Neuroscience
Personal psychology experiments
Will Meek: "When asked to share my thoughts on the most important psychology experiment that has never been done, my mind went wild. Could it be a more intensive follow-up to the famous
Milgram or
Zimbardo studies that would be completely unethical? Could it be something more practical but visionary like a gigantic international clinical trial testing the efficacy of non-directive insight-oriented psychotherapy for depression? Could it be something completely impossible, which hypothetically-speaking would be the most important experiment of all time? Like determining the effect of culture on personality?
Instead, when I really think about “psychology”, the study of the mind and behaviour, I think about individuals and the personal science we all utilize to understand our unique lives. We experiment constantly to explain, grow, create meaning, and move toward fulfilment, wholeness, aliveness, self-actualization, or whatever other word you can use to describe this process.
Based on this, the greatest psychology experiment never (not yet) done is the next experience, challenge, or adventure that You have yet to attempt that will take you to the next level of your life. It may be something that will test your strength, identity, and spirit; it may take place individually or
interpersonally; and it may be pleasant or painful, but ultimately it will be something to advance You.
We all may have personal “important experiments” that we decided not to conduct (e.g. moving against the Zeitgeist of our industry, or expressing a complicated feeling to a partner for the first time) and an infinite amount more that are on our radar screens or just beyond. Most of these experiments are never discussed or shared, they
aren’t written about or published in journals, and some are even conducted outside of our awareness, but this experimental process is an essential part of our existence."
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Dr Will Meek is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Delaware Centre for Counselling & Student Development (USA), and writes weekly at
staffpsychologist.com.
Return to menu for 'most important psych experiment never done.'
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Changing The Focus Of Psychotherapy To What Is Good In Your Life
Martin Seligman: "For one hundred years psychotherapy has been where you go to talk about your troubles. Looking over hundreds of controlled outcome studies, it is a moderately effective process. But does the troubles part matter? We have recently been...
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The Truman Show Experiment
Jeremy Dean: "While the greatest psychology experiment imaginable has never been done, it has been filmed. The film is The Truman Show in which the main character Truman Burbank, played by Jim Carrey, lives in an entirely manufactured world, and has done...
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Challenging The Conclusions Drawn From Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment
Alex Haslam: "The invitation to design the 'most important experiment that’s never been done' is an interesting one, but one that entails a great many dangers. One of these is that by inviting researchers to focus on experiments per se, it encourages...
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A 2 X 3 X 3 X 2 X 2 X 3 X 2 X 3...experiment On The Effects Of Contact On Reducing Prejudice And Discriminatory Behaviour
Pam Maras: "Social Identity Theory (SIT, Tajfel and Turner 1979) has been dominant in social psychological research for nearly 30 years, initially in Britain but now more widely. It has evolved and nuanced but is essentially still based on fundamental...
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Psychic Phenomena Discredited Yet Again
Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and author of several books, and also a personal acquaintance of mine, recently teamed up with New Scientist magazine to carry out athe first ever science experiment using the popular Twitter microblogging site....
Neuroscience