random thoughts

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Psychology is full of humor

In psych today we studied the effects of deindividuation, or how people act when they are not held accountable for their individual actions. One of the studies about this was called the "hour in the dark" study.
In this study, they put eight people in a room together and left them there for no more than an hour, without any rules as to what to do together. After the hour, each person left the room alone and never met any of the other participants.
They were either put in a pitch black room or in a bright room. The results were this:
-90% in the dark study at opposed to 0% in the bright study intentionally punched someone else
-50% vs. 0% hugged somebody
-80% vs. 30% felt sexually aroused
-everyone liked the study and agreed to return without pay.
This means two things to me: one, the dark does strange things to people, and two, 30% of people are just sexually aroused by being in a bright room with other people for no reason.
Ah science, so useful.

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