Cruel 1960s pscyhology experiments
My favorite involved 10 soldiers who went on a supposedly routine airplane flight in California in the 1960s. After a while, the plane started falling and the pilot announced they were about to crash.
While the soldiers faced almost certain death, a steward handed out insurance forms and asked the men to complete them, explaining it was necessary for the army to be covered if they died.Link (Thanks, Partha!)Little did the soldiers know they were completely safe. It was merely an experiment to find out how extreme stress affects cognitive ability, the forms serving as the test. Once the final soldier had completed his form the pilot announced: "Just kidding about that emergency folks!"
A later attempt to repeat the experiment with a new group of unwitting volunteers was ruined by one of the previous soldiers, who had penned a warning on a sickbag.
Reader comment:
Alex Boese says: In a Nov. 1 post, "Cruel 1960s psychology experiments," you link to a Guardian article which was, in turn, summarizing an article in New Scientist. What the Guardian never mentioned is that I wrote the New Scientist article, and that I was excerpting from my book, Elephants on Acid. It's kind of frustrating to be sidelined like that by a major publication, since I really need all the publicity I can get. But these things happen.
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You've done this one before.
The Guardian's reporting a New Scientist article written by a guy who's published a book of these experiments. He did another, very similar excerpt previously:
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/13/top-20-most-bizarre.html
I heard an engineer from the '60s talking about how they tested ejection seats with live bears. Someone asked him "Wasn't it hard to get the bear to sit in the ejection seat?" The answer was "Not the first time".
Reminds me of a story I heard on NPR recently about a pair of identical twins that were put up for adoption in the 70's and placed with different families who weren't told of the other twin as part of a nature vs. nurture study. They met for the first time in their 30's. How insane would that be?
Let me see if I've got this straight: The soldiers actually filled out the forms? They're told they're going to die and then told to fill out forms and they did it?
I gotta say, if I thought I was about to die, the last thing I'd do is fill out some idiotic Army form. I'd scream or pray or meditate or try to pay attention to everything that was happening so I wouldn't miss my last moments, but I wouldn't fill out some stupid form.
Which makes it a damn stupid way to measure cognitive ability under stress if you ask me, because no one but an idiot would take the form seriously. Not to mention that doing something like this is cruel to the point of being criminal. Somebody should have sued.
I am certain I read a follow-up on the elephant story fairly recently. My recollection is that the experiment was duplicated in later years, and that there was speculation it was not the LSD that killed the elephant in the original 1960 experiment, but rather some other medical condition precipitated by the LSD. I've googled for a few minutes to try to dig it up to no avail. If anyone knows what I'm referencing, please post here...