36 Amazing Psychology Experiments That May Change Your Perspective On Things

Aron and Dutton (1974) - Misattribution of arousal.

Men who had just walked across bridge (either steady or unsteady) were approached by a female psychology student, posing to do a project on the effects of exposure to scenic attractions on creative expression. The men had to complete a questionnaire and write a short dramatic story about a picture she provided and she gave them her phone number if they had more questions. Men who walked across the shaky bridge were more likely to call her up because they misattributed the arousal from the bridge to the woman.

TLDR: watch a horror movie on the first date.

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti

Psychologist forces three people who believe that they are Jesus Christ to live together.

It does not go well.

The psychologist, Milton Rokeach, had heard of a case where two women who believed that they were Mary, mother of Christ, were forced to live together and one of them broke free from their delusion.

So he figured, three Christs...what would happen.

They were angry at each other. Often had physical fights. They eventually started getting along by avoiding the topic. He would ask them about the others and each would say that the others were crazy. That they, of course, were the real Jesus.

No cures. Some unethical stuff. Interesting though.

When I was about 18 or 19 in the 1970’s, I tried an experiment for a few days: I would smile and say hello to EVERYONE I passed by. I wanted to see who would acknowledge me back. Surprisingly to me, over 90% of people smiled, said hello or acknowledged me back. That told me that if I were to approach someone I didn’t know, 90%+ time they would be receptive. Changed my whole attitude in life. BTW, I am a very outgoing person. Not sure if this experiment brought that out, but it certainly helped my confidence.

Edit: Chicago, Illinois.

Henry Murray conducted experiments on Harvard students where he had them write an essay about "personal beliefs and aspirations". They would them shame them by repeatedly using this information. On one particular student they noticed he had an acute response to a point that it traumatized him for life. This student was Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unibomber. He sent his bombs primarily focused at faculty from different institutions.

The Robber's Cave experiment. Basically, they took 24 boys into the woods and split them up into groups of 12. Each group was told to make a flag and a name. They were put through teambuilding exercises, and went through the predicted storming-norming-conforming phases. When put in competition with the others, rivalries grew, which were demonstrated when the boys were forced to eat together (and not segregate themselves). Later on, the researchers cut off the water supply to the camp and forced the two tribes to work together to fix it. They ended up going through the same storming-norming-conforming process and put aside their rivalries, eventually becoming one homogenous tribe, even going as far as all talking as one group on the bus home.

If people have the upper hand they will put others down to keep it. An experiment told a class of kids that having blue eyes meant you were smarter, achieved more etc. All of a sudden kids with blue eyes formed their own groups. Things like bullying and exclusion of other eye colours started too. They repeated the experiment with different eye colours in different classes, all with the same results.

Our psych class repeated an experiment where half the class held a pencil in between their teeth, and the other half balanced on their top lips. We then rated how funny we thought a comic strip was. Turns out using face muscles associated with smiling (pencil between teeth) made the comic strip subjectively funnier then those associated with frowning (pencil balanced on top lips). Choosing to smile or frown can change how you feel and perceive life.

Not a psychologist, but the one where given a choice between sitting down doing nothing and shocking oneself, people tend to choose the shock. Ergo, we would choose pain over boredom.

Not just one experiment, but a whole thesis and series of works supporting it:
we expect good or bad things to happen to people for a reason and go to pretty interesting length to make up for the lack of justice. Like someone winning the lottery and us thinking they deserve it.

Recent small sample size experiment in toddlers (18mo, I think) investigating the link between fine + gross motor skills and time spent on a computer tablet.
Results showed no difference in gross motor skills between children who had spent lots of time on a tablet, and children who had spent no time at all on one.
Fine motors skills, and understanding the task was largely increased in those who had spent time on tablets.

Editor's note: While the study found no difference in gross motor skills, it's important to note that the impact of screen time on fine motor skills is still being researched and may vary depending on factors like the type of screen activity and the child's age and individual development.
It's also important to consider the potential benefits of tablet use for learning and development, alongside the potential impact on motor skills. 

The marshmallow test , a child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards if they waited for a short period, approximately 15 minutes, during which the tester left the room and then returned. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes.

"The Selective Laziness of Reasoning" is an article I found and then "partially replicated" in my research methods class during my undergraduate, it's so so great with a very interesting method and results that make you think about discussions and arguments a lot!

Basically: The researchers presented participants with different syllogisms (logic puzzles like all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, so Socrates is moral etc.); and they asked them to provide their answers and also their reasoning for the answers. Later on, the participants were asked to return and they presented some of their old answers but the answers were reversed to be exactly what they had written down previously, BUT, if their own argument from prior was presented as someone else's they would disagree with it.

The lesson: We critically evaluate other peoples' arguments with a lot more focused lens, and we afford ourselves less loopholes to jump through to validate / substantiate our own claims.

There is an optical variable called tau, expressed as image size divided by image expansion rate, and it has been shown to be used to perceive time to contact of an approaching object. Even diving birds have been shown to use it. The most interesting part is that the tau quantity is perceived as a whole, directly, and not arrived at by any sort of implicit calculations. Also, it’s time derivative, called tau-dot, is used to control deceleration toward an object, e.g. braking in a car.

Physical activity, in the form of aerobic activity, does a better job of maintaining cognitive ability in aging than any brain training game or cognitively stimulating activities.

Casual video games can reduce stress. (Like candy crush, sushi cat)

Exposure to nature reduces stress and improves cognitive ability.

There is currently evidence to suggest that psychological trauma experienced as a child can have such a powerful affect that it changes part of your biology. In particular it seems to leave an imprint in the immune system, which seems to be involved in the 'flight or fight' reaction that activates in response to stress. This immune imprint seems to modulate the response in a way that causes a form of depression.

Ofcourse there are some people who are resistant to this as a child and will grow up healthy. Also there seem to be many types of depression, which have different but similar pathologies, so not everyone who is depressed has a maladaptive immune system.

Further evidence to support this comes from arthritis patients who are depressed. They take anti-inflammatory medicine, which calms down the immune systems response to stressors, and they experience a lifting of their mood before their arthritis symptoms start to disappear.

Don't know if you guys would care for it, but there are tons of experiments concerning babies and how they perceive the world. One interesting one that stuck with me was when one research team found out that babies recognise consonants of almost every language known to man. But as they grow up, they lose this ability.

This supports Chomsky's concept of "a language centre" in our brains. But there are tons of other researches disapproving it too.

White rats and black rats were raised separately without seeing each other. When a black rat was placed in the white rats cage, the other rats ostracized him. When white and black rats are raised together and a new black rat is placed in a cage, the white rats accept him.

So basically rats are racist, unless raised to accept differences.

I used to amuse myself to see if I could choose who would sit next to me on the bus. I'd let people get on, and once I spotted the person I wanted to sit with, I'd smile while looking at them. A lot of the time they weren't looking at me, probably weren't even aware of me, but they would invariably sit beside me.