Neuroscience
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 since birth. The island on which he lives is a stage, his wife is an actress along with all his friends, neighbours and acquaintances - indeed everyone on the island is playing a part.
In the film, Truman's every move is broadcast to an adoring global audience of millions - a run-of-the-mill Hollywood dream. But in the psychologist's dream, Truman's every move would be broadcast back to a waiting team of analysts.
All breeds of psychologists would be in on the act. Developmental psychologists examining how Truman changes over his life-span, social psychologists testing his obedience, conformity and social identity and cognitive psychologists checking his memory and attention. All in a controlled environment, and over a controlled lifespan.
The problem is that a sample size of one doesn't play well in the academic journals. So more 'participants' would be required. Truman is soon joined by an ever-growing cast of participants. He would need a 'real' wife, 'real' children and 'real' in-laws. But as more participants are added, the environment becomes less controlled, more chaotic, open to the vagaries of human behaviour. All those nicely controlled experiments would start to break down as real participants interacted with each other in unexpected ways.
No, we need many Truman's all in separate artificial environments - each subjected to slightly different environments and having slightly different genetic make-ups...
Right, I'm off to write my grant application. Do you think a few billion pounds ought to cover it?"
--
Jeremy Dean is the author of PsyBlog.
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Neuroscience
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 since birth. The island on which he lives is a stage, his wife is an actress along with all his friends, neighbours and acquaintances - indeed everyone on the island is playing a part.In the film, Truman's every move is broadcast to an adoring global audience of millions - a run-of-the-mill Hollywood dream. But in the psychologist's dream, Truman's every move would be broadcast back to a waiting team of analysts.
All breeds of psychologists would be in on the act. Developmental psychologists examining how Truman changes over his life-span, social psychologists testing his obedience, conformity and social identity and cognitive psychologists checking his memory and attention. All in a controlled environment, and over a controlled lifespan.
The problem is that a sample size of one doesn't play well in the academic journals. So more 'participants' would be required. Truman is soon joined by an ever-growing cast of participants. He would need a 'real' wife, 'real' children and 'real' in-laws. But as more participants are added, the environment becomes less controlled, more chaotic, open to the vagaries of human behaviour. All those nicely controlled experiments would start to break down as real participants interacted with each other in unexpected ways.
No, we need many Truman's all in separate artificial environments - each subjected to slightly different environments and having slightly different genetic make-ups...
Right, I'm off to write my grant application. Do you think a few billion pounds ought to cover it?"
--
Jeremy Dean is the author of PsyBlog.
Return to menu for 'most important psych experiment never done.'
- New Bbc Prison Study Website Goes Live
The British social psychologists, professors Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher, have put together a wonderful, resource-packed website that documents the science and issues behind their BBC Prison Study conducted and broadcast in 2001/2002. Rather like Zimbardo's...
- What's The Most Important Psychology Experiment That's Never Been Done...?
To mark 100 email issues of the Research Digest - the British Psychological Society's free roundup of the world's best new psychology research - and to inspire the next generation of researchers, I asked leading psychologists and bloggers to write...
- Switching The Parents Around
Judith Rich Harris: "In a 1995 paper in Psychological Review, I proposed a new theory of child development, based on the idea that children's personalities are shaped, not by their parents, but by the environment they encounter outside the home. This...
- Classic 1960's Obediency Experiment Reproduced In Virtual Reality
Scientists have recreated Milgram’s classic obediency psychology experiment using virtual reality. Back in the 1960s Stanley Milgram appeared to show that student participants would obey a researcher and administer lethal electric shocks to a stranger,...
- Get Out Of My Cyberspace!
If you thought online virtual worlds would be an easy-going utopia where players cast aside their awkward real-world inhibitions, think again. Online games like Second Life allow people to adopt an alternative identity and interact with other players...