Social experiment

In Psychology and Sociology, a Social Experiment is a category of Human Research which test a human’s reaction to certain situations or event. This is typically done by having two different groups of people and have one participate in an event/program and the other react to the event/program. Over a period of hours, days, months or years, the two differing groups are monitored to see the effects and differences as a result of the experiment. In Psychology and Sociology, a Social Experiment is a category of Human Research which test a human’s reaction to certain situations or event. This is typically done by having two different groups of people and have one participate in an event/program and the other react to the event/program. Over a period of hours, days, months or years, the two differing groups are monitored to see the effects and differences as a result of the experiment. Social experiments has also been used by companies and people in order to collect data and research as a result of asking their consumers questions about a particular topic. In 1895, American psychologist Norman Triplett constructed one of the earliest known Field social experiments, in which he found out that children manage to ride faster when in a Bicycle in the prescene of a counterpart rather than riding than themselves. Field social experiments had proved to be efficient as it reflects real life due to its natural setting. The social experiments that are commonly referred to today were conducted decades later, in which an experiment is done in a controlled environment such as a Laboratory. A famous example of which is Stanley Milgram's obedience experiment in 1963. Social experiments began in the United States as a test of the negative income tax concept in the late 1960s and since then have been conducted on all the populated continents. During the 1970s, criticism of the ethics and accusations of gender and racial bias led to a reassessment of both the field of social psychology and the conducted experiments. While experimental methods were still employed, other methods gained popularity. Social experimentation has raised many ethical concerns, due to its manipulation of large groups of the population, often without consent. Based around the murder of Kitty Genovese right outside her home, The New York Times stated that there were 38 witnesses that either saw or heard the fatal stabbing take place, and not a single person came to her aid. Although this number was proven to be exaggerated, this murder was known as what was coined 'bystander apathy' by social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley in 1968. For their experiment, Latané and Darley tried to replicate the Genovese slaying by having participants aware of each other but unable to communicate directly. Each participant was in a cubical in contact with each other via a microphone, however only one voice was allowed to speak at a time. A taped recording played of a participant having an epileptic seizure. When the participant believed themselves to be alone they invariably attempted to find help. When the participant believed others were around the speed and frequency of response declined significantly. The authors concluded that situational factors play an influential role in bystander apathy. People are less likely to help in an emergency if other people are present. Two reasons were offered by Latané and Darley: first is diffusion of responsibility. The second is pluralistic ignorance or the mentality that if nobody else is helping, then I am not needed as well. Current research on bystander apathy by psychologist Kyle Thomas et al. found that people's decisions to help are influenced by their level of knowledge. While diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance are factors, the researchers found that bystanders’ decisions also consider what they know about other bystanders and the situation before getting involved.