: That's because you're looking at yourself, looking at yourself, and
2:35
Speaker 1: you were adjusting your look to match your expectations of
2:39
Speaker 1: what you think you should be. And that's and that's
2:41
Speaker 1: never what you really are, right And today's story or
2:45
Speaker 1: today's starting point is an example of exactly the conundrum,
2:51
Speaker 1: the dilemma that Noel describes. Back in the nineteen thirties,
2:55
Speaker 1: there were two researchers, Mary Henley and Mary in Be Hubble,
3:00
Speaker 1: and they realized that they were running into this during
3:06
Speaker 1: their research on egocentricity in adult conversation, So essentially listening
3:13
Speaker 1: to adults talk to measure whether they're ego centric tendencies
3:19
Speaker 1: evaporated or increased or changed how they changed since childhood.
3:23
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, that is also the name
3:25
Speaker 1: of my favorite Emerson, Lake and Palmer record. It is
3:29
Speaker 1: Brain Brain Salad Surgery. I don't know, I'm I'm I'm funny.
3:33
Speaker 1: I think I'm funny and I'm not. I think you're hilarious, buddy. Yeah, man,
3:37
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. I I well, whenever I make, whenever
3:40
Speaker 1: I cracked jokes or puns that are originated by you.
3:43
Speaker 1: I also like to phrase it as that was a
3:46
Speaker 1: Noel Brown piece. I do appreciate that, and you know
3:49
Speaker 1: that credit where credit is due. And speaking of that,
3:52
Speaker 1: this study Eccentricity and Adult Conversation by Henley and Hubble
3:58
Speaker 1: was published in the Journal of social psychology in May
4:02
Speaker 1: of nineteen, so it's part of Henley's graduate work in psychology.
4:07
Speaker 1: She and her associate Hubble. We're trying to figure out
4:12
Speaker 1: whether children, over time as they age, become less egocentric.
4:18
Speaker 1: Let's unpack that just to touch some meaning less selfish,
4:21
Speaker 1: less focused on the self, and more outwardly observant. Yeah,
4:25
Speaker 1: in a way. And this is this is a great
4:28
Speaker 1: moment to explore this. So egocentrism is essentially the inability
4:34
Speaker 1: to differentiate between yourself and the other, whatever the other
4:40
Speaker 1: might be. So to a lot of people this would
4:42
Speaker 1: sound like narcissism, right, It's different because a person who
4:47
Speaker 1: is egocentric does believe they're the center, you know, the
4:50
Speaker 1: protagonist of their own story, which I think most people do.
4:55
Speaker 1: But unlike a narcissist, they don't receive gratification from their
5:00
Speaker 1: own admiration, like a narcissists might feel gratification when they're
5:05
Speaker 1: walking around going oh man, talking to the mirror, I
5:08
Speaker 1: am so great. This is almost subconscious we're talking about here, right,
5:12
Speaker 1: But um, for ego centrist, it's simply it's more like
5:17
Speaker 1: you are a universe unto yourself, and you may not
5:21
Speaker 1: receive the same like warm fuzzies from the approval of others,
5:25
Speaker 1: you might not need it. I guess that's what I
5:27
Speaker 1: mean when I say subconscious. It's almost just like this
5:29
Speaker 1: innate kind of characteristic um that's very much present in kids.
5:34
Speaker 1: I mean, if you ever spent any time around kids,
5:36
Speaker 1: you know that they kind of live in this like
5:39
Speaker 1: wonderful little kid bubble where everything revolves around them and
5:43
Speaker 1: to varying degrees of awfulness. And it's not malicious, Yeah,
5:49
Speaker 1: it's just it's the natural starting point for the vast
5:52
Speaker 1: majority of human mind totally. But there are certain kids
5:55
Speaker 1: that are just garbage. Kids are just like, what is
5:59
Speaker 1: wrong with you? Do you not see that your actions
6:02
Speaker 1: affect other people like at all? I don't know. I'm
6:05
Speaker 1: speaking from the position of a parent who tries very
6:08
Speaker 1: hard to engender non selfishness in my child. So when
6:11
Speaker 1: I see other kids that he's friends with the school
6:14
Speaker 1: that are just oh they're the worst. But your kids cool,
6:17
Speaker 1: My kids cool. But you know, she has her moments.
6:19
Speaker 1: But I think that that egocentricity um, there are varying
6:23
Speaker 1: degrees of it. So they were they were confronting this,
6:27
Speaker 1: and they knew that egocentrism exists, is very common in children,
6:33
Speaker 1: and they wanted to see if it declines and what
6:35
Speaker 1: that rate of decline would be. So they immediately ran
6:39
Speaker 1: into problem number one, which is that you can't just
6:42
Speaker 1: ask somebody when they're eight and then go back when
6:45
Speaker 1: they're in college and say, hey, do you about now?
6:48
Speaker 1: Do you feel less selfish about? Now? We met when
6:50
Speaker 1: you were nine, um, and you were you were a
6:53
Speaker 1: bad kid. So it requires a little bit of of subterfuge, right,
6:58
Speaker 1: And so they were gonna we're gonna find this stuff
7:01
Speaker 1: out through monitoring real conversations with college students, and they
7:07
Speaker 1: were going to do this by any means necessary. So
7:11
Speaker 1: in their study, in order to keep their presence a secret,
7:17
Speaker 1: what did they do, Ben, Oh, they they would eavesdrop
7:21
Speaker 1: in the dormitory smoking rooms. Keep in mind, this is
7:24
Speaker 1: the thirties, so there's a smoking room in everything. There's
7:27
Speaker 1: probably a smoking room for kids, right right, right right.
7:30
Speaker 1: And they were listening in in the washrooms, the restrooms,
7:34
Speaker 1: which is entirely illegal, and they tapped the phones. But
7:38
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing that you and I found was that
7:41
Speaker 1: they physically went into these students rooms and hid under
7:46
Speaker 1: the bed, Like, how long do you do that? Yeah,
7:50
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm I'm just crickets in my head.
7:52
Speaker 1: Let's say, whoa like, whose idea is this? I mean,
7:57
Speaker 1: I guess it's brilliant on the one hand, because as
8:00
Speaker 1: you're gonna get some real information, but like, what's the
8:03
Speaker 1: process like here? Like there is they're breaking and entering
8:06
Speaker 1: involved They just post up like all day and just
8:10
Speaker 1: hang out until their subjects arrive, and then they're just
8:13
Speaker 1: on the ready like you at the bar, under the
8:14
Speaker 1: table with their notepads. Sure, yeah, that's the weird thing
8:17
Speaker 1: because honestly, these are college students and physically you would
8:23
Speaker 1: have to wait until they leave so that you can leave.
8:27
Speaker 1: But what creeps me out about it is this entirely
8:30
Speaker 1: speculative on my part, Folks. I am more than fifty
8:35
Speaker 1: certain that they probably have to lay under those beds
8:38
Speaker 1: while yep, yeah, yeah, you know you know what I'm
8:44
Speaker 1: talking about, folks. Yeah, we're a family show. But I
8:47
Speaker 1: think we're pretty clear on that one. Because they're jumping
8:49
Speaker 1: on the bed, That's what I'm talking about. That's what
8:53
Speaker 1: we called it in the thirties. So they didn't just
8:57
Speaker 1: stay on the campus though, yeah, No, they went out
9:00
Speaker 1: into the world and eavesdropped in hotel lobbies, waiting rooms,
9:05
Speaker 1: doctor's offices, movie theaters, restaurants, even on like in to
9:10
Speaker 1: the street Car named or maybe not named Desire, right, right,
9:15
Speaker 1: And they were pursuing these subjects, so they were actively
9:19
Speaker 1: stalking them and spying on them, and they would always
9:23
Speaker 1: have their notepads handy so they could write down exactly
9:27
Speaker 1: what the people were saying and then judge it on
9:29
Speaker 1: the egocentrism. And you know what's interesting to me about
9:32
Speaker 1: this is if any of the subjects proved to be
9:35
Speaker 1: you know, extremely ecocentric, still, that's really interesting. They probably,
9:41
Speaker 1: you know, they may or may not like the approval
9:42
Speaker 1: of others, but I don't know if they would be
9:44
Speaker 1: as weirded out by the stalking or if it would
9:47
Speaker 1: make sense to them that someone else was also paying
9:50
Speaker 1: a huge amount of attention. It's like a Truman Show
9:52
Speaker 1: kind of scenario, which's like, clearly this is all for
9:54
Speaker 1: me and I am the star here. But the you know,
9:59
Speaker 1: they weren't just taking notes right then. I mean, they
10:01
Speaker 1: were essentially word for word these conversations, you know, in
10:06
Speaker 1: the moment, and we have a great quote here from
10:09
Speaker 1: a clinical psychologist by the name of Dr Ali Matu
10:13
Speaker 1: who has a great YouTube show called The psych Show UM,
10:17
Speaker 1: and he kind of helped shed some light on what
10:21
Speaker 1: the surrounding context of this experiment might have been. So
10:24
Speaker 1: Dr Matu says, quote the hallmark of psychological science is experimentation,
10:30
Speaker 1: highly controlling an environment and only manipulating one experimental variable.
10:35
Speaker 1: While this type of research can tell us a lot
10:37
Speaker 1: about the relationship between cause and effect, experimental studies can
10:41
Speaker 1: sometimes lack external validity. So give it to us been
10:45
Speaker 1: so that that makes sense. The idea that if you
10:48
Speaker 1: really want to understand a process or a phenomenon, you
10:52
Speaker 1: want everything else in all possible senses to be the same.
10:57
Speaker 1: That's one of the reasons why, and this is probably
11:00
Speaker 1: a different episode, but that's one of the reasons why
11:02
Speaker 1: historically so many scientists were interested in experiments with identical twins.
11:07
Speaker 1: It's closest you're going to get to the same person,
11:10
Speaker 1: who is just two people, and then what, you know,
11:12
Speaker 1: what kind of what kind of stuff can you do?
11:16
Speaker 1: And that's met with some fascinating and then also disturbing results.
11:20
Speaker 1: And we certainly know that there are versions of this
11:23
Speaker 1: that are manipulated. But it makes me think of wildlife
11:26
Speaker 1: photographers or documentarian that you know, when in order to
11:30
Speaker 1: paint the most realistic picture of an animal in its
11:33
Speaker 1: natural habitat, you can't go poking it with a stick.
11:36
Speaker 1: You got to stay as far away as possible and
11:38
Speaker 1: not not let it know that you're there. And you know,
11:40
Speaker 1: after all, we're all just like animals basically, right, who
11:44
Speaker 1: are who are very aware of being observed by an
11:48
Speaker 1: external source. So the problem with an observational study wherein
11:53
Speaker 1: if you and I were scientists, The problem with an
11:55
Speaker 1: observational study where and you and I are also being
12:00
Speaker 1: observed by the participants in the study, whether or not
12:04
Speaker 1: they have consented to this. The problem is that it will,
12:09
Speaker 1: it will falsify the information. It'll it'll tain't. That's a
12:13
Speaker 1: great word, favorites, that's one of your favorite words. According
12:18
Speaker 1: to Dr Matu, this is known as objective self awareness.
12:25
Speaker 1: So we have another quote from him where he points
12:27
Speaker 1: out this can be helpful in a lot of situations.
12:30
Speaker 1: Banks and other high security environments show you security camera
12:34
Speaker 1: footage of yourself to trigger objective self awareness and reduce
12:38
Speaker 1: the chances that you might do something stupid dummy. You
12:42
Speaker 1: know you're being watched, you know, a act accordingly exactly.
12:46
Speaker 1: It definitely changes your behavior and that can be manipulated
12:49
Speaker 1: to get you to get in line. I mean, yeah, exactly.
12:54
Speaker 1: And then so if you and I are doing your
12:56
Speaker 1: hypothetical experiment and people know that we are observing them,
13:00
Speaker 1: then they may do things differently. They may try to
13:04
Speaker 1: do what they think they we want them to do, right,
13:07
Speaker 1: They may try to act as they assume society expects
13:13
Speaker 1: them to act, write their values, their mores, or you know,
13:17
Speaker 1: if they're they're being a real pill about it, they
13:19
Speaker 1: might just do the opposite of what they think is expected.
13:22
Speaker 1: Either way, you cannot deny that that knowledge of the
13:25
Speaker 1: observer it has a serious effect. But in Henley and
13:29
Speaker 1: Hubble's time, this notion wasn't really a thing. This idea
13:34
Speaker 1: of objective self awareness hadn't really been codified, and they
13:38
Speaker 1: also were missing a very important thing that that came
13:42
Speaker 1: about not too long after this study. But it's the
13:47
Speaker 1: idea of informed consent that was codified in the Nuremberg
13:52
Speaker 1: Code after World War Two. In the Nuremberg Code, UM
14:03
Speaker 1: lays out very very explicitly what researchers are expected to
14:10
Speaker 1: share and what they're expected to receive from their subjects
14:15
Speaker 1: in the form of complete transparency. Let's call it so
14:19
Speaker 1: it goes. I'm just gonna read a little bit of it.
14:20
Speaker 1: The voluntary concent of human subjectivity is absolutely essential. This
14:24
Speaker 1: means that the person involves should have legal capacity to
14:27
Speaker 1: give consent, should be so situated as to be able
14:30
Speaker 1: to exercise free power of choice without the intervention of
14:34
Speaker 1: any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other
14:39
Speaker 1: ulterior form of constraint or coercion, and should have sufficient
14:43
Speaker 1: knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter
14:47
Speaker 1: involved as to enable him to make an understanding and
14:50
Speaker 1: enlightened decision, which is super important. We cannot over emphasize this.
14:57
Speaker 1: We can't say it enough because idea of informed consent
15:03
Speaker 1: is one of the foundations, one of the cornerstones of
15:07
Speaker 1: what we would consider ethical science and experimentation. And when
15:12
Speaker 1: we say that they have to have this power of
15:14
Speaker 1: choice and that there shouldn't be an ulterior motive, we
15:17
Speaker 1: also mean that consent doesn't count as agreement if it's
15:23
Speaker 1: impaired by a number of other factors, like high levels
15:26
Speaker 1: of stress. You know, like making someone feel that they
15:31
Speaker 1: must sign this thing, right they you have if you
15:34
Speaker 1: have to sign a thing in an experiment and they
15:38
Speaker 1: quote unquote make you do it, you're not really agree.
15:42
Speaker 1: It's like a form of coercion or intimidation most exactly,
15:46
Speaker 1: especially if there's pay involved, and you know, if people
15:49
Speaker 1: are submitting themselves to studies because they need medical treatment
15:54
Speaker 1: and there is that's involved as as a as part
15:57
Speaker 1: of being in the study, you get treatment that you
15:59
Speaker 1: couldn't otherwise afford. Word, or if you're like, you know,
16:01
Speaker 1: they're these sleep studies where people get paid. You hear
16:03
Speaker 1: about them on the you know, college radio stations all
16:05
Speaker 1: the time. They're asking for you know, smokers studies, their
16:08
Speaker 1: sleep studies, and you get a little bit of money.
16:10
Speaker 1: But some people, you know, probably really need that money.
16:13
Speaker 1: And if there is a sense that you know, you
16:14
Speaker 1: have to sign this document where you're not going to
16:16
Speaker 1: get paid, right, that's probably could taint the research. Um
16:22
Speaker 1: even more um. I actually found this really interesting paper
16:26
Speaker 1: about deception and informed consent and social behavior by Michael
16:31
Speaker 1: Chang tech Ta, who is a researcher at the Chung
16:35
Speaker 1: Shan Medical University in Taiwan, and he really concisely goes
16:40
Speaker 1: through kind of the history of informed consent and deception
16:45
Speaker 1: and how they kind of have a relationship um with
16:47
Speaker 1: each other, because, as he points out, there in some
16:51
Speaker 1: situations a little deception is almost necessary to get the
16:56
Speaker 1: right results. So three examples of deceptition in research that
17:01
Speaker 1: he points out, one of which, you know, it's not
17:03
Speaker 1: in his list, but the story we're talking about with
17:05
Speaker 1: you know, the researchers hiding under beds definitely falls into this.
17:09
Speaker 1: The ones that he points out are the Tuskegee Syphilis Study,
17:12
Speaker 1: which is kind of which was nineteen seventy two and Tuskegee, Alabama.
17:17
Speaker 1: And the idea here was to isolate the natural progression
17:20
Speaker 1: of untreated syphilis in rural black men who were, you know,
17:26
Speaker 1: under the poverty line. And there were six hundred African
17:29
Speaker 1: American individuals who had contracted syphilis, and they were gathered
17:34
Speaker 1: up and included in this study. But they were not
17:40
Speaker 1: given the knowledge of the fact that there was already
17:44
Speaker 1: an effective treatment for this disease, and in withholding that
17:48
Speaker 1: information from them put them in serious jeopardy. Well, they
17:52
Speaker 1: were also they were also actively lied to because they
17:55
Speaker 1: were under the impression that they were receiving treatment, but
17:59
Speaker 1: they were not, because they were just being used as
18:02
Speaker 1: guinea pigs to study progression of that. We've looked into
18:05
Speaker 1: this and other shows as well, and one of the big,
18:08
Speaker 1: even today controversial things is that the official stance of
18:12
Speaker 1: the US government is that they didn't infect people with syphilis.
18:16
Speaker 1: They just didn't help them when they said they would,
18:19
Speaker 1: or they said they were helping them. And then a
18:21
Speaker 1: lot of people will question that and they'll say, no,
18:25
Speaker 1: they injected them with syphilis and watched it happen under
18:28
Speaker 1: the guise of some sort of other medicinal treatment. But
18:32
Speaker 1: in either case, it's villainous, it's inhuman to do that,
18:37
Speaker 1: to let these people deteriorate while there is clearly a cure.
18:42
Speaker 1: And this is actually covered in the Nuremberg Code as well.
18:45
Speaker 1: It says at the end of the first rule um
18:48
Speaker 1: that this latter element requires that before the acceptance of
18:51
Speaker 1: an affirmative decision by the experimental subject, there should be
18:53
Speaker 1: made known to him the nature, duration and purpose of
18:56
Speaker 1: the experiment, the method and means by which it is
18:58
Speaker 1: to be conducted, all inconvenied mess and hazards reasonably to
19:01
Speaker 1: be expected, and the effects upon his health or a
19:04
Speaker 1: person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
19:08
Speaker 1: So I would say that like knowingly depriving someone of
19:11
Speaker 1: of a treatment that exists, is a form of harming
19:16
Speaker 1: that person's health, absolutely, especially like I said, when the
19:19
Speaker 1: person likely entered into the experiment because of the potential
19:23
Speaker 1: for getting help right. And that's why you will often
19:28
Speaker 1: see in a college study. I don't know if you
19:30
Speaker 1: participated in any of these during your schooling years. Now
19:33
Speaker 1: I have not, but you know, it's it's never too
19:35
Speaker 1: late to try. Yeah, I did it. It's a I
19:37
Speaker 1: did it because I thought it was a lot of fun. Uh,
19:40
Speaker 1: And you never know if you're going to be in
19:41
Speaker 1: one of those influential studies that what was it. I
19:45
Speaker 1: did a number of things, and most of them were
19:49
Speaker 1: psychological things. There was one that was framed as a
19:55
Speaker 1: market research thing, but it became pretty apparent to me
19:58
Speaker 1: part way through they were a against questions about gum,
20:01
Speaker 1: and it became apparent to me part way through it's like,
20:03
Speaker 1: this is not about um, So this is exactly what
20:06
Speaker 1: we're talking about. I mean, obviously they didn't you know,
20:08
Speaker 1: failed to treat your late stage syphilis, but they were
20:12
Speaker 1: withholding information you do not have late stage cyphilis with
20:16
Speaker 1: juicy fruit, and that's almost as bad, exactly exactly, So
20:20
Speaker 1: in this in this paper that we were talking about
20:22
Speaker 1: from Michael Chang Tech Tie. Another example of deception in
20:28
Speaker 1: research is what's called the Good Samaritan Behavior Study, which
20:33
Speaker 1: was a study that was meant to observe so called
20:38
Speaker 1: bystander apathy. There was a situation that was manufactured in
20:41
Speaker 1: a New York subway train where a person pretended to
20:45
Speaker 1: be drunk, or be an elderly person or in stress
20:50
Speaker 1: into stress in some way would collapse, and then the
20:53
Speaker 1: researchers measured and you know, took notes about how helpful
20:57
Speaker 1: people were, not helpful people were. Um. And this actually
21:01
Speaker 1: came about because of you know about Kitty Genevis. Is
21:04
Speaker 1: this the sexual assault. Yeah, she was supposedly screamed, you know,
21:09
Speaker 1: bloody murder for half an hour while being brutally raped
21:12
Speaker 1: and murdered and being observed by people in the nearby
21:16
Speaker 1: apartment exactly exactly. And uh, this was another example of
21:21
Speaker 1: you know, not informing the public about what's being done,
21:24
Speaker 1: but it could yield positive results. Great point here as well,
21:29
Speaker 1: This is while we're traveling into the darkest nature of
21:33
Speaker 1: the human heart. Uh. This can be applied very easily
21:37
Speaker 1: in your own life, folks, although I hope you never
21:40
Speaker 1: have to use this trick. You've probably heard this before.
21:44
Speaker 1: If you are in a situation where you are being robbed,
21:47
Speaker 1: where you are being assaulted, where someone is attempting to
21:51
Speaker 1: do violence towards you, and you are in a public space,
21:55
Speaker 1: you will probably have more success if you yell fire
21:59
Speaker 1: and that of help, because people operate under self interest
22:04
Speaker 1: and they they will perk up. They may not feel
22:07
Speaker 1: like they are the person to help you, but they
22:09
Speaker 1: certainly do feel like they are a person who doesn't
22:11
Speaker 1: want to burn to death, which is depressing but valuable.
22:15
Speaker 1: Human nature is as a bugger, isn't there. Yeah, it's
22:18
Speaker 1: a real real piece of work. But there's one more example,
22:22
Speaker 1: right there is the infamous I guess Milgram experiments. Yes,
22:27
Speaker 1: this is an interesting one and the and the source
22:29
Speaker 1: of a lot of like potential kind of pop culture touchstones.
22:34
Speaker 1: Or this can be used in I feel like I've
22:36
Speaker 1: seen a couple of movies that that kind of try
22:39
Speaker 1: to go to great lengths to sort of take this
22:41
Speaker 1: to the most extreme conclusion that could possibly go to UM.
22:45
Speaker 1: But the Milgram Experiment was a series of psychological experiments
22:49
Speaker 1: done at Yale by Stanley Milgram UM. And they basically
22:55
Speaker 1: measured how willing the participants were to harm in some
23:00
Speaker 1: way their fellow man and woman, right, and this happened.
23:05
Speaker 1: The experiments began in nineteen sixty one. Interestingly enough, this
23:09
Speaker 1: was during the trial of Adolf Eichman UH and one
23:13
Speaker 1: of the things Milgram wanted to explore was could it
23:16
Speaker 1: possibly be true that members of the Nazi regime we're
23:20
Speaker 1: just following or just fos right where they? How do
23:24
Speaker 1: people respond when an authority figure asked them or commands
23:28
Speaker 1: them to do an escalating series of tasks? So no,
23:33
Speaker 1: how about we set up the Milgram experiment? What what?
23:35
Speaker 1: What's going on in here? Yeah? Essentially it was sort
23:38
Speaker 1: of an interviewer interviewee situation, much like how where, where? How?
23:42
Speaker 1: You and I are arranged right at this minute, only um,
23:44
Speaker 1: instead of us having a nice chat about ridiculous history,
23:48
Speaker 1: I would have a button that I could push when
23:51
Speaker 1: you answered a question incorrectly that, in my mind, delivered
23:56
Speaker 1: a quite painful electric shock to you exactly, and you
24:02
Speaker 1: would cry out in pain. Uh, And I would hear
24:06
Speaker 1: a sound that was associated with this electric shock being delivered.
24:10
Speaker 1: And you know, choose whether or not to continue this behavior,
24:14
Speaker 1: but you in this case would not be choosing. Someone
24:16
Speaker 1: would be telling you to do it, excuse me, But
24:19
Speaker 1: I would be choosing whether or not to follow those
24:21
Speaker 1: orders or not. So there is an element of choice there.
24:24
Speaker 1: But there in lies the crux of the experiment. But
24:26
Speaker 1: the trick is, and the joke is that you're not
24:30
Speaker 1: actually being shocked, are you bad? No? This is uh.
24:33
Speaker 1: The person in this situation who appears to be being
24:36
Speaker 1: shocked is actually a colleague of the person who is
24:40
Speaker 1: telling the participant to push the button. So there's the
24:45
Speaker 1: experiment er, right, And then there's the role you would
24:48
Speaker 1: be playing in this thought experiment. Would be what they
24:50
Speaker 1: would call the teacher. And that's why you are rewarding
24:54
Speaker 1: or punishing correct or in correct answers. And the learner
24:59
Speaker 1: is also working with the experimenter. And I have been
25:02
Speaker 1: assured that I will not be held responsible for injuring
25:05
Speaker 1: um this person. And yeah, yeah, and there is no
25:10
Speaker 1: there's no consequence to you other than the expectation to
25:14
Speaker 1: perform as you are instructed. And the thing about it
25:18
Speaker 1: is the voltage of the shocks will increase, and they
25:23
Speaker 1: wanted to see how far they would go. And there
25:27
Speaker 1: was a system of verbal prompts that could be added,
25:33
Speaker 1: you know, like please continue. The experiment requires that you continue.
25:38
Speaker 1: And one of the most important and one of the
25:40
Speaker 1: most problematic, you have no other choice. You must go
25:44
Speaker 1: on because a lot of people in that role, we're saying, hey,
25:48
Speaker 1: I think this is hurting this person. You know, I
25:52
Speaker 1: think this is going too far. And the knobs and
25:56
Speaker 1: the voltage, right, all the instruments to control that we're
26:00
Speaker 1: clearly displayed in such a way that you could see
26:03
Speaker 1: it was becoming dangerous totally, and like it's it's you know,
26:07
Speaker 1: if you know anything, you know that this is a study.
26:09
Speaker 1: You know, you know that you are being you're part
26:11
Speaker 1: of some sort of experiment. So you're not like you know,
26:15
Speaker 1: in the military, you're not there's there's no the stakes
26:18
Speaker 1: are are not high in that respect. So it is
26:22
Speaker 1: a great way of measuring, you know, what kind of
26:25
Speaker 1: jerks people can be when they're given a little taste
26:28
Speaker 1: of power, right, right, And here's the here's the spookiest,
26:31
Speaker 1: most disturbing part of the Milgram experiment. They originally predicted.
26:35
Speaker 1: Bilgram and his team originally predicted that by the time
26:38
Speaker 1: it escalated to a three hundred volt shock, UH, when
26:42
Speaker 1: the victim refuses to answer, they said, less than four
26:46
Speaker 1: percent of the subjects would still continue, and they thought
26:49
Speaker 1: maybe only a little over one tenth of one percent
26:52
Speaker 1: would administer the highest shock on the board, which was
26:54
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty volts. However, in their first set
26:59
Speaker 1: of experiments, UH, twenty six of the forty people playing
27:03
Speaker 1: that role Noel's role, I like that right. Uh, that
27:07
Speaker 1: works out to about six of the participants did go
27:12
Speaker 1: all the way to that four and fifty vold shock
27:15
Speaker 1: and they administered it. So obviously this is a pretty
27:24
Speaker 1: controversial field even today, and their arguments for and against
27:28
Speaker 1: using deception in research. UM author A. J. Kimmel in
27:33
Speaker 1: American Psychology UH, in a piece entitled in Defense of Deception,
27:38
Speaker 1: said that using deception is the only way that you
27:42
Speaker 1: can actually get certain kinds of real data, real information,
27:46
Speaker 1: and if you totally outlaw deception in research, it will
27:51
Speaker 1: quote have the egregious consequence of preventing researchers from carrying
27:55
Speaker 1: out a wide range of important studies. Right. And it's
27:58
Speaker 1: obviously a pretty delicate bat on thing act. But you know, overall,
28:02
Speaker 1: informed consent is the law of the land today. And
28:06
Speaker 1: to bring it closer to a full circle today, which
28:10
Speaker 1: is always beautiful when we have this opportunity, you will
28:13
Speaker 1: be happy to know that Mary Henley and Marry and
28:16
Speaker 1: be Hubble did complete their study. No one was injured,
28:22
Speaker 1: no one died being crushed by a bed, which is
28:25
Speaker 1: a possibility. Uh, And they came up with some interesting
28:31
Speaker 1: conclusions that sound pretty solid today. They were confirming an
28:37
Speaker 1: earlier paper that argued the young child is essentially egocentric
28:41
Speaker 1: and becomes gradually more and more socialized, as evidenced by
28:45
Speaker 1: language use of language. So they were confirming this thing.
28:49
Speaker 1: And they found that although we have a common starting
28:53
Speaker 1: point in our species, you know, a trend toward ego
28:56
Speaker 1: centric city, as we grow, as we mature, or and
29:00
Speaker 1: as we meet more people and become more socialized, we
29:03
Speaker 1: may still have those tendencies, but we learn how to
29:08
Speaker 1: self correct. You know, the planet is not full of
29:11
Speaker 1: billions of billions of people running around going me me, Me,
29:15
Speaker 1: I mean I always say it's self awareness. Is is
29:17
Speaker 1: a really important trait in anybody that's not a total
29:21
Speaker 1: piece of trash, you know what I mean. I mean,
29:23
Speaker 1: I think if you can see yourself, you may still
29:26
Speaker 1: behave in an ecocentric manner, but if you have the
29:29
Speaker 1: ability to kind of take a step back and say,
29:31
Speaker 1: oh man, maybe that was sort of not the best
29:33
Speaker 1: way to act, you can learn from from that. And
29:36
Speaker 1: I think that's something that you get over time in
29:38
Speaker 1: dealing with more people and being around more people in
29:40
Speaker 1: different perspectives. But yeah, they did determine that we don't
29:43
Speaker 1: actually fully shed that ecocentric view at all. We just
29:48
Speaker 1: you know, figure out different ways to frame it. I guess, yeah,
29:51
Speaker 1: and then and then catch ourselves catching correct. So this
29:55
Speaker 1: is not just an example of a funny thing that
29:58
Speaker 1: happened during a study. We've also found that there are
30:01
Speaker 1: some crucial examples throughout history. And I wanted to add
30:05
Speaker 1: one thing that you and I hadn't talked about off air,
30:07
Speaker 1: but I want to get your take on this. Does
30:11
Speaker 1: informed consent become more important in seventeen I would argue
30:16
Speaker 1: that it does, especially with the manipulation of individual participants
30:20
Speaker 1: on social media. Platforms. Facebook for instance, Yeah, has done
30:25
Speaker 1: uh several experiments that do clearly breach ethical guidelines for
30:32
Speaker 1: informed consent. I think it was in two thousand fourteen
30:37
Speaker 1: they had it was discovered they have manipulated almost a
30:41
Speaker 1: million users news feeds to see if that would affect
30:45
Speaker 1: their emotions, so purposely giving them news that was meant
30:48
Speaker 1: to make you sad and then purposely giving other people
30:51
Speaker 1: news it was meant to make you happy. This was
30:53
Speaker 1: with the consent of Facebook or with the assistance Facebook
30:57
Speaker 1: did it. It wasn't for their own like to help
31:00
Speaker 1: their algorithms. Yes, Facebook did it, and uh so I
31:06
Speaker 1: would say big time not cool, right. The James Grimmelman,
31:10
Speaker 1: Professor Law at University of Maryland, said that Facebook did
31:15
Speaker 1: not give its users informed consent under US Human Subjects
31:19
Speaker 1: research law, and he said to study harm participants. This
31:23
Speaker 1: is bad even for Facebook. But I do feel like
31:26
Speaker 1: we have to point out Facebook's defenders, who of course
31:29
Speaker 1: all worked for Facebook. One of the researchers a guy
31:32
Speaker 1: named Adam Kramer, and he said it was the researchers
31:35
Speaker 1: carried out because we care about the emotional impact of
31:38
Speaker 1: Facebook and the people that use our products. We felt
31:41
Speaker 1: it was important to investigate the common worry that's seeing
31:44
Speaker 1: friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or
31:48
Speaker 1: left out. So they said, we did it because we
31:51
Speaker 1: were worried about you, because we care about you. That's
31:56
Speaker 1: why we didn't tell you. It's for your own good.
31:59
Speaker 1: And there's no there's no arguing that they probably did
32:03
Speaker 1: walk away with some really solid data, of course, And
32:06
Speaker 1: that's you're you're totally right, because I mean, there is
32:08
Speaker 1: kind of a version of the Henley and Hubble study
32:10
Speaker 1: that you could do today that would kind of fall
32:12
Speaker 1: under this informed consent rule where you could say, you know,
32:19
Speaker 1: do it any more controlled and ethical environment. Right, So
32:23
Speaker 1: all of this has to go through institutional review boards,
32:26
Speaker 1: and there's a lot more focus paid on protecting participants. Uh,
32:33
Speaker 1: you know that that might have scientists creeping around under
32:36
Speaker 1: beds in the three back alleys UM. So for example,
32:40
Speaker 1: studying behavior in a public space without getting informed consent
32:44
Speaker 1: from individuals, but without actually revealing their identity UM and
32:50
Speaker 1: talking about it more in terms of an aggregate. So
32:53
Speaker 1: like if you, for example, wanted to study public behavior
32:58
Speaker 1: UM in a place like Grand Central Station in New York,
33:03
Speaker 1: you could get a lot of great information just about how,
33:05
Speaker 1: for example, likely people were to you know, lend a
33:08
Speaker 1: hand to their their fellow humans or not. You could
33:12
Speaker 1: do that and get good information without describing the specifics
33:17
Speaker 1: of each case. So you know, there there is a
33:20
Speaker 1: way to do this. But then with the Facebook stuff, man,
33:22
Speaker 1: that really throws me for a loot because they know
33:24
Speaker 1: everything about you already, right, and now they're now the
33:29
Speaker 1: ideas under the stated um goal of caring about you,
33:35
Speaker 1: Facebook users you know, worried about you. Under under that
33:40
Speaker 1: stated goal, they are they have found ways to trigger
33:45
Speaker 1: emotional mechanisms, which becomes dangerous and I don't want to
33:50
Speaker 1: be too preachy about it, but we should admit that
33:53
Speaker 1: it is a real thing. And honestly know, if all
33:58
Speaker 1: this stuff is happening, I start thinking, well, why shouldn't
34:01
Speaker 1: I be able to conduct my own guerrilla social experiments?
34:05
Speaker 1: You know you do, Ben do? Why should I stop? Then?
34:10
Speaker 1: Because it's it makes me uncomfortable? So so uh. You know,
34:16
Speaker 1: when one of the things that I did a lot
34:19
Speaker 1: in the past was I love traveling to different cities
34:22
Speaker 1: and then just choosing a different name and background, and
34:25
Speaker 1: it never came back to bite me. But I was
34:29
Speaker 1: I was told by some friends. I'm not going to
34:31
Speaker 1: call it an intervention, but I was told by some
34:34
Speaker 1: friends that, you know, one day it might come back
34:37
Speaker 1: to bite me. Pretending to be Chris from Boston who's
34:40
Speaker 1: just in town for the weekend. It was at the
34:42
Speaker 1: priest with the eye patch. No, the priests with the
34:47
Speaker 1: come on man. So yeah, there was a priest with
34:50
Speaker 1: an eye patch. But this brings this brings us to
34:53
Speaker 1: an interesting question. Do you have any social experiments that
34:57
Speaker 1: you have conducted or have you been the subject of
35:01
Speaker 1: a social experiment? We'd like to know, and you can
35:04
Speaker 1: tell us directly at our email address, which is ridiculous
35:09
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. But wait, there's more.
35:12
Speaker 1: There is a little bit more. We've got Facebook, We've
35:14
Speaker 1: got Instagram. We're still working on the vision board. I've
35:17
Speaker 1: added some glitter and some paste and some kind of
35:20
Speaker 1: like unicorn string said, I made that up. That's not real,
35:23
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's really shaping up. And one day,
35:26
Speaker 1: one day, we're going to get that out on Pinterest.
35:28
Speaker 1: But not today, my friend, not today. Uh, today we
35:33
Speaker 1: are going to conclude our episode, but of course not
35:37
Speaker 1: our show. You can catch Nolan I on some more
35:41
Speaker 1: ridiculous adventures through history very soon, and we hope you
35:45
Speaker 1: will have a good one. Everyone,