Famous Psychology Experiments

Stanley Milgram

About two thirds went up to the highest level of 450 volts, although the learner was only an actor.

💡 Did you know? It was prompted by the question of how ordinary people could take part in the crimes of the Holocaust.

Philip Zimbardo

Students played guards and prisoners; some guards quickly became cruel.

💡 Did you know? Today the study is controversial because the guards were apparently encouraged to act tough.

Solomon Asch

Confederates deliberately named the wrong line, and about a third of answers went along with them.

💡 Did you know? A single ally who told the truth was enough to reduce conformity sharply.

Ivan Pavlov

He thereby described classical conditioning, though his 1904 Nobel Prize was for research on digestion.

💡 Did you know? The famous bell is more legend than fact: he mostly used metronomes and buzzers.

B. F. Skinner

The principle is called operant conditioning, and the box still bears his name.

💡 Did you know? In the Second World War he trained pigeons to guide bombs to their targets.

Walter Mischel

The experiment at Stanford University became famous as the marshmallow test.

💡 Did you know? Later studies showed that background and trust in adults also affect how long children wait.

Albert Bandura

The doll was called Bobo; children who saw an adult hit it copied the behaviour.

💡 Did you know? His theory of learning by observation is one of the most cited in psychology.

Harry Harlow

The 1950s experiments showed how important closeness and comfort are for attachment.

💡 Did you know? Because of their cruelty, the experiments helped spark the animal rights movement.

John B. Watson

Every time the child touched the rat, he banged loudly on a steel bar.

💡 Did you know? He is considered the founder of behaviourism and later went into advertising.

Leon Festinger

In one experiment participants rated a dull task as more interesting when they were paid one dollar rather than twenty for lying about it.

💡 Did you know? Earlier he had observed a cult whose predicted end of the world never came, yet whose faith grew stronger afterwards.

Martin Seligman

Animals that could not escape shocks later stopped trying even when escape was possible.

💡 Did you know? The model shaped the understanding of depression.

Hermann Ebbinghaus

We forget most within the first hours; spaced repetition helps against it.

💡 Did you know? Flashcard apps like this one are based on exactly this principle.

Muzafer Sherif

The Robbers Cave experiment also showed that shared goals brought the groups back together.

💡 Did you know? The groups named themselves the “Eagles” and the “Rattlers”.

David Rosenhan

The study was called “On Being Sane in Insane Places” and shook confidence in psychiatric diagnosis.

💡 Did you know? Later research raised doubts about how the study was actually carried out.

John Darley

The bystander effect arises because responsibility is spread across many people.

💡 Did you know? It was prompted by the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, where dozens of neighbours were said to have done nothing.

Daniel Simons

The phenomenon is called inattentional blindness.

💡 Did you know? About half the viewers missed the gorilla even though it thumped its chest.