February 21, 2023 • 37 mins
Let's say you're a scientist -- how far would you go to carry out a study? Back in the 1930s, two intrepid researchers went into full spy mode, stalking college students in an effort to determine how they behaved when they didn't know they were being observed. In today's classic episode, we join Ben and Noel as they explore the strange, ridiculous and, at times, disturbing history of informed consent.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, we are taking a little bit of a week
off or an episode off, because some of us are
getting back into Atlanta, some of us are leaving our
affair metropolis for a bit. We're passing Noel like ships
in the night, ships in the ridiculous ships in the night. Indeed,
(00:23):
ships in the Tuesday, ridiculous ships in the tuesdays. Right,
it is, in fact a national holiday. President's Day. What's
that one about again? Is that the one where all
the presidents were born at the same time, on the
same day. It's commemorating that time when they all went
to this same karaoke place totally on accident. God, So
we will be observing that sacred day with this classic
(00:46):
which is actually a fun one from way back in
the archives about the time or the scientific era where
researchers thought it was a cool idea to hide under
children's beds like the monsters. They truly were. M Yeah,
are we gonna call it an era or was it
just a very strange series of you know what, you
(01:07):
know what era? I think I think it was more
of a moment, you know perhaps, but well, every every
moment is an erat itself. It's very, very true it's very,
very true. But here we go with this classic episode.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(01:52):
Ladies and gentlemen. Not only is my name Ben, but
you have my absolute guarantee that I will not conduct
an experiment on you in this episode. Scientists be creeping
creep Ben, while you're sleeping. Yeah. Man, it's about creepy scientists.
So this one's about. My name's Nolan. This is Ridiculous History,
(02:13):
and you know it's it's a tough one, Ben, to
you know, conduct research on people who don't know that
you're doing that thing right right now. In the past,
sometimes when you and I are hanging out outside of
work or with our super producer Casey Pegraham, I have
(02:35):
been wont to do a little social experiments you. So
that's why I had to promise I wouldn't do anything
in this episode. And I do really appreciate you humoring
me with that stuff. Yeah, man, ladies and gentlemen, friends
and neighbors. To take a quote from my dear friend
Ben Bowling, there will be times where I will turn
up to a place like a bar, restaurant or what
(02:58):
have you, and I'll be waiting around for then to
show up, only to realize that he's been under the
table the whole time with a tiny Moleski notebook observing
my every move and tick. Yeah, and I apologize for that.
I bought the next round. That's fair, and we learned
a lot. It's for science, Well, that's the thing. It's
it's a conundrum, right, because it's like this ethical quandary
(03:21):
where in order to do behavioral research and really get
to the heart of what makes people tick and more
or less conduct these experiments, a little deception is sometimes required, right, right,
And we'll dive into this, but the top level of
it is essentially that people's behavior changes when they know
(03:42):
that they are being observed. There's a reason why security
cameras have a monitor that you can see at a
bank or at a gas station. It's because of this
same psychological principle. Yeah, you've ever gone into a grocery
store and you see the monitor up there and you
kind of look at yourself and realize how unnatural and
strange look. That's because you're looking at yourself, looking at yourself,
(04:02):
and you were adjusting your look to match your expectations
of what you think you should be, and that's that's
never what you really are, right. And today's story or
today's starting point is an example of exactly the conundrum,
the dilemma that Noel describes. Back in the nineteen thirties,
(04:22):
there were two researchers, Mary Henley and Marion B. Hubble,
and they realized that they were running into this during
their research on egocentricity in adult conversation, so essentially listening
to adults talk to measure whether they're ego centric tendencies
(04:46):
evaporated or increased or changed how they changed since childhood.
And as it turns out, that is also the name
of my favorite Emerson, Lake and Palmer record. It is
no Oh Brain Salad Surgery. I don't know I'm fun
I think I'm funny and I'm not. I think you're hilarious, buddy. Yeah, man,
I appreciate that. I well, whenever I make whenever it
(05:07):
crack jokes or puns that are originated by you. I
also like to phrase it as that was a Noel
Brown piece. I do appreciate that, and you know that
credit where credit is due in speaking of that, this
study Eccentricity in Adult Conversation by Henley and Hubble was
published in the Journal of Social Psychology in May of
(05:29):
nineteen thirty eight. So, as part of Henley's graduate work
in psychology, she and her associate Hubble, we're trying to
figure out whether children, over time as they age, become
less egocentric. Let's unpack that just to touch meaning less selfish,
less focused on the self, and more outwardly observant or
(05:52):
yeah in a way. And this is this is a
great moment to explore this. So egocentrism is essentially the
inability to differentiate between yourself and the other, whatever the
other might be. So to a lot of people, this
would sound like narcissism, right, It's different because a person
(06:14):
who is egocentric does believe they're the center, you know,
the protagonist of their own story, which I think most
people do if at some level. Yeah, But unlike a narcissist,
they don't receive gratification from their own admiration, like a
narcissist might feel gratification when they're walking around going ah,
(06:34):
man talking in the mirror, I am so great. I
see this is almost subconscious where we're talking about here, right,
But for egocentrist it's simply it's more like you are
a universe unto yourself, and you may not receive the
same like warm fuzzies from the approval of others. You
might not need it. I guess that's what I mean
(06:54):
when I say subconscious. It's almost just like this innate
kind of characteristic that's very much present in kids. I mean,
if you ever spend any time around kids, you know
that they kind of live in this like wonderful little
kid bubble where everything revolves around them and to varying
degrees of awfulness, you know. And it's not malicious, That's
(07:15):
what I mean. Yeah, it's just it's the natural starting
point for the vast majority of human mind totally. But
there are certain kids that are just garbage kids. They're
just like, what is wrong with you? Do you not
see that your actions affect other people like at all?
I don't know. I'm speaking from the position of a
parent who tries very hard to engender non selfishness in
(07:38):
my child. So when I see other kids that who's
friends with a school that are just oh they're the worst.
But your kid's cool. My kids cool. But you know,
she has her moments. But I think that that egocentricity,
there are varying degrees of it. So they were they
were confronting this, and they knew that egocentrism exists, is
(07:58):
very common in children, and they wanted to see if
it declines and what that rate of decline would be.
So they immediately ran into problem number one, which is
that you can't just ask somebody when they're eight and
then go back when they're in college and say, hey,
do you how about now do you feel less selfish about? Now?
We met when you were nine and you were you
(08:20):
were a bad kid. So it requires a little bit
of subterfuge, right, And so they were gonna they were
gonna find the stuff out through monitoring real conversations with
college students, and they were going to do this by
any means necessary. So in their study, in order to
(08:40):
keep their presence a secret, what did they do, Ben, Oh,
they would eavesdrop in the dormitory smoking rooms. Keep in mind,
this is the thirties, right, so there's a smoking room
in every there's probably a smoking room for kids, right right,
right right. And they were listening in the washrooms, the restrooms,
(09:01):
which is entirely illegal, and they tap the phones, but
the weirdest thing that you and I found was that
they physically went into these students rooms and hid under
the bed. Like how long do you do that? Yeah?
I don't know. I'm just crickets in my head. It's like,
WHOA whose idea is this? I mean, I guess it's
(09:25):
brilliant on the one hand, because you're gonna get some
real information, but like, what's the process like here? Like
as they're breaking and entering involved, they just post up
like all day and just hang out until their subjects arrive,
and then they're just on the ready, like you at
the bar, under the table with their notepads. Sure. Yeah,
that's the weird thing because honestly, these are college students
(09:48):
and physically you would have to wait until they leave
so that you can leave. But what creeps me out
about it is this entirely speculative on my part, Volks.
I am more than fifty percent certain that they probably
had to lay under those beds while yeah, yeah, yeah,
(10:10):
you know, you know what I'm talking about, folks. Yeah,
we're a family show, but I think we're pretty clear
on that one because they're called jumping on the bed.
That's what I'm talking about. That's what we called it
in the thirties. So they didn't just stay on the
campus though, Yeah, No, they like went out into the
world and eavesdropped in hotel lobbies, waiting rooms, doctor's offices,
(10:34):
movie theaters, restaurants, even on like in to the street
car named or maybe not named Desire right, right, And
they were pursuing these subjects, so they were actively stalking
them in spine on them, and they would always have
their notepads handy so they could write down exactly what
(10:54):
the people were saying and then judge it on the egocentrism.
And you know what's interesting to me about this is
if any of the subjects proved to be you know,
extremely ecocentric, still, that's really interesting. They probably, you know,
they may or may not like the approval of others,
but I don't know if they would be as weirded
out by the stalking or if it would make sense
(11:14):
to them that someone else was also paying a huge
amount of attention. Yeah, it's like a Truman Show kind
of scenario, which's like, clearly this is all for me
and I am the star here. But the you know,
they weren't just taking notes, right, Ben I mean, they
were essentially word for word these conversations, you know, in
the moment. And we have a great quote here from
(11:36):
a clinical psychologist by the name of doctor Ali Matu
who has a great YouTube show called The psych Show,
and he kind of helped shed some light on what
the surrounding context of this experiment might have been. So
doctor Matu says, quote, the hallmark of psychological science is experimentation,
(11:57):
highly controlling an environment and only manipulating one experimental variable.
While this type of research can tell us a lot
about the relationship between cause and effect, experimental studies can
sometimes lack external validity. So give it to us, Ben,
So that makes sense. The idea that if you really
want to understand a process or a phenomenon, you want
(12:19):
everything else in all possible senses to be the same.
That's one of the reasons why, and this is probably
for a different episode, but that's one of the reasons
why historically so many scientists were interested in experiments with
identical twins. It's closest you're going to get to the
same person, who is just two people, and then what,
you know, what kind of what kind of stuff can
(12:42):
you do? And that's met with some fascinating and then
also disturbing results. And we certainly know that there are
versions of this that are manipulated. But it makes me
think of wildlife photographers or a documentarian that you know,
when in order to paint the most realistic picture of
an animal and it's natural habitat, you can't go poking
in with a stick. You got to stay as far
(13:04):
away as possible and not not let it know that
you're there. And you know, after all, we're all just
like animals basically, right, who are who are very aware
of being observed by an external source. So the problem
with an observational study wherein, if you and I were scientists,
The problem with an observational study wherein you and I
(13:25):
are also being observed by the participants in the study,
whether or not they have consented to this. The problem
is that it will it will falsify the information, right,
it'll it'll taint. Taint. That's a great word, it's one
of your favorite words. According to doctor Matu, this is
(13:48):
known as objective self awareness. So we have another quote
from him where he points out this can be helpful
in a lot of situations. Banks and other high security environments.
You security camera footage of yourself to trigger objective self
awareness and reduce the chances that you might do something stupid.
Don't be a dummy. You know you're being watched, right,
(14:11):
you know, act accordingly exactly. It definitely changes your behavior,
and that can be manipulated to get you to get
in line. Yeah, I mean, yeah exactly. And then so
if you and I are doing your hypothetical experiment and
people know that we are observing them, then they may
do things differently. They may try to do what they
(14:31):
think we want them to do right. They may try
to act as they assume society expects them to act right,
their values, their mores, or you know, if they're if
they're being a real pill about it, they might just
do the opposite of what they think is expected. Either way,
you cannot deny that that knowledge of the observer it
(14:54):
has a serious effect. But in Henley and Hubble's time,
this notion wasn't really a thing. This idea of objective
self awareness hadn't really been codified, and they also were
missing a very important thing that came about not do
long after this study. But it's the idea of informed
(15:15):
consent that was codified in the Nuremberg Code after World
War Two, and the Nuremberg Code lays out very very
explicitly what researchers are expected to share and what they're
(15:40):
expected to receive from their subjects in the form of
complete transparency. Let's call it so it goes. I'm just
going to read a little bit of it. The voluntary
concent of human subjectivity is absolutely essential. This means that
the person involves should have legal capacity to give consent,
should be so situated as to be able to exercise
free power of choice without the intervention of any element
(16:02):
of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form
of constraint or coercion, and should have sufficient knowledge and
comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as
to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision,
which is super important. We cannot overemphasize this. We can't
(16:25):
say it enough because the idea of informed consent is
one of the foundations, one of the cornerstones of what
we would consider ethical science and experimentation. And when we
say that they have to have this power of choice
and that there shouldn't be an ulterior motive, we also
mean that consent doesn't count as agreement if it's impaired
(16:51):
by a number of other factors, like high levels of stress,
you know, like making someone feel that they must sign
this thing, right they have. If you have to sign
a thing in an experiment and they quote unquote make
you do it, you're not really agree. It's like a
form of coercion or intimidation almost exactly, especially if there's
(17:14):
pay involved. And you know, if people are submitting themselves
to studies because they need medical treatment and there is
that's involved, as as as part of being in the study,
you get treatment that you couldn't otherwise afford, or if
you're like, you know, they're these sleep studies where people
get paid. You hear about them on the you know,
college radio stations all the time. They're asking for you know,
(17:34):
smokers studies. There's sleep studies and you get a little
bit of money. But some people, you know, probably really
need that money. And if there's a sense that you know,
you have to sign this document where you're not going
to get paid, right, and that's probably could taint the
research even more. I actually found this really interesting paper
about deception and informed consent in social behavior by Michael
(17:58):
Chang Tech Tah who is a researcher at the chung
Shan Medical University in Taiwan, and he really concisely goes
through kind of the history of informed consent and deception
and how they kind of have a relationship with each
other because, as he points out, there in some situations
(18:20):
a little deception is almost necessary to get the right results.
So three examples of deception in research that he points out,
one of which, you know, it's not in his list,
but the story we're talking about with you know, the
researchers hiding under beds definitely falls into this. The ones
that he points out are the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which
is kind of which was in nineteen thirty two to
(18:41):
nineteen seventy two in Tuskegee, Alabama. And the idea here
was to isolate the natural progression of untreated syphilis in
rural black men who were, you know, under the poverty line.
And there were six hundred African American individuals who had
control acted syphilis and they were gathered up and included
(19:03):
in this study, but they were not given the knowledge
of the fact that there was already an effective treatment
for this disease and withholding that information from them put
them in serious jeopardy. Well, they were also they were
also actively lied to because they were under the impression
(19:23):
that they were receiving treatment, but they were not, because
they were just being used as guinea pigs to study
progression of that. We've looked into this and other shows
as well, and one of the big, even today controversial
things is that the official stance of the US government
is that they didn't infect people with syphilis. They just
(19:44):
didn't help them when they said they would, or they
said they were helping them, And then a lot of
people will question that and they'll say, no, they injected
them with syphilis and watched it happen under the guise
of some sort of other medicinal treatment. But either case,
it's villainous, it's inhuman to do that, to let these
(20:06):
people deteriorate while there is clearly a cure. And this
is actually covered in the Nuremberg Code as well. It
says at the end of the first rule that this
latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative
decision by the experimental subject, there should be made known
to him the nature, duration and purpose of the experiment,
the method and means by which it is to be conducted,
(20:26):
all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected, and the
effects upon his health or a person which may possibly
come from his participation in the experiment. So I would
say that like knowingly depriving someone of a treatment that exists,
is a form of harming that person's health. Oh absolutely,
especially like I said, when the person likely entered into
(20:48):
the experiment because of the potential for getting help right.
And that's why you will often see in a college study.
I don't know if you participated in any of these
during your cooling years. Now. I have not, but you know,
it's never too late to try. Yeah, I did it.
It's a I did it because I thought it was
a lot of fun, and you never know if you're
(21:08):
going to be in one of those influential studies that
what was it. I did a number of things, and
most of them were psychological things. There was one that
was framed as a market research thing. But it became
pretty apparent to me part way through they were asking
us questions about gum, and it became apparent to me
(21:29):
part way through It's like, this is not about gum.
So this is exactly what we're talking about. I mean,
obviously they didn't, you know, fail to treat your late
stage syphilis, but they were withholding information you do not
have late stage syphi with my juicy fruit. Yes, and
that's almost as bad. Yeah, exactly, exactly, So in this
in this paper that we were talking about from Michael
(21:50):
Chang Tech Tie. Another example of deception in research is
what's called the Good Samaritan Behavior Study, which was a
study that was meant to observe so called bystander apathy.
There was a situation that was manufactured in a New
York subway train where a person pretended to be drunk
(22:13):
or be an elderly person or distress or in distress
in some way would collapse, and then the researchers measured
and you know, took notes about how helpful people were,
not helpful people were. And this actually came about because
of you know about Kitty Geneviz. Is this the sexual assault. Yeah,
she was supposedly screamed, you know, bloody murder for half
(22:37):
an hour while being brutally raped and murdered and being
observed by people in the nearby apartment. Yeah, exactly, exactly,
and this was another example of you know, not informing
the public about what's being done, but it could yield
positive results. Great point here as well, This is while
we're traveling into the darkest nature of the human heart.
(23:02):
This can be applied very easily in your own life, folks,
although I hope you never have to use this trick.
You've probably heard this before. If you are in a
situation where you are being robbed, where you are being assaulted,
where someone is attempting to do violence towards you, and
you are in a public space, you will probably have
(23:24):
more success if you yell fire instead of help, because
people operate under self interest and they will perk up.
They may not feel like they are the person to
help you, but they certainly do feel like they are
a person who doesn't want to burn to death, which
is depressing but valuable. Human nature is as a bugger,
(23:44):
isn't there. Yeah, it's a real real piece of work.
But there's one more example right there is the infamous
I guess Milgram experiments. Yes, this is an interesting one
in the in the source of a lot of like
potential kind of pop culture touchstones or this can be
used in I feel like I've seen a couple of
(24:04):
movies that kind of try to go to great lengths
to sort of take this to the most extreme conclusion
that could possibly go to. But the Milgram Experiment was
a series of psychological experiments done at Yale by Stanley Milgram,
and they basically measured how willing the participants were to
(24:26):
harm in some way their fellow man and woman, right,
and this happened. The experiments began in nineteen sixty one.
Interestingly enough, this was during the trial of Adolf Eichman,
and one of the things Milgram wanted to explore was
could it possibly be true that members of the Nazi
(24:46):
regime we're just following or just following orders right where they?
How do people respond when an authority figure asked them
or commands them to do an escalating series of tasks? So, well,
how about we set up the Milgram experiment. What's going
on in here? Yeah? Essentially, it was sort of an
interviewer interviewee situation, much like how you and I are
(25:10):
arranged right at this minute, only instead of us having
a nice chat about ridiculous history, I would have a
button that I could push when you answered a question
incorrectly that in my mind delivered a quite painful electric
shock to you exactly, and you would cry out in pain,
(25:32):
and I would hear a sound that was associated with
this electric shock being delivered. And you know, choose whether
or not to continue this behavior. But you, in this
case would not be choosing. Someone would be telling you
to do it, excuse me, But I would be choosing
whether or not to follow those orders or not. So
there is an element of choice there. But therein lies
the crux of the experiment. But the trick is, and
(25:55):
the joke is that you're not actually being shocked, are you,
ben No. This is the person in this situation who
appears to be being shocked is actually a colleague of
the person who is telling the participant to push the button.
So there's the experimenter, right, And then there's the role
you would be playing in this thought experiment, would be
(26:17):
what they would call the teacher. And that's why you
are rewarding or punishing right correct or in correct answers,
And the learner is also working with the experimenter. And
I have been assured that I will not be held
responsible for injuring this person. And yeah, yeah, and there
is no, there's no consequence to you other than the
(26:40):
expectation to perform as you are instructed. And the thing
about it is the voltage of the shocks will increase, right,
And they wanted to see how far they would go,
and there was a system of verbal prompts that could
be added, you know, like please continue. The experiment requires
(27:03):
that you continue, and one of the most important and
one of the most problematic, you have no other choice.
You must go on because a lot of people in
that role, we're saying, hey, I think this is hurting
this person. You know, I think this is going too far.
And the knobs and the voltage, right, all the instruments
(27:26):
to control that. We're clearly displayed in such a way
that you could see it was becoming dangerous. Oh totally,
And like it's it's you know, if you know anything,
you know that this is a study. You know, you
know that you are being you're part of some sort
of experiment. So you're not like you know, in the military,
you're not. There's there's no the stakes are are not
high in that respect. So it is a great way
(27:50):
of measuring, you know, what kind of jerks people can
be when they're given a little taste of power, right right,
And here's the here's the spookiest, most disturbing part of
the mill experiment. They originally predicted bilgrim in Es team
originally predicted that by the time it escalated to a
three hundred volt shock when the victim refuses to answer,
(28:11):
they said less than four percent of the subjects would
still continue, and they thought maybe only a little over
one tenth of one percent would administer the highest shock
on the board, which was four hundred and fifty volts. However,
in their first set of experiments, twenty six of the
forty people playing that Rolenles role I like that rhyme
(28:33):
that works out to about sixty five percent of the
participants did go all the way to that four hundred
and fifty volt shock and they administered it. So obviously
this is a pretty controversial field even today and their
arguments for and against using deception in research. Author AJ
(28:59):
Kimmel in American Psychology, in a piece entitled in Defense
of Deception, said that using deception is the only way
that you can actually get certain kinds of real data,
real information, and if you totally outlaw deception in research,
it will quote have the egregious consequence of preventing researchers
(29:21):
from carrying out a wide range of important studies. Right,
And it's obviously a pretty delicate balancing act. But you know, overall,
informed consent is the law of the land today. And
to bring it closer to a full circle today, which
is always beautiful when we have this opportunity, you will
be happy to know that Mary Henley and Mary and
(29:42):
be Hubble did complete their study. No one was injured,
no one died being crushed by a bed, which is
a possibility, and they came up with some interesting conclusions
that sound pretty solid today. They were confirming an earlier
(30:04):
paper that argued the young child is essentially egocentric and
becomes gradually more and more socialized, as evidenced by language
use of language. So they were confirming this thing. And
they found that although we have a common starting point
in our species, you know, a trend toward egocentricity, as
we grow, as we mature, and as we meet more
(30:27):
people and become more socialized, we may still have those tendencies,
but we learn how to self correct. You know, the
planet is not full of billions of billions of people
running around going me, Me, Me. I mean I always
say it's self awareness is a really important trait in
anybody that's not a total piece of trash, you know
(30:49):
what I mean. I mean, I think if you can
see yourself, you may still behave in an egocentric manner,
but if you have the ability to kind of take
a step back and say, oh man, maybe that was
sort of not the best way to act, you can
learn from from that. And I think that's something that
you get over time in dealing with more people and
being around more people in different perspectives. But yeah, they
did determine that we don't actually fully shed that egocentric
(31:13):
view at all. We just, you know, figure out different
ways to frame it, I guess, yeah, and then and
then catch ourselves catching correct. So this is not just
an example of a funny thing that happened during a study.
We've also found that there are some crucial examples throughout history.
And I wanted to add one thing that you and
I hadn't talked about off air, but I want to
(31:34):
get your take on this. Sure does informed consent become
more important in twenty seventeen, I would argue that it does,
especially with the manipulation of individual participants on social media platforms. Facebook,
for instance, that man yeah, has done several experiments that
(31:55):
do clearly breach ethical guidelines for informed I think it
was in twenty fourteen they had it was discovered they
had manipulated almost a million users news feeds to see
if that would affect their emotions, so purposely giving them
news that was meant to make you sad, and then
(32:16):
purposely giving other people news it was meant to make
you happy. This was with the consent of Facebook or
with the assistants. Facebook did it. It wasn't for their
own Yes, I'd like to help their algorithms or something.
Oh yes, Facebook did it, and so I would say
big time not cool, right the James Grimmelman, Professor Law
(32:38):
at University of Maryland, said that Facebook did not give
its users informed consent under US Human Subjects Research law,
and he said the study harm participants. This is bad
even for Facebook. But I do feel like we have
to point out Facebook's defenders, who of course all worked
for Facebook. One of the researchers, a guy named Adam Kramer.
(33:00):
He said it was the research was carried out because
we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the
people that use our products. We felt it was important
to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive
content leads to people fully negative or left out. So
they said, we did it because we were worried about you,
(33:20):
because we care about you. That's why we didn't tell you.
It's for your own good. And there's there's no arguing
that they probably did walk away with some really solid data,
of course, And that's you're totally right, because I mean,
there is kind of a version of the Henley and
Hubble study that you could do today that would kind
of fall under this informed consent rule where you could say,
(33:45):
you know, do it any more controlled and ethical environment. Right,
So all of this has to go through institutional review boards,
and there's a lot more focus paid on protecting participants.
You know, that might have scientists creeping around under beds
and the three back alleys. So for example, studying behavior
(34:07):
in a public space without getting informed consent from individuals,
but without actually revealing their identity and talking about it
more in terms of an aggregate. So like if you,
for example, wanted to study public behavior in a place
like Grand Central Station in New York, you could get
(34:30):
a lot of great information just about how, for example,
likely people were to you know, lend a hand to
their their fellow humans or not. You could do that
and get good information without describing the specifics of each case.
So you know there there is a way to do this.
But then with the Facebook stuff, man, that really throws
me for a loot because they know everything about you already, right,
(34:53):
and now they're now the ideas under the stated um
goal of caring about you. Facebook users you know, worried
about you. Under under that stated goal, they are they
have found ways to trigger emotional mechanisms, which becomes dangerous
(35:15):
and I don't want to be too preachy about it,
but we should admit that it is a real thing.
And honestly, no, if all this stuff is happening, I
start thinking, well, why shouldn't I be able to conduct
my own guerrilla social experiments? You know you do, Ben do?
Why should I stop? Then? Because it's it makes me uncomfortable.
(35:40):
So so you know, one of the things that I
did a lot in the past was I love traveling
to different cities and then just choosing a different name
and background and it never came back to bite me.
But I was I was told by some friends. I'm
not going to call it an intervention. Was told by
some friends that you know, one day it might come
(36:03):
back to bite me, pretending to be Chris from Boston
who's just in town for the weekend. It was at
the priest with the eyepatch. No, the priests with the
eye but come on, man, so yeah, there was a
priest with an eyepatch. But this brings this brings us
to an interesting question. Do you have any social experiments
(36:23):
that you have conducted or have you been the subject
of a social experiment? We'd like to know, and you
can tell us directly at our email address, which is
ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. But wait, there's more. There
is a little bit more. We've got Facebook, We've got Instagram.
We're still working on the vision board. I've added some
(36:44):
glitter and some paste and some kind of like unicorn string.
Yes I made that up. That's not real, but it's
it's really shaping up and one day, one day, we're
going to get that out on Pinterest. But not today,
my friend, not today today we are going to conclude
our episode, but of course not our show. You can
(37:05):
catch Nolan I on some more ridiculous adventures through history
very soon, and we hope you will have a good one. Everyone.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Well, we are taking a little bit of a week
off or an episode off, because some of us are
getting back into Atlanta, some of us are leaving our
affair metropolis for a bit. We're passing Noel like ships
in the night, ships in the ridiculous ships in the night. Indeed,
(00:23):
ships in the Tuesday, ridiculous ships in the tuesdays. Right,
it is, in fact a national holiday. President's Day. What's
that one about again? Is that the one where all
the presidents were born at the same time, on the
same day. It's commemorating that time when they all went
to this same karaoke place totally on accident. God, So
we will be observing that sacred day with this classic
(00:46):
which is actually a fun one from way back in
the archives about the time or the scientific era where
researchers thought it was a cool idea to hide under
children's beds like the monsters. They truly were. M Yeah,
are we gonna call it an era or was it
just a very strange series of you know what, you
(01:07):
know what era? I think I think it was more
of a moment, you know perhaps, but well, every every
moment is an erat itself. It's very, very true it's very,
very true. But here we go with this classic episode.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(01:52):
Ladies and gentlemen. Not only is my name Ben, but
you have my absolute guarantee that I will not conduct
an experiment on you in this episode. Scientists be creeping
creep Ben, while you're sleeping. Yeah. Man, it's about creepy scientists.
So this one's about. My name's Nolan. This is Ridiculous History,
(02:13):
and you know it's it's a tough one, Ben, to
you know, conduct research on people who don't know that
you're doing that thing right right now. In the past,
sometimes when you and I are hanging out outside of
work or with our super producer Casey Pegraham, I have
(02:35):
been wont to do a little social experiments you. So
that's why I had to promise I wouldn't do anything
in this episode. And I do really appreciate you humoring
me with that stuff. Yeah, man, ladies and gentlemen, friends
and neighbors. To take a quote from my dear friend
Ben Bowling, there will be times where I will turn
up to a place like a bar, restaurant or what
(02:58):
have you, and I'll be waiting around for then to
show up, only to realize that he's been under the
table the whole time with a tiny Moleski notebook observing
my every move and tick. Yeah, and I apologize for that.
I bought the next round. That's fair, and we learned
a lot. It's for science, Well, that's the thing. It's
it's a conundrum, right, because it's like this ethical quandary
(03:21):
where in order to do behavioral research and really get
to the heart of what makes people tick and more
or less conduct these experiments, a little deception is sometimes required, right, right,
And we'll dive into this, but the top level of
it is essentially that people's behavior changes when they know
(03:42):
that they are being observed. There's a reason why security
cameras have a monitor that you can see at a
bank or at a gas station. It's because of this
same psychological principle. Yeah, you've ever gone into a grocery
store and you see the monitor up there and you
kind of look at yourself and realize how unnatural and
strange look. That's because you're looking at yourself, looking at yourself,
(04:02):
and you were adjusting your look to match your expectations
of what you think you should be, and that's that's
never what you really are, right. And today's story or
today's starting point is an example of exactly the conundrum,
the dilemma that Noel describes. Back in the nineteen thirties,
(04:22):
there were two researchers, Mary Henley and Marion B. Hubble,
and they realized that they were running into this during
their research on egocentricity in adult conversation, so essentially listening
to adults talk to measure whether they're ego centric tendencies
(04:46):
evaporated or increased or changed how they changed since childhood.
And as it turns out, that is also the name
of my favorite Emerson, Lake and Palmer record. It is
no Oh Brain Salad Surgery. I don't know I'm fun
I think I'm funny and I'm not. I think you're hilarious, buddy. Yeah, man,
I appreciate that. I well, whenever I make whenever it
(05:07):
crack jokes or puns that are originated by you. I
also like to phrase it as that was a Noel
Brown piece. I do appreciate that, and you know that
credit where credit is due in speaking of that, this
study Eccentricity in Adult Conversation by Henley and Hubble was
published in the Journal of Social Psychology in May of
(05:29):
nineteen thirty eight. So, as part of Henley's graduate work
in psychology, she and her associate Hubble, we're trying to
figure out whether children, over time as they age, become
less egocentric. Let's unpack that just to touch meaning less selfish,
less focused on the self, and more outwardly observant or
(05:52):
yeah in a way. And this is this is a
great moment to explore this. So egocentrism is essentially the
inability to differentiate between yourself and the other, whatever the
other might be. So to a lot of people, this
would sound like narcissism, right, It's different because a person
(06:14):
who is egocentric does believe they're the center, you know,
the protagonist of their own story, which I think most
people do if at some level. Yeah, But unlike a narcissist,
they don't receive gratification from their own admiration, like a
narcissist might feel gratification when they're walking around going ah,
(06:34):
man talking in the mirror, I am so great. I
see this is almost subconscious where we're talking about here, right,
But for egocentrist it's simply it's more like you are
a universe unto yourself, and you may not receive the
same like warm fuzzies from the approval of others. You
might not need it. I guess that's what I mean
(06:54):
when I say subconscious. It's almost just like this innate
kind of characteristic that's very much present in kids. I mean,
if you ever spend any time around kids, you know
that they kind of live in this like wonderful little
kid bubble where everything revolves around them and to varying
degrees of awfulness, you know. And it's not malicious, That's
(07:15):
what I mean. Yeah, it's just it's the natural starting
point for the vast majority of human mind totally. But
there are certain kids that are just garbage kids. They're
just like, what is wrong with you? Do you not
see that your actions affect other people like at all?
I don't know. I'm speaking from the position of a
parent who tries very hard to engender non selfishness in
(07:38):
my child. So when I see other kids that who's
friends with a school that are just oh they're the worst.
But your kid's cool. My kids cool. But you know,
she has her moments. But I think that that egocentricity,
there are varying degrees of it. So they were they
were confronting this, and they knew that egocentrism exists, is
(07:58):
very common in children, and they wanted to see if
it declines and what that rate of decline would be.
So they immediately ran into problem number one, which is
that you can't just ask somebody when they're eight and
then go back when they're in college and say, hey,
do you how about now do you feel less selfish about? Now?
We met when you were nine and you were you
(08:20):
were a bad kid. So it requires a little bit
of subterfuge, right, And so they were gonna they were
gonna find the stuff out through monitoring real conversations with
college students, and they were going to do this by
any means necessary. So in their study, in order to
(08:40):
keep their presence a secret, what did they do, Ben, Oh,
they would eavesdrop in the dormitory smoking rooms. Keep in mind,
this is the thirties, right, so there's a smoking room
in every there's probably a smoking room for kids, right right,
right right. And they were listening in the washrooms, the restrooms,
(09:01):
which is entirely illegal, and they tap the phones, but
the weirdest thing that you and I found was that
they physically went into these students rooms and hid under
the bed. Like how long do you do that? Yeah?
I don't know. I'm just crickets in my head. It's like,
WHOA whose idea is this? I mean, I guess it's
(09:25):
brilliant on the one hand, because you're gonna get some
real information, but like, what's the process like here? Like
as they're breaking and entering involved, they just post up
like all day and just hang out until their subjects arrive,
and then they're just on the ready, like you at
the bar, under the table with their notepads. Sure. Yeah,
that's the weird thing because honestly, these are college students
(09:48):
and physically you would have to wait until they leave
so that you can leave. But what creeps me out
about it is this entirely speculative on my part, Volks.
I am more than fifty percent certain that they probably
had to lay under those beds while yeah, yeah, yeah,
(10:10):
you know, you know what I'm talking about, folks. Yeah,
we're a family show, but I think we're pretty clear
on that one because they're called jumping on the bed.
That's what I'm talking about. That's what we called it
in the thirties. So they didn't just stay on the
campus though, Yeah, No, they like went out into the
world and eavesdropped in hotel lobbies, waiting rooms, doctor's offices,
(10:34):
movie theaters, restaurants, even on like in to the street
car named or maybe not named Desire right, right, And
they were pursuing these subjects, so they were actively stalking
them in spine on them, and they would always have
their notepads handy so they could write down exactly what
(10:54):
the people were saying and then judge it on the egocentrism.
And you know what's interesting to me about this is
if any of the subjects proved to be you know,
extremely ecocentric, still, that's really interesting. They probably, you know,
they may or may not like the approval of others,
but I don't know if they would be as weirded
out by the stalking or if it would make sense
(11:14):
to them that someone else was also paying a huge
amount of attention. Yeah, it's like a Truman Show kind
of scenario, which's like, clearly this is all for me
and I am the star here. But the you know,
they weren't just taking notes, right, Ben I mean, they
were essentially word for word these conversations, you know, in
the moment. And we have a great quote here from
(11:36):
a clinical psychologist by the name of doctor Ali Matu
who has a great YouTube show called The psych Show,
and he kind of helped shed some light on what
the surrounding context of this experiment might have been. So
doctor Matu says, quote, the hallmark of psychological science is experimentation,
(11:57):
highly controlling an environment and only manipulating one experimental variable.
While this type of research can tell us a lot
about the relationship between cause and effect, experimental studies can
sometimes lack external validity. So give it to us, Ben,
So that makes sense. The idea that if you really
want to understand a process or a phenomenon, you want
(12:19):
everything else in all possible senses to be the same.
That's one of the reasons why, and this is probably
for a different episode, but that's one of the reasons
why historically so many scientists were interested in experiments with
identical twins. It's closest you're going to get to the
same person, who is just two people, and then what,
you know, what kind of what kind of stuff can
(12:42):
you do? And that's met with some fascinating and then
also disturbing results. And we certainly know that there are
versions of this that are manipulated. But it makes me
think of wildlife photographers or a documentarian that you know,
when in order to paint the most realistic picture of
an animal and it's natural habitat, you can't go poking
in with a stick. You got to stay as far
(13:04):
away as possible and not not let it know that
you're there. And you know, after all, we're all just
like animals basically, right, who are who are very aware
of being observed by an external source. So the problem
with an observational study wherein, if you and I were scientists,
The problem with an observational study wherein you and I
(13:25):
are also being observed by the participants in the study,
whether or not they have consented to this. The problem
is that it will it will falsify the information, right,
it'll it'll taint. Taint. That's a great word, it's one
of your favorite words. According to doctor Matu, this is
(13:48):
known as objective self awareness. So we have another quote
from him where he points out this can be helpful
in a lot of situations. Banks and other high security environments.
You security camera footage of yourself to trigger objective self
awareness and reduce the chances that you might do something stupid.
Don't be a dummy. You know you're being watched, right,
(14:11):
you know, act accordingly exactly. It definitely changes your behavior,
and that can be manipulated to get you to get
in line. Yeah, I mean, yeah exactly. And then so
if you and I are doing your hypothetical experiment and
people know that we are observing them, then they may
do things differently. They may try to do what they
(14:31):
think we want them to do right. They may try
to act as they assume society expects them to act right,
their values, their mores, or you know, if they're if
they're being a real pill about it, they might just
do the opposite of what they think is expected. Either way,
you cannot deny that that knowledge of the observer it
(14:54):
has a serious effect. But in Henley and Hubble's time,
this notion wasn't really a thing. This idea of objective
self awareness hadn't really been codified, and they also were
missing a very important thing that came about not do
long after this study. But it's the idea of informed
(15:15):
consent that was codified in the Nuremberg Code after World
War Two, and the Nuremberg Code lays out very very
explicitly what researchers are expected to share and what they're
(15:40):
expected to receive from their subjects in the form of
complete transparency. Let's call it so it goes. I'm just
going to read a little bit of it. The voluntary
concent of human subjectivity is absolutely essential. This means that
the person involves should have legal capacity to give consent,
should be so situated as to be able to exercise
free power of choice without the intervention of any element
(16:02):
of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form
of constraint or coercion, and should have sufficient knowledge and
comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as
to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision,
which is super important. We cannot overemphasize this. We can't
(16:25):
say it enough because the idea of informed consent is
one of the foundations, one of the cornerstones of what
we would consider ethical science and experimentation. And when we
say that they have to have this power of choice
and that there shouldn't be an ulterior motive, we also
mean that consent doesn't count as agreement if it's impaired
(16:51):
by a number of other factors, like high levels of stress,
you know, like making someone feel that they must sign
this thing, right they have. If you have to sign
a thing in an experiment and they quote unquote make
you do it, you're not really agree. It's like a
form of coercion or intimidation almost exactly, especially if there's
(17:14):
pay involved. And you know, if people are submitting themselves
to studies because they need medical treatment and there is
that's involved, as as as part of being in the study,
you get treatment that you couldn't otherwise afford, or if
you're like, you know, they're these sleep studies where people
get paid. You hear about them on the you know,
college radio stations all the time. They're asking for you know,
(17:34):
smokers studies. There's sleep studies and you get a little
bit of money. But some people, you know, probably really
need that money. And if there's a sense that you know,
you have to sign this document where you're not going
to get paid, right, and that's probably could taint the
research even more. I actually found this really interesting paper
about deception and informed consent in social behavior by Michael
(17:58):
Chang Tech Tah who is a researcher at the chung
Shan Medical University in Taiwan, and he really concisely goes
through kind of the history of informed consent and deception
and how they kind of have a relationship with each
other because, as he points out, there in some situations
(18:20):
a little deception is almost necessary to get the right results.
So three examples of deception in research that he points out,
one of which, you know, it's not in his list,
but the story we're talking about with you know, the
researchers hiding under beds definitely falls into this. The ones
that he points out are the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which
is kind of which was in nineteen thirty two to
(18:41):
nineteen seventy two in Tuskegee, Alabama. And the idea here
was to isolate the natural progression of untreated syphilis in
rural black men who were, you know, under the poverty line.
And there were six hundred African American individuals who had
control acted syphilis and they were gathered up and included
(19:03):
in this study, but they were not given the knowledge
of the fact that there was already an effective treatment
for this disease and withholding that information from them put
them in serious jeopardy. Well, they were also they were
also actively lied to because they were under the impression
(19:23):
that they were receiving treatment, but they were not, because
they were just being used as guinea pigs to study
progression of that. We've looked into this and other shows
as well, and one of the big, even today controversial
things is that the official stance of the US government
is that they didn't infect people with syphilis. They just
(19:44):
didn't help them when they said they would, or they
said they were helping them, And then a lot of
people will question that and they'll say, no, they injected
them with syphilis and watched it happen under the guise
of some sort of other medicinal treatment. But either case,
it's villainous, it's inhuman to do that, to let these
(20:06):
people deteriorate while there is clearly a cure. And this
is actually covered in the Nuremberg Code as well. It
says at the end of the first rule that this
latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative
decision by the experimental subject, there should be made known
to him the nature, duration and purpose of the experiment,
the method and means by which it is to be conducted,
(20:26):
all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected, and the
effects upon his health or a person which may possibly
come from his participation in the experiment. So I would
say that like knowingly depriving someone of a treatment that exists,
is a form of harming that person's health. Oh absolutely,
especially like I said, when the person likely entered into
(20:48):
the experiment because of the potential for getting help right.
And that's why you will often see in a college study.
I don't know if you participated in any of these
during your cooling years. Now. I have not, but you know,
it's never too late to try. Yeah, I did it.
It's a I did it because I thought it was
a lot of fun, and you never know if you're
(21:08):
going to be in one of those influential studies that
what was it. I did a number of things, and
most of them were psychological things. There was one that
was framed as a market research thing. But it became
pretty apparent to me part way through they were asking
us questions about gum, and it became apparent to me
(21:29):
part way through It's like, this is not about gum.
So this is exactly what we're talking about. I mean,
obviously they didn't, you know, fail to treat your late
stage syphilis, but they were withholding information you do not
have late stage syphi with my juicy fruit. Yes, and
that's almost as bad. Yeah, exactly, exactly, So in this
in this paper that we were talking about from Michael
(21:50):
Chang Tech Tie. Another example of deception in research is
what's called the Good Samaritan Behavior Study, which was a
study that was meant to observe so called bystander apathy.
There was a situation that was manufactured in a New
York subway train where a person pretended to be drunk
(22:13):
or be an elderly person or distress or in distress
in some way would collapse, and then the researchers measured
and you know, took notes about how helpful people were,
not helpful people were. And this actually came about because
of you know about Kitty Geneviz. Is this the sexual assault. Yeah,
she was supposedly screamed, you know, bloody murder for half
(22:37):
an hour while being brutally raped and murdered and being
observed by people in the nearby apartment. Yeah, exactly, exactly,
and this was another example of you know, not informing
the public about what's being done, but it could yield
positive results. Great point here as well, This is while
we're traveling into the darkest nature of the human heart.
(23:02):
This can be applied very easily in your own life, folks,
although I hope you never have to use this trick.
You've probably heard this before. If you are in a
situation where you are being robbed, where you are being assaulted,
where someone is attempting to do violence towards you, and
you are in a public space, you will probably have
(23:24):
more success if you yell fire instead of help, because
people operate under self interest and they will perk up.
They may not feel like they are the person to
help you, but they certainly do feel like they are
a person who doesn't want to burn to death, which
is depressing but valuable. Human nature is as a bugger,
(23:44):
isn't there. Yeah, it's a real real piece of work.
But there's one more example right there is the infamous
I guess Milgram experiments. Yes, this is an interesting one
in the in the source of a lot of like
potential kind of pop culture touchstones or this can be
used in I feel like I've seen a couple of
(24:04):
movies that kind of try to go to great lengths
to sort of take this to the most extreme conclusion
that could possibly go to. But the Milgram Experiment was
a series of psychological experiments done at Yale by Stanley Milgram,
and they basically measured how willing the participants were to
(24:26):
harm in some way their fellow man and woman, right,
and this happened. The experiments began in nineteen sixty one.
Interestingly enough, this was during the trial of Adolf Eichman,
and one of the things Milgram wanted to explore was
could it possibly be true that members of the Nazi
(24:46):
regime we're just following or just following orders right where they?
How do people respond when an authority figure asked them
or commands them to do an escalating series of tasks? So, well,
how about we set up the Milgram experiment. What's going
on in here? Yeah? Essentially, it was sort of an
interviewer interviewee situation, much like how you and I are
(25:10):
arranged right at this minute, only instead of us having
a nice chat about ridiculous history, I would have a
button that I could push when you answered a question
incorrectly that in my mind delivered a quite painful electric
shock to you exactly, and you would cry out in pain,
(25:32):
and I would hear a sound that was associated with
this electric shock being delivered. And you know, choose whether
or not to continue this behavior. But you, in this
case would not be choosing. Someone would be telling you
to do it, excuse me, But I would be choosing
whether or not to follow those orders or not. So
there is an element of choice there. But therein lies
the crux of the experiment. But the trick is, and
(25:55):
the joke is that you're not actually being shocked, are you,
ben No. This is the person in this situation who
appears to be being shocked is actually a colleague of
the person who is telling the participant to push the button.
So there's the experimenter, right, And then there's the role
you would be playing in this thought experiment, would be
(26:17):
what they would call the teacher. And that's why you
are rewarding or punishing right correct or in correct answers,
And the learner is also working with the experimenter. And
I have been assured that I will not be held
responsible for injuring this person. And yeah, yeah, and there
is no, there's no consequence to you other than the
(26:40):
expectation to perform as you are instructed. And the thing
about it is the voltage of the shocks will increase, right,
And they wanted to see how far they would go,
and there was a system of verbal prompts that could
be added, you know, like please continue. The experiment requires
(27:03):
that you continue, and one of the most important and
one of the most problematic, you have no other choice.
You must go on because a lot of people in
that role, we're saying, hey, I think this is hurting
this person. You know, I think this is going too far.
And the knobs and the voltage, right, all the instruments
(27:26):
to control that. We're clearly displayed in such a way
that you could see it was becoming dangerous. Oh totally,
And like it's it's you know, if you know anything,
you know that this is a study. You know, you
know that you are being you're part of some sort
of experiment. So you're not like you know, in the military,
you're not. There's there's no the stakes are are not
high in that respect. So it is a great way
(27:50):
of measuring, you know, what kind of jerks people can
be when they're given a little taste of power, right right,
And here's the here's the spookiest, most disturbing part of
the mill experiment. They originally predicted bilgrim in Es team
originally predicted that by the time it escalated to a
three hundred volt shock when the victim refuses to answer,
(28:11):
they said less than four percent of the subjects would
still continue, and they thought maybe only a little over
one tenth of one percent would administer the highest shock
on the board, which was four hundred and fifty volts. However,
in their first set of experiments, twenty six of the
forty people playing that Rolenles role I like that rhyme
(28:33):
that works out to about sixty five percent of the
participants did go all the way to that four hundred
and fifty volt shock and they administered it. So obviously
this is a pretty controversial field even today and their
arguments for and against using deception in research. Author AJ
(28:59):
Kimmel in American Psychology, in a piece entitled in Defense
of Deception, said that using deception is the only way
that you can actually get certain kinds of real data,
real information, and if you totally outlaw deception in research,
it will quote have the egregious consequence of preventing researchers
(29:21):
from carrying out a wide range of important studies. Right,
And it's obviously a pretty delicate balancing act. But you know, overall,
informed consent is the law of the land today. And
to bring it closer to a full circle today, which
is always beautiful when we have this opportunity, you will
be happy to know that Mary Henley and Mary and
(29:42):
be Hubble did complete their study. No one was injured,
no one died being crushed by a bed, which is
a possibility, and they came up with some interesting conclusions
that sound pretty solid today. They were confirming an earlier
(30:04):
paper that argued the young child is essentially egocentric and
becomes gradually more and more socialized, as evidenced by language
use of language. So they were confirming this thing. And
they found that although we have a common starting point
in our species, you know, a trend toward egocentricity, as
we grow, as we mature, and as we meet more
(30:27):
people and become more socialized, we may still have those tendencies,
but we learn how to self correct. You know, the
planet is not full of billions of billions of people
running around going me, Me, Me. I mean I always
say it's self awareness is a really important trait in
anybody that's not a total piece of trash, you know
(30:49):
what I mean. I mean, I think if you can
see yourself, you may still behave in an egocentric manner,
but if you have the ability to kind of take
a step back and say, oh man, maybe that was
sort of not the best way to act, you can
learn from from that. And I think that's something that
you get over time in dealing with more people and
being around more people in different perspectives. But yeah, they
did determine that we don't actually fully shed that egocentric
(31:13):
view at all. We just, you know, figure out different
ways to frame it, I guess, yeah, and then and
then catch ourselves catching correct. So this is not just
an example of a funny thing that happened during a study.
We've also found that there are some crucial examples throughout history.
And I wanted to add one thing that you and
I hadn't talked about off air, but I want to
(31:34):
get your take on this. Sure does informed consent become
more important in twenty seventeen, I would argue that it does,
especially with the manipulation of individual participants on social media platforms. Facebook,
for instance, that man yeah, has done several experiments that
(31:55):
do clearly breach ethical guidelines for informed I think it
was in twenty fourteen they had it was discovered they
had manipulated almost a million users news feeds to see
if that would affect their emotions, so purposely giving them
news that was meant to make you sad, and then
(32:16):
purposely giving other people news it was meant to make
you happy. This was with the consent of Facebook or
with the assistants. Facebook did it. It wasn't for their
own Yes, I'd like to help their algorithms or something.
Oh yes, Facebook did it, and so I would say
big time not cool, right the James Grimmelman, Professor Law
(32:38):
at University of Maryland, said that Facebook did not give
its users informed consent under US Human Subjects Research law,
and he said the study harm participants. This is bad
even for Facebook. But I do feel like we have
to point out Facebook's defenders, who of course all worked
for Facebook. One of the researchers, a guy named Adam Kramer.
(33:00):
He said it was the research was carried out because
we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the
people that use our products. We felt it was important
to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive
content leads to people fully negative or left out. So
they said, we did it because we were worried about you,
(33:20):
because we care about you. That's why we didn't tell you.
It's for your own good. And there's there's no arguing
that they probably did walk away with some really solid data,
of course, And that's you're totally right, because I mean,
there is kind of a version of the Henley and
Hubble study that you could do today that would kind
of fall under this informed consent rule where you could say,
(33:45):
you know, do it any more controlled and ethical environment. Right,
So all of this has to go through institutional review boards,
and there's a lot more focus paid on protecting participants.
You know, that might have scientists creeping around under beds
and the three back alleys. So for example, studying behavior
(34:07):
in a public space without getting informed consent from individuals,
but without actually revealing their identity and talking about it
more in terms of an aggregate. So like if you,
for example, wanted to study public behavior in a place
like Grand Central Station in New York, you could get
(34:30):
a lot of great information just about how, for example,
likely people were to you know, lend a hand to
their their fellow humans or not. You could do that
and get good information without describing the specifics of each case.
So you know there there is a way to do this.
But then with the Facebook stuff, man, that really throws
me for a loot because they know everything about you already, right,
(34:53):
and now they're now the ideas under the stated um
goal of caring about you. Facebook users you know, worried
about you. Under under that stated goal, they are they
have found ways to trigger emotional mechanisms, which becomes dangerous
(35:15):
and I don't want to be too preachy about it,
but we should admit that it is a real thing.
And honestly, no, if all this stuff is happening, I
start thinking, well, why shouldn't I be able to conduct
my own guerrilla social experiments? You know you do, Ben do?
Why should I stop? Then? Because it's it makes me uncomfortable.
(35:40):
So so you know, one of the things that I
did a lot in the past was I love traveling
to different cities and then just choosing a different name
and background and it never came back to bite me.
But I was I was told by some friends. I'm
not going to call it an intervention. Was told by
some friends that you know, one day it might come
(36:03):
back to bite me, pretending to be Chris from Boston
who's just in town for the weekend. It was at
the priest with the eyepatch. No, the priests with the
eye but come on, man, so yeah, there was a
priest with an eyepatch. But this brings this brings us
to an interesting question. Do you have any social experiments
(36:23):
that you have conducted or have you been the subject
of a social experiment? We'd like to know, and you
can tell us directly at our email address, which is
ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. But wait, there's more. There
is a little bit more. We've got Facebook, We've got Instagram.
We're still working on the vision board. I've added some
(36:44):
glitter and some paste and some kind of like unicorn string.
Yes I made that up. That's not real, but it's
it's really shaping up and one day, one day, we're
going to get that out on Pinterest. But not today,
my friend, not today today we are going to conclude
our episode, but of course not our show. You can
(37:05):
catch Nolan I on some more ridiculous adventures through history
very soon, and we hope you will have a good one. Everyone.
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Noel Brown
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