You read an advertisement in a local newspaper entitled "Want to gain 4 dollars in one hour exchange of your time?". Like 295 people, you answer this advertisement (4$, in the Fifties. it that of are always taken).
(You come to join the people having answered, they, with an invitation letter, received at them. (12% answered). The majority of these future participants are postal workers, professors of college, salesmen, engineers and manual workers. From the intellectual point of view, the range goes from those which did not continue their studies, until the holders of doctorates and other occupational qualifications). .
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Room and personnel: .
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Research takes place in a luxurious laboratory of the university of Yale, which impresses you, and reassures you on the legitimacy of research undertaken here.
What you do not know, it is which will be exactly the experiment in which you will take part (you think of coming for an experiment on "the effect of the punishment on the training").
And, which you know even less, it is that the role of the experimenter is played by a teacher in Biology with the college, 31 years. This one carries a gray blouse and keeps an impassive maintenance and a rather severe expression throughout all experiment (to some extent the stereotype of the experimenter).
The role of the pupil (a collaborator) is held, him, by a 47 year old accountant, américano-Irish extraction. It adopts a rather gracious attitude and sympathetic nerve. It received a special drive besides. .
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Method: .
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The researcher, you, and the collaborator (the accountant) be present (you are unaware of that the other person present with you and the experimenter are in fact a collaborator). After a short introduction, presenting several theories worked out by psychologists on the training (of which one supporting that a punishment following an error allows a good training, for example a smacking), the researcher explains why one of you will have the role of professor, and the other the role of pupil.
