My top 3 famous psychology studies

There have been so many famous psychology studies throughout the years, made famous for a variety of reasons. It was hard to choose but I wanted to share my top three famous psychology studies

3 - The little Albert experiment 1920

The little Albert study was conducted by Dr John Watson wanting to test classical conditioning. They used a 9 month old toddler named ‘Albert’. The toddler would play with fluffy white objects happily. Over time when Albert played with the objects a loud noise would be made behind him to scare the child. After a while Albert was conditioned to be scared when he saw furry white objects. This showed humans could be conditioned to enjoy or be scared of something, which suggested this was a way irrational fears were formed and how many began in childhood.

2 - The Milgram experiment 1963

Milgram wanted to test the levels of obedience to authority. He wanted to see if people would obey orders even if they went beyond their personal beliefs. 40 males were split into learners and teachers, however even though the study looked random the learner was always an actor and the participant would always be the teachers. The idea was that the learner would be strapped to a chair and tasked to memorise word pairs, when they got them wrong they would receive an electric shock which increased each time. In reality the learner was never shocked. When the teachers thought the learner was being shocked some refused to continue the experiment. After being encouraged by the experimenter 65% carried on giving shocks. Mil grams findings lead to agency theory suggesting people will allow others to direct their actions as they believe the authority figure to be qualified and accept responsibility for what may happen. The study also help to explain why people make decisions against their conscience when participating in things such as war.

1 - Stanford Prison experiment 1971

This famous study was conducted by Zimbardo and has even been made into a film. Zimbardo wanted to see whether environment or personality made people act a certain way. Make college students recruited were assigned as either prisoner or guard. The ‘prison’ was a makeshift prison under Stanfords psychology department. The process was made as realistic as possible with prisoners given numbers and prison uniforms. Guards had shifts and were told to treat prisoners how they would in real life. The study had to be shut down after 6 days however as the guards and prisoners fully adapted to their roles and the study was deemed too dangerous. The study confirmed that people will conform to the social roles they’re expected to play, especially overly stereotyped ones such as prison guards.