Psychological experiments are not that common nowadays and many of them are considered unethical today. But it’s still intriguing to know, how people will act on the certain circumstances. I choosed some of them to share.

The Rhythm 0

It was not exactly an experiment in official sense and just supposed to be a form of art.
And the result of the human behaviour was intriguing as well.
Marina Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist. She did many performances, and one of them turned out extremely dangerous.
Abramovic placed on a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use just however they wanted.

Some of these objects were completely harmless, like a rose, an apple, a brush, etc.
But some of them were not. And especially knife or gun.
As for Marina, throughout the whole performance she was assigned to be passive and do not interfere in anything what can people do to her.
At the beginning, people were pretty polite and acted cautiously. But the more experiment progressed, the more aggressive they became. They stripped her, cutted her, wrote things on her body.

Experiment ended, when someone aimed the gun at her head.
“This tested how vulnerable and aggressive the human subject could be when hidden from social consequences.”
And sadly, when given no resistance, the human subject became ruthless.
It kinda reminds of another experiment, which is more widely known.

Stanford prison experiment

In short, it was a psychological study of the effects of becoming prisoner or prison guard. Participants were assigned to either the role of prisoner or guard in a simulated prison environment. Randomly.
This experiment went out of control really fast. The more submissive the prisoners were, the more aggressive guards became. The prisoners were insulted and humiliated and experiment was forced to end quickly.
It leads you to a question, how come someone can easily conform to the social roles, imposed on them?
Not only that, people can also conform to another’s opinions. Ash conformity experiments proves that really well.

Ash conformity experiments

Each participant saw two pictures – one with a longer line, the other – with the shorter. The task itself was simple – to tell, which of the lines was shorter.
Only one of the participants was “real”, because the others were simply actors and were told to say the wrong answer. The result - 37 of the 50 participants agreed with the incorrect group despite an obvious evidence to the contrary.
"The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black”, said Asch.

In overall, as it was mentioned by many, steemit must be a big psychological experiment as well. It surely makes people act differently, exposing their natures.