I attended a psychology experiment today to boost up my hopefully-not-so-dreadful psych mark. The experiment involved two participants to give each other instructions regarding where to put certain objects in a wooden grid.
I noticed a couple of things aren’t right starting from the beginning:
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When I entered the room, the experimenter asked “Are you Oliver?” As I was filling out the consent form, the other person entered; but the experimenter did not try to identify him and the other person went ahead and said “Hi I’m Jim.”
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Both times when either I was giving instructions or given instructions from the other person, the experimenter facing me.
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The other person seemed to understand the rules perfectly and did not look at the experimenter’s face.
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For the second part of the experiment, involving clicking things on a computer, I was given a laptop to work with first. While it was starting up, the experimenter said there’s another computer in the other room for the other person. But she said this to me, not the other person.
Still, I did not realize that I was the one being played until in the end the experimenter told me. Turns out “Jim”, if that is his real name, was just another experimenter, part of their research group. It came to me so much as a shock that I almost said “WTF” out loud.
Lesson of the day — people named Jim are not to be taken lightly.
weird….
What were they trying to study? Did you ever find out?
They say it’s communication and cognitive skills. But I guess I’ll never know.
Oh my god they’re aliens!
Hmm… reminds me of this other experiment my friend was telling me about. Given the power of authority how much would you “shock” someone in order to make them learn.
Yup that’s the Milgram experiment. I actually learned about that in Psych class.
You weren’t being “played” in this experiment any more than you are being played in any similar experiment. From your brief description of the study, I’m guessing that the study had something to do with how a subject (you) responds to something that their confederate (“Jimâ€?) does, e.g., would you change the way you gave instructions to “Jim” in response to a particular action (i.e., one of the variables in the study) on his part.
I had a similar experience in my undergrad days (mid ’70s). I was the 4th/last person to arrive to participate in an experiment that involved identifying the brightest light bulb on a panel placed in full view of all panelist. In each case, the 3 “subjects” before me choose the same bulb, despite the rather obvious fact that there was a better choice. I’ll admit that their apparent agreement caused me to hesitate before responding for the first 2 rounds, but by round 3 I “gotâ€? the real experiment and blew off the opinions of the others.
The fact that you felt that you had been “played” says a lot about the lack of experience of those conducting the study and suggests that there are problems with the design. Further, if your perception influenced your actions, it may well confound the results of the experiment. In my example, any conclusions the researchers made about peer pressure were suspect, given that their subjects (I’m assuming that I was not the only one who caught on) did not consider the other panelist to be their peers.
Perhaps you can earn some psych points by writing up your experience, suggesting that the methodology was flawed.
(Re Milgram’s work–pretty damn frightening to think what “normal people” are capable of, under the right circumstances, isn’t it?)
Bridget
BTW–I found your site when I googled something re site design (I’m setting up my first). I will be making use of the info in “perfect site structure.” Thanks!
Very interesting Bridget. I guess their experiment wasn’t very well designed. Their camera was on, but clearly pointing to me for each part and not the other “participant”.