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Experiment with blue eyes
On an April evening in 1968, American teacher Jane Elliott turned on the TV and heard the shocking news of the murder of Martin Luther King. He led the civil rights movement in the United States since the mid-1950s.
it brought an end to racial segregation in the United States. His murder sparked widespread discussion of racism, and as a teacher, Jane Elliott wanted to bring it up in class.
The next day, she held a conversation about Martin Luther King and racism. But it seemed to her that the disciples did not understand her well enough; most of those eight-year-olds, like her, were white and lived in Riceville, a small town in Iowa where there were always few blacks. It seemed to her that one conversation would not be enough for the children to truly understand how easily racism arises and what impact it has.
So Elliott came up with an experiment that she hoped would show children what racism is and how easy it is to become racist. Since most of the children were white, she needed some other trait to divide them into "races," and she chose her eye color. Elliott stated that blue-eyed children are superior to brown-eyed children, and told the class that from now on blue-eyed children will receive privileges: a breakfast addition, permission to play in new playgrounds, and longer breaks. Blue-eyed children were transplanted closer to the blackboard, and brown-eyed children were transplanted into the last desks. The teacher allowed blue-eyed children to communicate and play only with other blue-eyed ones, encouraged them to ignore the brown-eyed ones and even forbade them to drink from the same fountain as the brown-eyed ones.
Elliott wondered how children would react to her imposed unfair system based on such a random trait as eye color. At first, the children did not want to admit that blue-eyed is somehow better than brown-eyed. Then Elliott gave a plausible explanation: she told the children that melanin, which is responsible for blue eyes, also gives blue-eyed people an intellectual advantage (which, of course, is not the case). She made brown-eyed children wear special headbands to indicate their low status.
Soon the children adapted to the new roles of “best” and “worst”, and they developed discriminatory behaviors. Representatives of the "superior race" began to behave arrogantly, commanding, and rather nasty attitude towards their "worst" classmates. They showed better results on tests, better than before, coping with tasks in math and reading. Some have even used the term "brown eyes" disparagingly to offend the "worst" students.
As Elliott said, her sweet, kind, cooperative charges turned into vile racists in no time. The “worst” students also changed: they became shy and obsequious, they began to cope worse on tests and during the changes they kept themselves apart. Even those children who used to be popular and occupied a "dominant" position in the class hierarchy seemed to accept their lower status. Their academic performance also declined.
As news of the experiment spread, Elliott was invited to appear on television, and she began doing the exercise during professional training aimed at identifying biases (this is how the concept of personal diversity training was born). In 1971, ABC aired a documentary about Elliott, The Eye of the Storm, and she became even more famous. Later, William Peters wrote two books about her and her experiment: A Class Divided and A Class Divided: Then and Now.
In 1985, the schoolchildren who starred in The Eye of the Storm (for which Elliott received the prestigious Hillman Prize for Social Justice Journalists) gathered again to shoot the A Class Divided documentary on PBS's Frontline. The TV version of this experiment, titled The Event: How Racist Are You? ("Event: How Much Racist Are You?") Aired in the UK in 2009.
Lost in the store. False memory research
The American cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus (born 1944) conducted groundbreaking research on false memory in 1995, which has become one of her most famous studies. Loftus and her colleagues gave twenty-four participants to read descriptions of events that allegedly happened to those in childhood - participants were told that all this was told by their relatives. Participants were asked to recall as many details of these stories as possible with the goal of, they were told, studying the memory of childhood events.
Unbeknownst to the participants, however, only three stories were told by relatives; the fourth, about how the participant got lost in a store at the age of about five, was invented by the researchers. According to legend, the child could not be found for a long time, in the end he was found by an elderly man, and the baby returned to the family safe and sound. To make the story seem as believable as possible, they added real details of the life of each participant, for example, the place of residence and the store, which they probably often visited in childhood.
After the participants read the stories, they were asked to write what they remember. They were then interviewed and asked questions about the events in the stories. 25% of participants said they remember a fictional event, although worse than real ones, and they described it with fewer words than real events. At the end of the study, participants were told that one of the four stories was fictional and asked to identify which one. A fifth of the participants were unable to do it correctly.
Through this research, Loftus proved the existence of false memories and demonstrated how false memories can be created (in particular by mixing them with real events). Over time, people find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between real and false memories. Research shows how unreliable memories can be and how easy it is to instill them. Its findings can have tremendous implications in areas such as testimony of crimes and memories of childhood sexual abuse.
On an April evening in 1968, American teacher Jane Elliott turned on the TV and heard the shocking news of the murder of Martin Luther King. He led the civil rights movement in the United States since the mid-1950s.
it brought an end to racial segregation in the United States. His murder sparked widespread discussion of racism, and as a teacher, Jane Elliott wanted to bring it up in class.
The next day, she held a conversation about Martin Luther King and racism. But it seemed to her that the disciples did not understand her well enough; most of those eight-year-olds, like her, were white and lived in Riceville, a small town in Iowa where there were always few blacks. It seemed to her that one conversation would not be enough for the children to truly understand how easily racism arises and what impact it has.
So Elliott came up with an experiment that she hoped would show children what racism is and how easy it is to become racist. Since most of the children were white, she needed some other trait to divide them into "races," and she chose her eye color. Elliott stated that blue-eyed children are superior to brown-eyed children, and told the class that from now on blue-eyed children will receive privileges: a breakfast addition, permission to play in new playgrounds, and longer breaks. Blue-eyed children were transplanted closer to the blackboard, and brown-eyed children were transplanted into the last desks. The teacher allowed blue-eyed children to communicate and play only with other blue-eyed ones, encouraged them to ignore the brown-eyed ones and even forbade them to drink from the same fountain as the brown-eyed ones.
Elliott wondered how children would react to her imposed unfair system based on such a random trait as eye color. At first, the children did not want to admit that blue-eyed is somehow better than brown-eyed. Then Elliott gave a plausible explanation: she told the children that melanin, which is responsible for blue eyes, also gives blue-eyed people an intellectual advantage (which, of course, is not the case). She made brown-eyed children wear special headbands to indicate their low status.
Soon the children adapted to the new roles of “best” and “worst”, and they developed discriminatory behaviors. Representatives of the "superior race" began to behave arrogantly, commanding, and rather nasty attitude towards their "worst" classmates. They showed better results on tests, better than before, coping with tasks in math and reading. Some have even used the term "brown eyes" disparagingly to offend the "worst" students.
As Elliott said, her sweet, kind, cooperative charges turned into vile racists in no time. The “worst” students also changed: they became shy and obsequious, they began to cope worse on tests and during the changes they kept themselves apart. Even those children who used to be popular and occupied a "dominant" position in the class hierarchy seemed to accept their lower status. Their academic performance also declined.
As news of the experiment spread, Elliott was invited to appear on television, and she began doing the exercise during professional training aimed at identifying biases (this is how the concept of personal diversity training was born). In 1971, ABC aired a documentary about Elliott, The Eye of the Storm, and she became even more famous. Later, William Peters wrote two books about her and her experiment: A Class Divided and A Class Divided: Then and Now.
In 1985, the schoolchildren who starred in The Eye of the Storm (for which Elliott received the prestigious Hillman Prize for Social Justice Journalists) gathered again to shoot the A Class Divided documentary on PBS's Frontline. The TV version of this experiment, titled The Event: How Racist Are You? ("Event: How Much Racist Are You?") Aired in the UK in 2009.
Lost in the store. False memory research
The American cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus (born 1944) conducted groundbreaking research on false memory in 1995, which has become one of her most famous studies. Loftus and her colleagues gave twenty-four participants to read descriptions of events that allegedly happened to those in childhood - participants were told that all this was told by their relatives. Participants were asked to recall as many details of these stories as possible with the goal of, they were told, studying the memory of childhood events.
Unbeknownst to the participants, however, only three stories were told by relatives; the fourth, about how the participant got lost in a store at the age of about five, was invented by the researchers. According to legend, the child could not be found for a long time, in the end he was found by an elderly man, and the baby returned to the family safe and sound. To make the story seem as believable as possible, they added real details of the life of each participant, for example, the place of residence and the store, which they probably often visited in childhood.
After the participants read the stories, they were asked to write what they remember. They were then interviewed and asked questions about the events in the stories. 25% of participants said they remember a fictional event, although worse than real ones, and they described it with fewer words than real events. At the end of the study, participants were told that one of the four stories was fictional and asked to identify which one. A fifth of the participants were unable to do it correctly.
Through this research, Loftus proved the existence of false memories and demonstrated how false memories can be created (in particular by mixing them with real events). Over time, people find it increasingly difficult to distinguish between real and false memories. Research shows how unreliable memories can be and how easy it is to instill them. Its findings can have tremendous implications in areas such as testimony of crimes and memories of childhood sexual abuse.
