Writing Sample: 3 Science Experiments You Should Name Drop to Totally Impress Your "Friends"

Have you ever found yourself at a gathering of pseudo-intellectuals? The guests are name dropping like mad, adding syllables to words to bolster the verbal character count. Making others feel slow and inadequate is the name of the game.

Never fear, however, that's why you're here. You’re going to fake it 'til you make it. You don't need to go into horrendous student loan debt nor do you need to actually understand anything. Just memorize these three famous and pivotal science experiments for your next social gathering.

1. The Milgram Experiment

In the 1960s, before there were many regulations regarding ethics in research, professor Stanley Milgram subjected hundreds of people to the psychological shock of their lives - literally. Actually, it's not so literal. In this experiment, test subjects were placed in front of a contraption connected to a person in another room. Beside the subject was a "doctor" (read: paid actor). The participants were told by this "doctor" to use the panel before them to shock the person in the other room. While mostly hesitant, most people were willing to shock the unfortunate soul into excruciating pain. (Spoilers: The panel wasn't really connected to anything and the people in the other room were also actors).

The Takeaway

People are willing to act beyond their normal moral comfort zone when instructed to do so by an authority figure. Use this to provide Hobbesian commentary on the nasty, short, and brutish nature of man. Mention an authoritarian government for additional flavor.

2. The Stanford Prison Experiment

A decade after Milgram's house of electrifying horrors, Phillip Zimbardo at Stanford University recruited several dozen students to play cops and robbers. Some students were assigned the role of prison guard. The rest were assigned the role of prisoner. The participants roleplayed over the course of six days, which resulted in the "guards" physically and emotionally abusing their "prisoners" for just over 6 days until one of the researchers thought that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. (It was later revealed that “guards” were coached and other variables were tampered with, among a variety of other unethical, unscientific practices.)

The Takeaway

Again, people are sadistic and get easily power crazy. Drop a super saccharine cherry onto your intellectual cheesecake with the terms "power of suggestion” and “cognitive dissonance” to emphasize that you really understand the underlying social constructs revealed by this experiment. You can also reference Lord of the Flies.

3. The Watching Eyes

More recently, researchers at Newcastle University conducted an experiment in the lobby of their very own psychology department. They had a coffee station that people could pay for via the honor system. As you may imagine, some paid, some did not. Over the course of several weeks, the researchers pasted different images above the coffee station. The images were mundane out of context. However, when the researchers posted pictures of a pair of eyes above the coffee stand, the money jar was noticeably more full.

The Takeaway

People act differently if they know or feel like they are being watched. You can explain that it’s a subconscious thing having to do with the id, ego, supergo, and maybe something called focaccia. (Say it with enough confidence and alacrity and no one will notice.)

What You Should Actually Take Away

Forget all of this. I'm serious. Don't name drop any of these, please. While this isn't to say you shouldn't actively seek to educate yourself, you also need to realize when the people around you are toxic. Go ahead and learn more about these experiments of your own volition, but don't do yourself the disservice of resorting to shallow social tricks. If you need to learn anything from these experiments it's that the human psyche, while impressively robust, isn't infinitely flexible. For the sake of your emotional well-being, stop going to social functions that make you feel inferior. Chances are, while those people might be experts at shallow "high brow" games, their depth and long-term worth are just that - shallow.

Seek out like minds and hearts. You'll be a lot happier there.