A monstrous experiment. The most terrible psychological experiments in human history

People have always been interested in extremes. In this article you will find the most terrifying psychological experiments ever conducted by humans. “Most terrifying” is a rather vague criterion, but here you will find the experiments that best fit this description.

Milgram experiment

Considered by many to be the most horrific psychological experiment of all time, it has continued to shock and amaze researchers and ordinary people alike ever since it was conducted. Variants of it continue to appear in modern studies and even in television shows. It was first conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1963. The researcher was inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a German Nazi lieutenant and one of the architects of the Holocaust. When he was tried, he stated that he was only following orders, and Milgram wanted to explore this in more detail. Do people do terrible things just because an authority figure told them to? To find out the answer to this question, a deception was devised. Forty men were sitting in one room.
They were told that in the next room a person who had been trained to memorize pairs of words was waiting for their questions. If they asked him a question to test his knowledge and he couldn't answer correctly, they gave him an electric shock. The power of the electricity increased with each subsequent incorrect answer, and cries of pain were heard from the next room until the person there was supposedly unconscious. Naturally, no electric shock existed, and the man in the next room was an actor. The point was to see how far people would go just because an authority figure told them it was okay.

Results

Obviously, this experiment provided the scientific community with very important information for further research. This was a revolutionary experiment that was aimed at scientific research, but the potential for moral injury that participants could suffer is obvious, and modern analogs are trying in every possible way to circumvent this point. The results of the original study, which were published in the journal Abnormal Psychology, are very interesting to read, but at the same time scary. “Profuse sweating, trembling and stuttering were typical symptoms of emotional instability among participants,” it said. “One unexpected sign of tension that has yet to be explained was regular nervous laughter, which in some participants developed into uncontrollable fits.” But forget about the scary methods of this research for a moment, because what was discovered in the end is even more terrifying. In the original experiment, approximately 0.1 percent of participants were expected to complete the entire battery of questions and shocks. In fact, two-thirds of the participants continued to administer shocks even when the actor pretended to be unconscious, and in modern experiments, most people also continue to follow orders.

Little Albert

Don't let the cute name fool you, this experiment was an absolute nightmare. It was conducted in 1920 at Hopkins University by John Watson and his student Rosalie Rayner. Together, they allowed a 9-month-old baby named "Albert B" to encounter a white rat and other furry objects. At first he enjoyed the toys and the rat, but after a while Watson snuck up behind the child and began making frightening loud noises whenever he gained access to the rat or the toys.

Experiment results

Soon the frightening sounds stopped, but the child had already associated fear with furry objects, and therefore reacted hostilely to their presence. This is a prime example of conditioned reflexes, a variation of the classic experiment that most people associate with Pavlov and his dog, which was similarly trained to associate food with the sound of a bell.
According to the American Psychological Association, it was not until 2010 that the child's identity was revealed: his name was Douglas Merritt, and he was the son of a nanny who was paid one dollar for her child's participation in the experiment, which in today's money equals $13.

Stanford prison experiment

If you haven't heard of this experiment yet, it's already legendary because of how chaotic, unpredictable, and frightening it turned out to be. The result eventually became so notorious that a memorial plaque was erected at the site of the experiment. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo received sponsorship from the US Office of Naval Research along with an assignment to find out what was causing problems between prisoners and guards in the US Navy and Marine Corps. A prison was created in the basement of Stanford University, and physically strong and psychologically stable students were selected to be "arrested" in their homes and then divided into groups of "prisoners" and "guards." The researchers asked them to behave as if it were an ordinary prison, while they themselves watched what was happening. What happened next has been the subject of feature films, documentaries, articles, and lively discussions around the world, but in case you don't know, here's what happened.

Frightening reality

Despite the initial difficulties with the students' role as security guards, events began to move very quickly on the second day. One "guard" took on the role of an evil caretaker out of boredom. The prisoners, addressed only by numbers, rebelled and organized a blockade in their cells. As noted in the BBC documentary, this caused a change in the guards' behavior that stripped the prisoners of their humanity. They forcibly stripped the prisoners, forced them to perform terribly difficult physical exercises, did not allow them to sleep, and also put them in solitary confinement, did not allow them to use the toilet, and so on. The results of the study stated that the prison soon began to smell of urine and feces. The prisoners were also divided: some of them received privileged “good” cells, while the rest ended up in “bad” cells. Periodically, some of them were swapped. This aroused suspicion among the rebel prisoners, who believed that the guards had turned other prisoners into informants, which deprived the prisoners of community and trust and led to cohesion within the ranks of the guards.

Research results

Within just a couple of days, sadistic authoritarianism reigned in the prison, and it began to disintegrate. The first participant left prison after just 36 hours because he suffered from severe emotional instability, disorganized thinking, uncontrollable crying, screaming and rage. Soon, several more participants began to show symptoms of severe psychological instability, and the experiment was ended after just six days, more than a week earlier than planned, after Zimbardo's future wife expressed her concerns.

Monstrous experiment

In the thirties, speech therapist Wendell Johnson, who stuttered as a child, decided to prove that the reason he stuttered was because his teacher told him he stuttered. For the study, he used 22 orphans, who were ideal for the experiment because they had no authority figure in their lives. Half the children stuttered, half spoke normally, but each half was split in half on the principle that one half was told that they stuttered and the other half was told that they did not stutter. As it turned out, it was impossible to make a child stutter, but the experiment also led to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the university where Johnson taught. Each child ultimately received about a million dollars in compensation.

Psychology as a science gained popularity at the beginning of the twentieth century. The noble goal of learning more about the intricacies of human behavior, perception, and emotional state was not always achieved by equally noble means. Psychologists and psychiatrists, who stood at the origins of many branches of the science of the human psyche, conducted experiments on people and animals that can hardly be called humane or ethical. Here are ten of them:

"Monstrous Experiment" (1939)

In 1939, Wendell Johnson from the University of Iowa (USA) and his graduate student Mary Tudor conducted a shocking experiment involving 22 orphans from Davenport. The children were divided into control and experimental groups. The experimenters told half of the children how clearly and correctly they spoke. The second half of the children were in for unpleasant moments: Mary Tudor, sparing no epithets, sarcastically ridiculed the slightest defect in their speech, eventually calling them all pathetic stutterers.

As a result of the experiment, many children who had never experienced problems with speech and, by the will of fate, ended up in the “negative” group, developed all the symptoms of stuttering, which persisted throughout their lives. The experiment, later called “monstrous,” was hidden from the public for a long time for fear of damaging Johnson’s reputation: similar experiments were later carried out on concentration camp prisoners in Nazi Germany. In 2001, the University of Iowa issued a formal apology to all those affected by the study.

Project "Aversia" (1970)

In the South African army, from 1970 to 1989, a secret program was carried out to cleanse the army ranks of military personnel of non-traditional sexual orientation. All means were used: from electric shock treatment to chemical castration.

The exact number of victims is unknown, however, according to army doctors, during the “purges” about 1,000 military personnel were subjected to various prohibited experiments on human nature. Army psychiatrists, on instructions from the command, were doing their best to “eradicate” homosexuals: those who did not respond to “treatment” were sent to shock therapy, forced to take hormonal drugs, and even subjected to gender reassignment surgery.

In most cases, the “patients” were young white males between the ages of 16 and 24. The then leader of the “study,” Dr. Aubrey Levin, is now a professor of psychiatry at the University of Calgary (Canada). Engaged in private practice.

Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)

The 1971 “artificial prison” experiment was not intended by its creator to be unethical or harmful to the psyche of its participants, but the results of this study shocked the public. The famous psychologist Philip Zimbardo decided to study the behavior and social norms of individuals placed in atypical prison conditions and forced to play the roles of prisoners or guards.

To do this, a simulated prison was set up in the basement of the psychology department, and 24 student volunteers were divided into “prisoners” and “guards.” It was assumed that the “prisoners” were initially placed in a situation during which they would experience personal disorientation and degradation, up to and including complete depersonalization.

The "overseers" were not given any specific instructions regarding their roles. At first, the students did not really understand how they should play their roles, but already on the second day of the experiment everything fell into place: the uprising of the “prisoners” was brutally suppressed by the “guards.” From that moment on, the behavior of both sides changed radically.

The “guards” have developed a special system of privileges designed to separate the “prisoners” and instill in them distrust of each other - individually they are not as strong as together, which means they are easier to “guard.” It began to seem to the “guards” that the “prisoners” were ready to start a new “uprising” at any moment, and the control system became tougher to the extreme: the “prisoners” were not left alone with themselves, even in the toilet.

As a result, the “prisoners” began to experience emotional disorders, depression, and helplessness. After some time, the “prison priest” came to visit the “prisoners.” When asked what their names were, the “prisoners” most often gave their numbers rather than their names, and the question of how they were going to get out of prison led them to a dead end.

To the horror of the experimenters, it turned out that the “prisoners” absolutely got used to their roles and began to feel like they were in a real prison, and the “warders” experienced real sadistic emotions and intentions towards the “prisoners”, who had been their good friends just a few days ago. It seemed that both sides had completely forgotten that this was all just an experiment. Although the experiment was planned to last for two weeks, it was stopped early after just six days due to ethical concerns. Based on this experiment, Oliver Hirschbiegel made the film “The Experiment” (2001).

Research on the effects of drugs on the body (1969)

It should be recognized that some experiments carried out on animals help scientists invent drugs that can later save tens of thousands of human lives. However, some studies cross all ethical lines. An example is a 1969 experiment designed to help scientists understand the speed and extent of human addiction to drugs.

The experiment was carried out on rats and monkeys, as animals closest to humans in physiology. The animals were taught to independently inject themselves with a dose of a certain drug: morphine, cocaine, codeine, amphetamines, etc. As soon as the animals learned to “inject themselves” on their own, the experimenters left them with a large amount of drugs, left the animals to their own devices and began observing.

The animals were so confused that some of them even tried to escape, and, being under the influence of drugs, they were crippled and did not feel pain. Monkeys who took cocaine began to suffer from convulsions and hallucinations: the unfortunate animals tore out their phalanges. Monkeys on amphetamines had all their hair pulled out.

“Drug addict” animals that preferred a “cocktail” of cocaine and morphine died within 2 weeks after starting to take the drugs. Despite the fact that the purpose of the experiment was to understand and evaluate the degree of impact of drugs on the human body with the intention of further developing effective treatment for drug addiction, the methods for achieving the results can hardly be called humane.

Landis Experiments: Spontaneous Facial Expressions and Submission (1924)
In 1924, Carini Landis from the University of Minnesota began studying human facial expressions. The experiment undertaken by the scientist was supposed to reveal the general patterns of the work of groups of facial muscles responsible for the expression of individual emotional states, and to find facial expressions typical of fear, embarrassment or other emotions (if facial expressions characteristic of most people are considered typical).

The subjects were his own students. To make facial expressions more distinct, he drew lines on the subjects' faces with burnt cork, after which he presented them with something that could evoke strong emotions: he forced them to sniff ammonia, listen to jazz, look at pornographic pictures and put their hands in buckets of toads. Students were photographed while expressing their emotions.

And everything would be fine, but the last test that Landis subjected the students to caused controversy in the widest circles of psychological scientists. Landis asked each subject to cut off the head of a white rat. All participants in the experiment initially refused to do this, many cried and screamed, but subsequently most of them agreed to do it. The worst thing was that most of the participants in the experiment, as they say, had never hurt a fly in their lives and had absolutely no idea how to carry out the experimenter’s orders.

As a result, the animals suffered a lot of suffering. The consequences of the experiment turned out to be much more important than the experiment itself. Scientists were unable to find any pattern in facial expressions, but psychologists received evidence of how easily people are ready to obey authorities and do things that they would not do in a normal life situation.

Little Albert (1920)

John Watson, the father of the behaviorist movement in psychology, studied the nature of fears and phobias. In 1920, while studying the emotions of infants, Watson, among other things, became interested in the possibility of forming a fear response in relation to objects that had not previously caused fear. The scientist tested the possibility of forming an emotional reaction of fear of a white rat in a 9-month-old boy, Albert, who was not at all afraid of the rat and even loved to play with it.

During the experiment, over the course of two months, an orphan baby from an orphanage was shown a tame white rat, a white rabbit, cotton wool, a Santa Claus mask with a beard, etc. Two months later, the child was seated on a rug in the middle of the room and allowed to play with the rat. At first, the child was not at all afraid of the rat and calmly played with it. After a while, Watson began hitting a metal plate behind the child's back with an iron hammer every time Albert touched the rat. After repeated blows, Albert began to avoid contact with the rat.

A week later, the experiment was repeated - this time the strip was hit five times, simply placing the rat in the cradle. The baby cried only at the sight of a white rat. After another five days, Watson decided to test whether the child would be afraid of similar objects. The child was afraid of the white rabbit, cotton wool, and the Santa Claus mask. Since the scientist did not make loud sounds when showing objects, Watson concluded that fear reactions were transferred. Watson suggested that many fears, aversions and anxieties of adults are formed in early childhood. Unfortunately, Watson was never able to rid baby Albert of his unreasonable fear, which stuck for the rest of his life.

Learned Helplessness (1966)

In 1966, psychologists Mark Seligman and Steve Mayer conducted a series of experiments on dogs. The animals were placed in cages, previously divided into three groups. The control group was released after some time without causing any harm, the second group of animals were subjected to repeated shocks that could be stopped by pressing a lever from the inside, and the animals of the third group were subjected to sudden shocks that could not be prevented.

As a result, dogs have developed so-called “acquired helplessness” - a reaction to unpleasant stimuli based on the conviction of helplessness in front of the outside world. Soon the animals began to show signs of clinical depression. After some time, the dogs from the third group were released from their cages and placed in open enclosures, from which they could easily escape. The dogs were again subjected to electric shock, but none of them even thought about running away. Instead, they reacted passively to pain, accepting it as something inevitable.

The dogs learned from previous negative experiences that escape was impossible and no longer made any attempts to jump out of the cage. Scientists have suggested that the human reaction to stress is in many ways similar to that of dogs: people become helpless after several failures following one another. It is not clear whether such a banal conclusion was worth the suffering of the unfortunate animals.

Milgram experiment (1974)

A 1974 experiment by Stanley Milgram of Yale University is described by the author in the book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental Study. The experiment involved an experimenter, a subject, and an actor playing the role of another subject. At the beginning of the experiment, the roles of “teacher” and “student” were distributed “by lot” between the subject and the actor. In reality, the subject was always given the role of the “teacher,” and the hired actor was always the “student.”

Before the experiment began, the “teacher” was explained that the purpose of the experiment was supposedly to identify new methods of memorizing information. In reality, the experimenter set out to study the behavior of a person receiving instructions that diverge from his internal behavioral norms from an authoritative source. The “student” was tied to a chair, to which a stun gun was attached. Both the “student” and the “teacher” received a “demonstration” shock of 45 volts.

Then the “teacher” went into another room and had to give the “student” simple memorization tasks over the speakerphone. For each student error, the test subject had to press a button and the student received a 45-volt electric shock. In reality, the actor playing the student was only pretending to receive electric shocks. Then after each mistake the teacher had to increase the voltage by 15 volts. At some point, the actor began to demand that the experiment be stopped. The “teacher” began to doubt, and the experimenter responded: “The experiment requires that you continue. Please continue."

As the tension increased, the actor acted out more and more intense discomfort, then severe pain, and finally broke into a scream. The experiment continued up to a voltage of 450 volts. If the “teacher” hesitated, the experimenter assured him that he took full responsibility for the experiment and for the safety of the “student” and that the experiment should continue.

The results were shocking: 65% of the “teachers” gave a shock of 450 volts, knowing that the “student” was in terrible pain. Contrary to all the preliminary predictions of the experimenters, the majority of the subjects obeyed the instructions of the scientist in charge of the experiment and punished the “student” with electric shock, and in a series of experiments out of forty subjects, not one stopped until the level of 300 volts, five refused to obey only after this level, and 26 “teachers” from 40 reached the end of the scale.

Critics said the subjects were hypnotized by Yale's authority. In response to this criticism, Milgram repeated the experiment, renting a shabby room in Bridgeport, Connecticut, under the banner of the Bridgeport Research Association. The results did not change qualitatively: 48% of the subjects agreed to reach the end of the scale. In 2002, the combined results of all similar experiments showed that from 61% to 66% of “teachers” reached the end of the scale, regardless of the time and place of the experiment.

The conclusions from the experiment were the most frightening: the unknown dark side of human nature is inclined not only to mindlessly obey authority and carry out the most unthinkable instructions, but also to justify its own behavior by the “order” received. Many participants in the experiment felt a sense of superiority over the “student” and, when they pressed the button, they were sure that the “student” who answered the question incorrectly would get what he deserved.

Ultimately, the results of the experiment showed that the need to obey authorities is so deeply rooted in our minds that the subjects continued to follow instructions, despite moral suffering and strong internal conflict.

"The Source of Despair" (1960)

Harry Harlow conducted his cruel experiments on monkeys. In 1960, while researching the issue of social isolation of an individual and methods of protecting against it, Harlow took a baby monkey from its mother and placed it in a cage all alone, and chose those babies who had the strongest bond with their mother. The monkey was kept in a cage for a year, after which it was released.

Most individuals showed various mental disorders. The scientist made the following conclusions: even a happy childhood is not a protection against depression. The results, to put it mildly, are not impressive: a similar conclusion could have been made without conducting cruel experiments on animals. However, the movement in defense of animal rights began precisely after the publication of the results of this experiment.

Warning! This post is not for the impressionable.

Psychologists and psychiatrists, who stood at the origins of many branches of the science of the human psyche, conducted experiments on people and animals that can hardly be called humane or ethical. Here are ten of them:

"Monstrous Experiment" (1939)

Project "Aversia" (1970)

Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)

The "Overseers" were not given any specific instructions regarding their roles. At first, the students did not really understand how they should play their roles, but already on the second day of the experiment everything fell into place: the uprising of the “prisoners” was brutally suppressed by the “guards.” From that moment on, the behavior of both sides changed radically.

To the horror of the experimenters, it turned out that the “prisoners” absolutely got used to their roles and began to feel like they were in a real prison, and the “guards” experienced real sadistic emotions and intentions towards the “prisoners”, who had been their good friends just a few days ago. It seemed that both sides had completely forgotten that this was all just an experiment. Although the experiment was planned to last for two weeks, it was stopped early after just six days due to ethical concerns. Based on this experiment, Oliver Hirschbiegel made the film “The Experiment” (2001).

Research on the effects of drugs on the body (1969)

Landis Experiments: Spontaneous Facial Expressions and Submission (1924)

In 1924, Carini Landis from the University of Minnesota began studying human facial expressions. The experiment undertaken by the scientist was supposed to reveal the general patterns of the work of groups of facial muscles responsible for the expression of individual emotional states, and to find facial expressions typical of fear, embarrassment or other emotions (if facial expressions characteristic of most people are considered typical).

Little Albert (1920)

Learned Helplessness (1966)

Milgram experiment (1974)

"The Source of Despair" (1960)

A monstrous experiment - it was inherently monstrous, and it was carried out in 1939 by psychologist Wendell Johnson and his graduate student Mary Tudor in the United States of America. The purpose of the experiment was to find out how susceptible children are to suggestion.
The experiment process itself is quite simple - 22 orphans from the city of Davenport were selected for the purpose of the experiment. The children were randomly divided into two groups. The first group (more precisely, the children from this group) were constantly told how correctly, how wonderfully they spoke, and at the same time they praised them in every possible way. Children from the second group were strongly convinced that they spoke incorrectly, their speech was full of all sorts of shortcomings, and they called these children, no less, pathetic stutterers.
Perhaps, because the children were orphans, there were no such interested people who would intervene in time and stop the shocking experiment at the beginning of its implementation.
And if the children from the first group expected only positive emotions, then the children who ended up in the second group experienced constant discomfort - graduate student Mary Tudor was quite sarcastic, blasphemously ridiculing even the most minor deviations in their children's speech. At the same time, she performed her duties very conscientiously and did not skimp on using the most juicy epithets in her speech.
It is not surprising that children, systematically subjected to verbal bullying, experiencing public humiliation from an older and more authoritative person, began to have problematic contacts with others. In these children, previously absent complexes began to appear in large numbers. One of the most striking manifestations was speech inhibition, after which graduate student Mary Tudor began calling children from the second group pathetic stutterers.
The children who were unlucky enough to be in the ill-fated second group had never before experienced absolutely any speech problems, but as a result of the described experiment they not only formed, but also developed vivid symptoms of stuttering. And, unfortunately, these symptoms persisted throughout their lives after the experiment.
Those who conducted this monstrous experiment - scientist Wendell Johnson and his graduate student Mary Tudor - wanted to confirm in practice the theory that psychological pressure affects the speech of children, causing delays in speech development and causing symptoms of stuttering. The experiment lasted quite a long time - six long months.
For obvious reasons, the described experiment was hidden from the public for quite a long time. Publicity about its conduct would inevitably affect Wendell Johnson's reputation as a scientist and as a person. But although it sounds banal, everything secret becomes clear, sooner or later. Today this experiment is known as the Monstrous Experiment.
Many years have passed since the monstrous experiment was carried out. And only in 2001, the details of this study were described in one of the Californian newspapers, based on the recollections of one of the participants in this monstrous experiment. Iowa State University issued a formal apology to all victims.
Further events developed as follows - in 2003, six people filed a lawsuit, demanding financial compensation, since as a result of the actions carried out on them, their psyche suffered to a significant extent. The Iowa Attorney General ordered five plaintiffs to pay $900,000 and another to pay $25,000. Whether this money was actually received by the plaintiffs, at the moment there is no reliable information about this.
Psychology-best.ru hopes that this article will force parents and ordinary adults to carefully weigh the words they say to children, keeping in mind the results of the monstrous experiment.

Back in 1939, two employees of the University of Iowa, scientist Wendell Johnson and his graduate student Mary Tudor, decided to conduct a psychological experiment in the field of speech development, in which twenty-two children took an active part.

The children were orphans from Davenport. Maybe it was the absence of parents that was the reason that there was no such interested person who could intervene in time and stop this shocking experiment at its very beginning.

During the experiment, children from the orphanage were divided into two groups - experimental and control. One half of the orphans were very lucky, so part of the study involved experimenters telling the children that they were speaking correctly and clearly. It is difficult to envy the other half of the orphans, since the second part of the study was based on completely opposite actions. The kids were in for a rather unpleasant pastime, because graduate student Mary Tudor, who did not skimp on using the juiciest epithets, sarcastically and blasphemously ridiculed even the slightest deviation in their speech.

It is not surprising that children who were subjected to such verbal bullying and public humiliation from a much older person subsequently began to make problematic contacts, displaying a lot of inadequate and previously absent complexes. One of these manifestations was inhibition in speech, which gave rise to graduate student Mary Tudor to call the orphans of the second group pathetic stutterers.

Most of the children who, by the will of fate, found themselves in the experimental group had never previously experienced absolutely any problems with speech, but as a result of this experiment, pronounced stuttering symptoms formed and developed, which, unfortunately, persisted throughout their subsequent lives.

In the process of conducting this psychological experiment, scientist Wendell Johnson, together with his graduate student Mary Tudor, wanted to test and confirm the theory that psychological pressure causes speech delay in children and entails symptoms of stuttering. The experiment lasted for six long months.

This experiment was hidden from the public for a long time. Its publicity would certainly attract the attention of critical scholars, which would inevitably affect Wendell Johnson's reputation. But everything secret, sooner or later, becomes clear. Today this research is known as “The Monstrous Experiment.” Unfortunately, this bitter event did not prevent similar experiments from being carried out on concentration camp prisoners in Nazi Germany.

Many years have passed since the experiment was carried out. And only in 2001, the details of the research carried out at the university were described by one of the Californian newspapers, citing the recollections of one of the participants in this event. Iowa State University has formally apologized to all those affected.

But the matter did not end there. In 2003, six people filed a lawsuit demanding financial compensation, since as a result of the experiments carried out on them, their psyche was severely damaged. The Iowa Attorney General ordered five plaintiffs to pay $900,000 and another $25,000. Did the six elderly people receive this money because they were used as subjects in a stuttering stimulation experiment as children or not? At the moment there is no reliable information...