 |
|
|
Psychology 101: The other assignment by Marilyn King
There is something they don’t mention in the course packet for classes at MSU when it comes to Psychology 101. It sounds like a general class, right? I mean, it’s 101. Very basic. It’s also a large lecture, about 500 people, so attendance is basically optional, considering the professor would never notice if you weren't there. Sure, there are exams, but only four of them, and the professor drops the lowest one. But there is a catch to this so called “easy” class: the required experiments the students have to partake in to receive full credit. You need 14 points worth of experiments, 19 if you want extra credit. Some of them are easy: online surveys that are simple to do, but long and awkward. One of them, for example, is a “self-harm” survey that asks if you’ve purposely harmed yourself by scratching, bruising, hitting or performing other bodily harm to yourself. Another one asks about your private-life background: have you been sexually assaulted? When/where/how? And so forth. But these online surveys do not fill the required amount of experiment credit. Most students, if they want a decent grade in Psych, have to partake in other experiments as well. There is a website for the Psychology classes that lists a bunch of experiments that a student can attend. Some just require sitting around and discussing our time in college. Some even pay you money for taking part. But the thing that scared me before I took part in these experiments is what I witnessed just a few weeks before I had to sign up for one: a girl who lives in my hall came into the elevator, angry and sticky, and explained to my friends and I that she had gone to one of the Pysch experiments and had sticky goop dumped on her head (which was why she was wearing a hat), and had to look at offensive pictures for 45 minutes while experimenters analyzed her reactions. Pretty creepy. The experiment I signed up for was a "TAS" experiment. TAS stands for Tactical Action Simulation. The description was ambiguous: the experiment was seven credits, and said it had to do with a computer simulation, but what kind? Were we going to be working in a group, or alone? One thing that was interesting about this experiment was that there was prize money for whoever received the highest "score" at the end. When I went to the Psychology building on Thursday evening to take part in the experiment, I was feeling very nervous. I didn't want to appear incompetent or an inefficient participant to the experimenter. We waited outside the room in nervous anticipation, and finally a young guy with a hoodie that said "Spartan Sailing Team" on it led us into the room, which was a computer lab. The experiment itself was tedious. All of us (there were maybe 10 of us in all) had to practice a computer simulation over and over again, one that was set up like military radar. We had a set amount of time to study the online manual, then do practice trials in which we had to identify the moving little dots as military or civilian, peaceful or hostile, air or submarine, etc. It was interesting maybe the first two times; the next ten were a bit much. The point was to see if we could improve our skills, and the final try actually counted our score and compared it to the others in the experiment. My score was very low, because by the end of three hours I was tired and distracted. Plus, being under an actual trial put the pressure on. My friends' final score was much higher; we have yet to see if he wins the prize money. Experiments weren't always this easy or peaceful. Back in the days of Psychologists such as Ivan Pavlov (who attached saliva-catching devices to the mouths of dogs and then tested their reactions to the presence of food when a bell was rung), there weren't many laws of ethics. A specific case of this, called the Little Albert experiment, involved a little boy who was experimented on by Psychologist John B. Watson. Watson and his assistants put Albert, who was just a toddler, in a room with a white rabbit. Whenever the rabbit was presented, Watson would then make a loud banging noise, frightening Albert into not wanting to see the rabbit anymore because he was scared that something bad would ensue. This type of "classical conditioning" experiment permanently affected Albert, as he ended up being afraid of all things white and fuzzy (even a Santa Clause costume) for the rest of his life. Luckily, the experiment I took part in wasn’t quite so life-changing. It wasn’t as scary as I thought, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. |
|
||
