One boring day, I was hanging out at our tambayan. Kuya Francis walks by, and asked if anyone’s free that time. I volunteer, since I won’t be doing anything anyway, and go with him. I asked him what’s this all about, and he just answered, “You’ll see. Gagawin niyo rin ito kapag higher psych na kayo.” And so I got dragged, unwittingly, into my first ever experiment.
From that “fateful” psych135 experiment in the first (!) sem, I’ve been fascinated about psychology experiments. They open up your hidden attraction to certain choices (Healthy or Hip?), to how you behave (Competitive or Passive?), to how you see yourself (Am I fat?). The mere fact that students have devised ways to scientifically study humans is just so cool! So cool, in fact, that I almost filled up my credit sheet! (well technically, I filled it up. Ndi lang nakalagay yung two other stickers J).
Here’s a quick rundown of them all:
Collaborative Problem Solving – communication skills (may scary confederate! Haha). There are a number of topics, ranging from my fave color to TOFI, on the table, and both of us are to talk about 5 of them. The experimenters said that there’d be a 2nd part… but I haven’t heard from them o.O
How will you know? – How filling gender roles affect attractiveness. We were given a set of adjectives describing someone of the opposite sex, and were asked to say if s/he were attractive. They varied the descriptions from purely male-like (likes cars), purely female-like (likes dolls) or mixed.
Emofunc – how being given gender-oriented ideas will affect decision-making. Alone in a room, there were two products, each with two different marketing strategies (healthy or hip, cheap or cool etc) and were asked to choose. Next, I was exposed to words linked to one strategy, and asked to choose again.
No Read No Write – visual cues on courtship. There was a mute, black-and-white clip with a guy and a girl… and a lot of hands o.O. After the clip, we were asked if we noticed flirty or seductive actions between them. This was probably the weirdest I joined in haha.
What do you see? – how the lack of an authority figure affects behavior. This one I liked! I kwento more down there J
Sana dalawa ang puso ko – … I’m sorry, but I honestly can’t remember what happened here. I just remember the experimenters, that there were some videos and laptops, and that I was late here… ooops.
Body Esteem Scale – how you judge your own body. This one was very long, but surprisingly thorough. How we feel about our forearms, calves, wrists, everything.
iSUBok mo – gender discrimination survey. Also very long, but a bit… R18. seriously haha
Cloud 9 – how either gender sees sexual harrasment. It asks things how we’d feel if we were touched by a fe/male student/prof. Oh, and the place (PPT) was real lonely, since the only guys there were the experimenters L
Ang Galing Mo Naman – visual memory and how long we remember them. We were shown pics of psychology personalities with their names (Frued, Maslow, Horney etc) 4 in a row, then shown a pic and asked who that person is. It was a really interesting study but very very boring. Sori J
Sex 101 – survey on how much we know about sex. No, really.
Yun Yon eh! – sound vs visual cues. There was a sequence of pictures accompanied by words and bells randomly rang every so often. We were told to take note of how many times the bells rang. Afterwards, we were shown another sequence of pictures and we asked to determine which of them were in the first sequence.
Text Twist – how content are we with our achievements. This is so funny, because I was supposed to do some other experiment, but they weren’t ready so the Text Twist guys pirated me lol. I was given an “easy” set of text twist puzzles, and was told to do as good as possible. Then, I was asked how content I was with my work.
Photogenic Memory – detail attentiveness. This one I also liked (and not because there was chocolate, or that the experimenters are my friends J). We were shown a series black-and-white pictures, and were told to take note of the details. Then, they gave us chocolate! Afterwards, we were shown another series of pictures, and asked which of them were also in the first one.
There. 14 experiments worth 8 ½ hours of credits. Like I said, I like taking part in experiments (and not just because we had a small contest of who’d fill up the sheet first XD). There’s something attractive about scrutinizing every choice, decision and action you make. Not only does it give the experimenters much needed data, it also makes you reassess yourself. Like a retreat, only much shorter and simpler. It makes you rethink why you pick sexy over nice, or how you can improve your short-term memory, or how and why you get noisy when the teacher’s not around. Those little things that you never notice.
Also, as a Psych major, and future experimenter himself, joining experiments not only gives experimenters data, it also gives me ideas on what I might do, and what I would expect. Let’s take “What do you see” as an example.
I was in a room with two other female “participants”/confeds. We were told to follow the usual SOPs (keep quiet, don’t communicate, may leave anytime etc), and that we put our cellphones on silent and vibrate on top of our tables. Then, Renz the experimenter (see, I’m close like that XD) gave us some word puzzles and left us. After a while, he came back, collected our papers, and told us to wait a moment, since the next set weren’t there yet. Then he left again. After a few moments, one of the girls started to small talk me. Unfortunately, I was very sleepy and light-headed that day… so I started to doze off J. Also, I noticed that my phone was at low battery, so I switched it off. After around 5 minutes, Renz came back with the next set of word puzzles, where I got one saying that the experiment was over. After they finished theirs, I was debriefed. I was told that the study was about how we would behave without an authority figure nearby. They expected that I’d start babbling one the experimenter was gone and that I’d answer my phone, since Renz was supposedly calling me when he went out. At that point, they were amused/frustrated that I dozed off, and that I turned my phone off hahaha. That was fun J
In that one experiment, I learned that a) puzzles aren’t the only thing that we can be tested with, b) participants don’t always behave like how we want them to behave and c) good confeds are hard to find (and keep!).
And so, would I recommend participating in experiments to everyone? Well, probably not to every person I meet, but yeah I’d recommend it. It benefits the experimenters who are hard-pressed to find participants. It benefits the participants because, like I said, it also makes you examine yourself. It benefits the department, because experiments (and surveys) are the embodiment of what Psychology is – the systematic study of human behavior. And sometimes, they’re just flat-out fun! Like a friend of mine said, “Psych majors are here para mang-experiment ng mga tao.”
Ayun eh!
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