A social experiment is a research project conducted with people in the real world. The main task is to find out how society and individuals will react in different situations. This is necessary to better understand how culture and people work, how they interact with each other.
Preamble
A social experiment is a unique way to study society as a whole, as well as each person individually. Before you begin to study society, you need to develop a certain concept. It is important to understand what conditions are considered critical, how an individual can react to a particular situation, what tools are needed to conduct the next analysis. In this article we will learn all about the methods of social experiment and why they are needed at all.
Short story
In the 1920s, the famous statistician Ronald Fisher began to develop universal methods of social experiments. This made it possible to understand how perfect this method of studying society and its behavior can be.
Fisher realized that no two groups could be identical, but behavioral models could contain up to 90% similarity. He noted that it is possible through experiments to conduct more accurate statistical calculations related to society.
The first major social experiment was conducted in New Jersey (1968). Of course, before that, many statisticians carried out the analysis using different methods, but it was in this year that the attitude of people to the new law on the introduction of negative income tax in the 1960s, which was developed by Jason Tobin and Milton Friedman, was carefully studied.
Now social experiments are being conducted both in Russia and in other countries around the world. But what do they give and what role do they play in the development of society?
Why do you need such a study
It is important to realize that social experimentation is a great way to learn about human culture. Not a single science, not a single technical device, not even the latest one, can evaluate the behavioral qualities of each individual in various situations.
Any social experiment can prove or disprove the theory, so all methods are different from each other. Moreover, such a study allows you to thoroughly study the nature and opinion of people around the world, and also use this knowledge for the good, for the development of mankind.
Any experiment leads to a specific conclusion, from which scientists (extras, sociologists, philosophers, psychologists) will repel.
Any socio-psychological experiment is carried out only in artificially created conditions. In a natural environment, the behavior of society is studied extremely rarely. That is, most of the situations are staged, where one initiator or an organizational group is involved.
The main reason why such experiments are needed is to create a unique method of managing, educating and developing our society, to develop effective training programs and to direct forces and capabilities in the right direction.
Such various techniques
All social experiments can be divided into several categories. They are pedagogical, psychological or economic. It is important to understand that they can be carried out under controlled conditions and vice versa, within the walls of a laboratory or building.
Each method is similar to each other, only the area in which society will be studied separates them. But the main task is to obtain specific information with evidence, to exclude the possibility of developing uncontrolled situations and to be ready for any changes.
What is taken into account
No social experiment is conducted without careful preparation. To do this, you must:
- Gather an initiative group. As a rule, a certain number of people are responsible for conducting a particular social experiment. They must choose an analysis method (anonymous, public or open), the place where testing will be conducted. The responsibility of the initiative group lies in the selection of details and instructing each participant, because there are often cases when a social experiment fails and emergency measures have to be taken.
- The plan is in writing. The leaders of the initiative group are developing their own concept of the experiment, so all analyzes may differ from each other. No participant should deviate from the finished plan. Its essence is to achieve maximum results during the experiment. At the same time, the initiative group should have 1-2 participants who will outline the progress of the social audit. This can be a normal recording in a notebook, audio or video.
Social Experiment Examples
The results of the analysis are considered as follows: a test group of people of a certain gender, age, race, social status is taken, introduced into artificially developed life situations (political, religious, etc.), and then conclusions are drawn about human actions. The final score should show how ready people are for violence, how passive or active they are, whether they have racist or sexist views, are aggressive or compassionate, whether they obey authorities, or have their own opinions.
Let's get acquainted with some of the most common international social experiments. People from all over the world regularly develop new concepts to study the behavioral model of the population. And thanks to the fact that the Internet was developed in the 21st century, the results of all experiments can be observed online on any resources on the network.
Against Domestic Violence
This experiment was conducted by the initiative organization STHLM Panda in 2014.
Researchers installed a hidden camera in the elevator, while group members played a negative-minded husband and his victim-wife. A male actor threatened a woman and physically attacked her. It was important that during the experiment other members of the public were in the elevator, unaware that they were being monitored.
The result stunned the initiative group. Most elevator passengers ignored the violence, believing that interfering in someone else's showdown is wrong. They pretended that this did not concern them, looking away, looking at the phone, putting on their headphones. According to statistics, only one person for every 50 subjects is willing to intervene in a showdown and prevent domestic violence.
Separation by ethnicity and gender
This experiment was conducted by the Social Misfits initiative group in 2010.
In this experiment, two young male actors participated, dressed neatly, but provoking suspicions with their appearance. One person has fair skin, and the second is dark. They take turns playing the theft of a bicycle chained to a pole in a public park.
Two actors (one after the other) spend an hour breaking a bicycle lock. At this time, at least 100 people should pass (this figure is necessary for subsequent statistics).
The conclusions of this experiment are not very encouraging. When a fair-skinned actor plays the theft of a bicycle, only 1 out of 100 people is ready to take immediate action. Several people may ask: “Is this your bike?”, But later they laugh when a member of the initiative group seriously replies that he is stealing it. But when a black actor plays the same thing, then a crowd of people who are ready to stop him can gather in a few seconds. Most get their handsets and people call the police. When the experiment is suspended by the initiative group, and then after a while it resumes again, the same thing happens again.
But the experiment does not end there, because it shows how people divide their brothers by gender and ethnicity. This time a pretty girl in beautiful clothes enters the public stage. She is also trying to steal a bicycle, but people passing by are not trying to stop her or call the police. On the contrary, they come up and offer her help.
Separation by ethnicity and employment
This experiment was conducted by the initiative center National Center for Social Research in 2009.
Researchers sent nearly 3,000 job applications under false names. This method of social experiment was supposed to show whether employers are discriminatory in relation to applicants with foreign names.
The initiative group found that a fictitious specialist sending a resume to an organization that had a familiar name and description for people (for example, Ivan Ivanov) received a huge number of responses. Minority candidates (for example, Magomed Kaiyrbekovich) with the same qualifications and work experience had to send two to three times more applications in order to receive a sufficient number of answers from organizations.
Summing up, we can say that no organization subsequently gave a single intelligible and plausible explanation on how the specialists are selected for the new position. However, racial and national discrimination occurs throughout the world, not only in the United States or European countries, but also in Russia. This is because a large number of job seekers are migrants and neighboring countries - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Georgia, etc.
"Self-fulfilling prophecy"
This experiment was conducted by Rosenthal and Jacobson in 1968.
The purpose of this study was to identify and measure the impact of high expectations of teachers on student performance.
Rosenthal and Jacobson conducted their experiment in a California elementary school, which they called Oak School. The students passed the IQ test and on the basis of this, two researchers informed the teachers that 20% of students will be able to show incredible abilities next year. In fact, this number of students was randomly selected.
All students were retested 8 months later, and 20% of the children who had high expectations received 12 points, although the average at that time was 8.
Rosenthal and Jacobson concluded that teachers' higher expectations were responsible for this difference in achieving the best results, providing evidence for marking the theory of "self-fulfilling prophecy."
Features of the social experiment
At first glance, it might seem that carrying out this analysis is a meaningless and not fruitful exercise. But any experiment in social psychology helps scientists and public figures change the human behavioral model by introducing new industries into different spheres of life.
All results are recorded, entered into a common database to get a statistical graph. So, the government can, although remotely, know about the consequences of the new laws, get acquainted with the opinion of the inhabitants of the country and make rational decisions. Members of society, in turn, better understand each other, making changes to the model of upbringing and education of a new generation.
Finally
Any social and pedagogical experiment is not a farce, but a way of acquaintance, study and cognition of society as a whole. Any model of analysis affects absolutely all spheres of life (engineering, medicine, education, science, religion).