Psychological Experiments on Human Behavior

Human behavior is both predictable and unpredictable simultaneously. Researchers conduct experiments on the psychology of humans to gain insight into the behaviors which can be predicted. Conducting experiments of this type presents difficulty for researchers in many cases, as awareness of an experiment shifts the way that people react in a given situation. For detractors of psychology, this invalidates many of the experiment results obtained in the field.

Perception

• People perceive the relative positive aspects of a person, item or behavior based on a number of characteristics that often can't even be articulated by the person perceiving them. Marketing agencies conduct these types of studies to gain more insight into why people make certain purchases. Nisbett and Wilson of the University of Michigan did a study in the 70s that showed that people tended to think a person was smarter, well spoken and even better looking if he acted in a likable manner but felt the opposite if he acted in an unlikeable manner. Participants thought that his attractiveness and intelligence made them like him him more, but the experiment kept those traits consistent throughout and only altered his personality, showing that likability influences perception greatly.

Stimuli

• People react differently in a given situation based on the stimuli provided and the circumstances of the situation. For instance, the bystander effect is a reaction that people have to crisis when other people witness the crisis with them. Research has shown that a person is much more likely to help in an emergency if he is the only one witnessing an emergency. In one experiment conducted by Latane and Darley, 70 percent of subjects who were alone checked behind a curtain when sounds of someone falling and hurting themselves were simulated. On the other hand, when people were accompanied with passive confederates, only 7 percent reacted.

Thinking Style

• Just as understanding why humans decide certain things is important, psychologists also want to understand how the underlying thought processes work. Experiments on thought have often examined the so-called "left-brained" and "right-brained" methods of decision making. These might also be called the logical and the intuitive ways of thinking. Experiments that study different styles of thinking give scientists insight into a wide range of behavior, including something as seemingly complex as political affiliation. A study done at UCLA showed that liberals and conservatives generally think differently. Liberals are open to new things while conservative thinkers prefer structure and are stubborn.

Ethics

• Psychological experiments in the past used many ethically dubious means of studying human behavior. Psychology is a relatively new science, and some of the ethical flaws of past experimentation resulted in stricter codes of conduct for the study of psychology. In the past, experiments have been done on orphans and have subjected animals to varying degrees of cruelty.