Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, Brainstuff. Lauren
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum here, it's quite a conundrum needing to conduct research
Speaker 1: on people who don't know your conducting research on them.
Speaker 1: After all, when people know they're being watched, they may
Speaker 1: very well behave differently than they otherwise would. This is
Speaker 1: a scientific predicament as old as the science of psychology.
Speaker 1: But today we're talking about researchers Mary Henley and Marian B.
Speaker 1: Hubble and a study that they did in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: By the way, Henley went on to be an important
Speaker 1: expert in the stalt psychology. And I tried to look
Speaker 1: up how she pronounced her name but couldn't find it.
Speaker 1: Henla is the traditional German way of saying it, but
Speaker 1: it's often Henlee in English, so I'm going with that
Speaker 1: at any rate. As part of Henley's psychology graduate work
Speaker 1: at britainmar College, a women's school in Pennsylvania, Henley and
Speaker 1: Hubble were trying to determine whether children become less ego
Speaker 1: centric as they grow older. In order for the researchers
Speaker 1: to get a real feel for the conversations of college students,
Speaker 1: they took any means necessary, but to quote their paper
Speaker 1: Egocentricity and Adult Conversation, published in the Journal of Social
Speaker 1: Psychology in May of nineteen thirty eight. In order not
Speaker 1: to introduce artifacts into the conversations, the investigators took special
Speaker 1: precautions to keep the students ignorant of the fact that
Speaker 1: their remarks were being recorded. They concealed themselves under beds
Speaker 1: in students rooms where tea parties were being held, eavesdropped
Speaker 1: in dormitory smoking rooms and dormitory washrooms, and listened to
Speaker 1: telephone conversations. And the researchers didn't confine themselves just to
Speaker 1: students campus activities. They also captured remarks in waiting rooms,
Speaker 1: hotel lobbies, theaters, and restaurants, even on the street car.
Speaker 1: They pursued their unsuspecting subjects in the streets, in department stores,
Speaker 1: and into their homes. In each case, the researchers jotted
Speaker 1: down a verbatim record of the remarks on the scene
Speaker 1: before the article. This episode is based on how Stfforks
Speaker 1: spoke about email doctor Ali Mattou, a clinical psychologist. He
Speaker 1: explained the hallmark of psychological science is experimentation, highly controlling
Speaker 1: an environment and only manipulating one experimental variable. While this
Speaker 1: type of research can tell us a lot about the
Speaker 1: relationship between cause and effect, experimental studies can sometimes lack
Speaker 1: external validity, which is to say, the more control a
Speaker 1: researcher exerts on an experiment, the less it seems like
Speaker 1: real life. Observational studies like the one Henley and Hubble
Speaker 1: carried out pose a way to mitigate that effect, although
Speaker 1: they have their own drawbacks. The duo hoped to get
Speaker 1: good data without the biasing effect of letting their subjects
Speaker 1: know they were being observed. Because again, knowing you're being
Speaker 1: observed changes your behavior, Mattu said, this is called objective
Speaker 1: self awareness. This can be helped full in a lot
Speaker 1: of situations. Banks and other high security environments show you
Speaker 1: camera security footage of yourself to trigger objective self awareness
Speaker 1: and reduce the chances you might do something stupid for
Speaker 1: the purposes of research. Knowing that you are being observed
Speaker 1: can lead to reactivity. People might act the way they
Speaker 1: think an experimenter wants them to act, or they might
Speaker 1: act more in line with cultural expectations. They might also
Speaker 1: act the opposite of what is expected because they know
Speaker 1: that this is an artificial situation back in Henley. In
Speaker 1: Hubble's time, though the concept of objective self awareness hadn't
Speaker 1: been defined, they also lacked something else critical to research
Speaker 1: studies today, informed consent that would arise from the Nuremberg Code,
Speaker 1: created after World War II, an important set of ethical
Speaker 1: standards for the treatment of human subjects and scientific experiments
Speaker 1: of all kinds, upon which many international regulations and guidelines
Speaker 1: have been based. Mattus said. The rules now state that
Speaker 1: people must be fully aware of an experiment's risks and
Speaker 1: benefits before they sign on to participate. Additionally, you cannot
Speaker 1: involve anyone in any type of research without their complete consent,
Speaker 1: and if at any time they want to pull out
Speaker 1: of a study, they can. Scientists could do a sort
Speaker 1: of modern take on Henley and Hubble's experiment today, but
Speaker 1: in a much more controlled and etical way. All research
Speaker 1: has to go through institutional review boards that work to
Speaker 1: protect participants from studies that would have scientists hiding under
Speaker 1: their beds. Mattu said. Researchers can easily study behavior in
Speaker 1: public spaces without getting informed consent from others, as long
Speaker 1: as they don't reveal any identifying information about the people
Speaker 1: being observed. Researchers typically do this by showing results in aggregate.
Speaker 1: For example, someone studying public behavior in times square could
Speaker 1: describe how many times people help each other out, as
Speaker 1: long as they don't describe specifics of individuals, a meaning
Speaker 1: that if the authors of the nineteen thirty eight study
Speaker 1: wanted to get their results today, their methodology would need
Speaker 1: to be drastically different to conform to ethical standards. In
Speaker 1: case you're curious, Henley and Hubble found that adults don't
Speaker 1: shed their egocentricity after all, and they've had a lot
Speaker 1: of time to think about it, hiding under beds and
Speaker 1: sneaking around campus. Today's episode is based on the article
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History when scientists hit under beds to do research
Speaker 1: on HowStuffWorks dot com, written by Brian young a brain
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