Introduction to Psychology
What at first seems obvious may not always be the case. Psychology looks past personal intuitions and feelings to search for the true roots of human behavior. Please read this lesson below to learn about two experiments that demonstrate how testing the 'obvious' can yield surprising results.
So you might think that the things psychologists study are just plain obvious. They study behavior...and we all have our own intuitions about behavior. We all have our own ways that we think things work. This, however, can lead to a big misconception about psychology - that psychologists are just confirming things that we already know about ourselves.
One example was a recent study that examined the "weekend effect". Some researchers at the University of Rochester in New York concluded that regardless of whatever job people have, they are happier on the weekend than they are during the week. This is something that your own personal experience has probably confirmed time and again. In this study, the hypothesis formed was that the weekend is judged to be more fun than the rest of the week. While in this case the hypothesis was in fact proven to be true, there are a lot of instances in psychology where the suspected hypothesis has been proven to be completely false.
In fact, some of the coolest experiments have been when people have thought things to be true, but they've turned out not to be. Let's say your friend decides to design an experiment where he's going to see if people get an incredibly easy question wrong just because everyone else in the room is answering wrong as well. He starts by giving you two cards. The first card has one line on it, and the second card has three lines on it of different lengths. One of them is the same length as the one on the first card. The three lines are labeled "A","B" and "C". Next, he asks the group of people in the room with you which of the three lines is the same as the line on the first card. This seems to be the most obvious, easily answered question ever. But, unbeknownst to you, your friend has asked everyone else in the room to answer incorrectly. i.e.- If the answer is "B", then he has everyone else say "C".
One example was a recent study that examined the "weekend effect". Some researchers at the University of Rochester in New York concluded that regardless of whatever job people have, they are happier on the weekend than they are during the week. This is something that your own personal experience has probably confirmed time and again. In this study, the hypothesis formed was that the weekend is judged to be more fun than the rest of the week. While in this case the hypothesis was in fact proven to be true, there are a lot of instances in psychology where the suspected hypothesis has been proven to be completely false.
In fact, some of the coolest experiments have been when people have thought things to be true, but they've turned out not to be. Let's say your friend decides to design an experiment where he's going to see if people get an incredibly easy question wrong just because everyone else in the room is answering wrong as well. He starts by giving you two cards. The first card has one line on it, and the second card has three lines on it of different lengths. One of them is the same length as the one on the first card. The three lines are labeled "A","B" and "C". Next, he asks the group of people in the room with you which of the three lines is the same as the line on the first card. This seems to be the most obvious, easily answered question ever. But, unbeknownst to you, your friend has asked everyone else in the room to answer incorrectly. i.e.- If the answer is "B", then he has everyone else say "C".
Actually, this was a real experiment designed by a researcher named, Solomon Asch. He made the hypothesis that subjects would clearly see the correct answers and not be pressured by the other people in the room to answer incorrectly. However, the subjects gave the wrong answer most of the time! Having done three trials each, only about 24% of the subjects did not give the wrong answer. Everyone else gave the wrong answer at least once due to the effect of all the other people in a row saying the wrong answer repeatedly.
Now, if Solomon Asch had just said, "Oh yeah this is something obvious that people can see, and they're not going to get this wrong," we would never know the real answer. We would never know scientifically how powerful peer pressure can be. And this illustrates how psychology can be useful. - Even though we all have ideas of how our brains work, we don't actually have any idea a lot of the time!
There is another study that shows this perfectly. It's about how people misattribute why they're feeling the way they are. In this particular study, the researchers decided to have men walk across a bridge. There were two bridges; one was a bit shaky like one of those wood, Indiana Jones bridges where you figure a plank may fall out in the middle, and the other was very stable and sturdy.
Each man would cross one of the two bridges and afterward talk to a very attractive lady posing as a researcher. She would ask the men many different questions designed to get them to make up story scenarios, and she would then give them her phone number to call if they had any questions about the experiment.
The researchers found that the men who went over this shaky bridge answered their questions with story scenarios that were way more sexual in content than the ones who went over the more stable bridge. And the "shaky bridge" men were way more likely to call the researcher than the "stable bridge" men. The experimenters concluded that the men who crossed the shaky bridge (being somewhat more physiologically aroused than the "stable bridge" men) felt their hearts racing because of the beautiful woman standing on the other side, not the dangerous, shaky bridge. And, therefore, the "shaky bridge" men wanted to call the beautiful woman more than the other group of men did.
So, many times we really have no idea why we do what we do. And what psychology can do in the Asch experiment and the bridge experiment is to help us tease apart all of the reasons why we might do things, figure out what actually causes behavior and why we actually think certain things, and determine what influences what. It really allows us to sort out all these factors without our own intuition and feelings getting in the way.
Each man would cross one of the two bridges and afterward talk to a very attractive lady posing as a researcher. She would ask the men many different questions designed to get them to make up story scenarios, and she would then give them her phone number to call if they had any questions about the experiment.
The researchers found that the men who went over this shaky bridge answered their questions with story scenarios that were way more sexual in content than the ones who went over the more stable bridge. And the "shaky bridge" men were way more likely to call the researcher than the "stable bridge" men. The experimenters concluded that the men who crossed the shaky bridge (being somewhat more physiologically aroused than the "stable bridge" men) felt their hearts racing because of the beautiful woman standing on the other side, not the dangerous, shaky bridge. And, therefore, the "shaky bridge" men wanted to call the beautiful woman more than the other group of men did.
So, many times we really have no idea why we do what we do. And what psychology can do in the Asch experiment and the bridge experiment is to help us tease apart all of the reasons why we might do things, figure out what actually causes behavior and why we actually think certain things, and determine what influences what. It really allows us to sort out all these factors without our own intuition and feelings getting in the way.
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The video to the left is footage of the actual Asch Conformity Experiment (c.1951) |