The Trouble with Using Undergrads for Psychological Research

[fendrock]

<p>I was astonished to hear of the psychological testing undertaken at Harvard by Henry Murray in the late 1950s / early 1960s:</p>

<p>

Students in Murray’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored study were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student. Instead they were subjected to the stress test, which was an extremely stressful and prolonged psychological attack by an anonymous attorney. During the test, students were strapped into a chair and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a two-way mirror. This was filmed, and students’ expressions of impotent rage were played back to them several times later in the study.

</p>

<p>One of the students subjected to this testing was Ted Kaczynski.</p>

<p>Murray was never disciplined for this torturing of students; it doesn’t seem to have raised any eyebrows at the time.</p>