The research investigated impressions formed of a “teacher” who obeyed an experimenter by delivering painful electric shocks to an innocent person (S. Milgram, 1963, 1974). Three findings emerged across different methodologies and different levels of experimenter-induced coercion. First, contrary to conventional wisdom, perceivers both recognized and appreciated situational forces, such as the ...

Each author recently attempted to replicate studies in which participants were asked to psychically detect an unseen gaze. RW’s studies failed to find any significant effects whilst MS’s study obtained positive findings. The authors then agreed to carry out the joint study described in this paper, in the hope of determining why they had originally obtained such different results. This joint stu...

From preschool age to adulthood, most humans prefer to help someone who has treated others well over helping someone who has treated others badly. Researchers have recently made opposing predictions about whether such observation-based preferential helping is present when children begin to help in the second year of life. In the present study, 84 toddlers (16-27 months) observed 1 experimenter ...

Cooperative social interaction is critical for human social development and learning. Despite the importance of social interaction, previous neuroimaging studies lack two fundamental components of everyday face-to-face interactions: contingent responding and joint attention. In the current studies, functional MRI data were collected while participants interacted with a human experimenter face-t...

In this account of the Obedience to Authority experiments, we offer a richer and more dynamic depiction of the subjects’ acts and reactions. To paraphrase Milgram, our account tries to examine the central elements of the situation as perceived by its research subjects. We describe a model of the experimenter–subject system that moves beyond experimentalism and humanism, positing instead a model...

Measuring fun and enjoyment with children is not trivial. Subjective measures are known to suffer from an experimenter effect and often lack detail in their answering. The experimenter effect refers to answering in accordance with the expectations of the experimenter rather than reflecting the opinion of the subject. The lack of detail in answering is due to the oft-found finding (which we will...

BACKGROUND Facial responses to pain are believed to be an act of communication and, as such, are likely to be affected by the relationship between sender and receiver. OBJECTIVES To investigate this effect by examining the impact that variations in communicative relations (from being alone to being with an intimate other) have on the elements of the facial language used to communicate pain (t...

Two experiments tested the roles of hidden toys and motor history in the AB task with l&monthold infants. In Experiment 1 (N = 24), infants were tested in lid and toy versions of the task, each comprised of A and B trials. No toys were ever hidden in the lid condition. On all A trials, an experimenter directed infants’ attention to one of two lids (the A lid) and allowed infants to reach follow...

In an attempt to demonstrate the effects of low expectancy of reinforcement and low expectancy for control of reinforcement on performance in an achievement situation, 40 fifth-grade children (20 boys and 20 girls) were given successes (soluble block designs) by one adult (success experimenter) and failures (insoluble block designs) by another (failure experimenter) with trials from each being ...

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the motivations behind, and the function of, infant pointing behaviour. Many studies have converged on the view that early pointing reflects a motivation to share attention and interest with others. Under one view, it is the sharing of attention itself that is the ultimate function of pointing, and is an early manifestation of a uniquel...