Experiments
16 studies and paradigms from introductory psychology, each profiled with its question, design, findings, limits, ethics and later reassessment.
Not every famous study is an experiment. Each profile says whether it was a controlled comparison, a quasi-experiment, a single-case demonstration, a paradigm used across many studies, or a simulation. Source links show how much of each source was actually opened.
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Experiment directory
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Asch conformity 1956
When a group unanimously gave a clearly wrong answer on a simple line-matching task, some participants went along on some trials, but many stayed independent.
Solomon E. Asch
Bobo doll imitation 1961
Preschool children who watched a live adult attack an inflatable doll later reproduced the adult's actions more often than children who saw a quiet adult or no adult.
Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, Sheila A. Ross
Darley and Latané bystander intervention 1968
Participants who believed more people could also hear a staged emergency were less likely to respond, and slower to do so.
John M. Darley, Bibb Latané
Festinger and Carlsmith forced compliance 1959
Students paid one dollar to tell another student a dull task was fun later rated the task as more enjoyable than students paid twenty dollars.
Leon Festinger, James M. Carlsmith
Harlow contact comfort 1958
Infant monkeys raised with a cloth surrogate and a wire surrogate spent more time clinging to the cloth one even when the wire one supplied the milk.
Harry F. Harlow
Little Albert 1920
A single infant was reported to show fear of a white rat after it was paired with a loud noise, and similar fear of some other furry objects.
John B. Watson, Rosalie Rayner
Loftus and Palmer misleading questions 1974
People asked how fast cars 'smashed' into each other gave higher speed estimates than those asked about cars that 'contacted', and later more often reported broken glass that was not there.
Elizabeth F. Loftus, John C. Palmer
Milgram obedience 1963
In a staged shock procedure at Yale, most participants in the main condition continued to the highest level when an experimenter told them to.
Stanley Milgram
Mischel delay of gratification 1972
Preschool children waited longer for a larger reward when they were distracted from it and for less time when they focused on it. A 2018 study found a weaker link between early waiting and later achievement than earlier work suggested.
Walter Mischel, Ebbe B. Ebbesen, Antonette Raskoff Zeiss
Pavlovian conditioning 1927
A neutral signal repeatedly paired with a stimulus that already triggers a reflex begins to trigger a similar response by itself.
Ivan P. Pavlov
Roediger and Karpicke retrieval practice 2006
Students who practiced by recalling a passage remembered more after days than students who spent the same effort rereading it, though rereading did better after only minutes.
Henry L. Roediger III, Jeffrey D. Karpicke
Simons and Chabris inattentional blindness 1999
Observers counting passes by one team often failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit or an umbrella-carrying woman crossing the scene.
Daniel J. Simons, Christopher F. Chabris
Sperling partial report 1960
Observers could report only a few letters from a brief display, but when cued to report one row they did well, suggesting a larger, fast-fading visual store.
George Sperling
Stanford prison simulation 1973
A staged prison at Stanford ended early after volunteers playing guards and prisoners behaved harshly and with distress. A 2019 archival study argues that the guards were instructed and that the roles did not simply emerge.
Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, Philip Zimbardo
Stroop color-word interference 1935
Naming the ink color of a color word printed in a conflicting color is much slower than naming plain color patches, while reading the same words is barely affected.
J. Ridley Stroop
Tolman and Honzik latent learning 1930
Rats given no food at the end of a maze improved little, but once food appeared they quickly ran as well as rats rewarded from the start.
Edward C. Tolman, C. H. Honzik
Kinds of design
- Experiment
- The researchers set the conditions and compare outcomes between or within groups. Each profile says whether participants were randomly assigned.
- Quasi-experiment
- The researchers compare conditions, but people or animals were placed in them by non-random, pre-existing or external assignment, so groups may differ in other ways.
- Demonstration
- A single case or single condition that shows a phenomenon can occur. It has no comparison that rules out other explanations.
- Paradigm
- A general procedure used across many studies, laboratories and species, not one dated trial.
- Simulation
- A staged situation meant to resemble a real setting. What it shows about real settings depends on how closely the staging matches them.