Psychology experiments
They say, that other sciences have classic laws but psychology has classic experiments. Biology has Darwins principle (don't know why it is not called a law), physics has Newtons laws and so on. But, psychology has experiments. Asch's conformity experiments and the Ultimatum game are very popular and I am guessing should be found in all standard text books (am guessing here because I have not read any psychology text books). Please read briefly about the above two experiments before proceeding.
There are a lot of variations that one can think about in the conformity experiments. For e.g., when the actual subject was told to write down the answers, conformity decreased tremendously. Also, when one person other than the actual subject was told to give correct answers, again conformity decreased. From our day-to-day experience, these results are intuitively correct. I have some more variations that I think are very interesting (there could be some ethical questions to be considered before proceeding with these though):
a.) The questions need not always be about the correct answer to a question. One other idea could be to ask about the usefulness of a product. Another idea could be to ask about political opinions.
b.) Instead of the other people in the room merely answering their question, what if they are made to gasp or look at the actual subject curiously when the actual subject gives out the answers?
c.) Choose the other participants such that the subject does not know them. Introduce the others to the subject and tell the subject that each of them either has phd in mathematics, is a prof in physics etc. Let it be that all of them are from famous places like MIT, Stanford etc. Then conduct the test. This test could be both in terms of right/wrong answers and in the form of opinions.
I think these are very interesting variations but I do not know if these have already been done. The first one could explain why people buy useless products advertised by others. The second one could bring on more pressure to conform. I like the third one most. It could tell how we conform in the face of 'expert' opinion.
The second experiment is the Ultimatum game. It seems a bit trivial to me. Of course, if someone offers me $1 when they are taking $99, I would reject it. But, what if someone were to offer me $100000 when they took the left over portion of $1 million? There seems to be some work in this regard but this version is not being talked about often. I think, the version where I will stand to gain much more than my monthly income is the one people should be interested in. Even in that case, the experimental setup is not quite right. In the case where $100, is to be split, researchers can spend that and the subjects will know that they will get that amount. But in the case where the amount to be split is $1 million, the subjects do know that they are not going to get the huge amount of money and it is only a thought experiment. This could seriously affect the outcome. So, the case where $1 million is the amount to be split and with a different kind of experimental setup is the one that is needed.
If there are any experts in this field reading this, please enlighten us about what you think about these suggestions.
6 comments:
Very interesting! This is what I meant when I said I learn new things from your post.
Oru sandegam...Did you yourself post as anonymous to diss your post as some kind of experiment?
hehe.. no no! :)
antha mathri experiment panra alavuku kidney pathathu :)
Hey Partha!
Its a good post. But you need to do a little bit of homework before you write about Newton and Darwin.
Lets begin with Newton:
His Laws of motion are the basis of classical mechanics and have been proved experimentally. They are still one of the classic experiments in physics. Newton himself proved them experimentally and used them to explain his various other results. So, all in all, his laws of motion are also the classical experiments and one of the greatest contributions to science.
Now lets go to Darwin's Principles:
Well, they are called principles because they were based upon observations and evidences and also are not universally applicable. This is the biggest difference between a law and a principle in science.
Finally, about the psychological experiments (which you call Classical Experiments); well, as far as my understanding goes, psychological experiments are based upon case studies and are not universally applicable. They are more like conclusions based upon statistics of all the case studies. Im not trying to offend any psychological experiments... but comparison of psychological experiments with Newton's laws is not really apt.
@Sneha
I dont understand whether you agree or disagree with me! For precisely the reason that you gave, i.e. experiments in psychology are not universally applicable, they are not called laws. But some of them are called classic experiments because either a.) They launched a completely new field of study or gave very interesting results (or) b.) They are highly repeatable. The two that I had noted do satisfy this. Secondly, you missed the analogy with respect to Newton's law. These experiments play the role to psychology what Newton's law plays to physics. Probably Newton's law singularly has more significance to physics than any experiment in psychology, but that does not break the analogy.
Your explanation about the diff between law is something to be thought about. Thanks for that! But I didnt undestand the thing about homework though.
Hmm... by saying "Homework", I meant all the previous mistake that I mailed you along with the difference between laws an principles... it is just that, when I read your post, I felt that you had just picked up two great names in science and used them for comparison without much background information.
haha.. that was of course not the idea about the post.. the post is about psychology.. :)
thanks for pointing out the typos!
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