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:

1. 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.”

2. Both times when either I was giving instructions or given instructions from the other person, the experimenter facing me.

3. The other person seemed to understand the rules perfectly and did not look at the experimenter’s face.

4. 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.