Wendell Johnson's False Experiments

Imagine you are a student at Stanford University in the 1970s, and you hear that a psychologist is offering $15 per day to take part in his experiment. You figure that you could use the extra cash and figure that it’s a good way to help out. You and 20 other students are accepted to participate, and you are split into two groups, prisoners and guards. The only instructions given were “...do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the respect of the prisoners. No physical violence [is] permitted.” So far this experiment appears to be a fairly innocent experiment, but you gradually forget it is an experiment. The guards no longer act like themselves, and have begun to act in a brutal and sadistic …show more content…
This experiment, conducted by Wendell Johnson, was to determine if stuttering could be removed if the child was told they did not stutter. In order to do this, Johnson required some orphans. Out of the 22 orphans, 10 had been labeled as stutterers before the experiment. They were evenly split among 2 groups, with not one containing ‘worse’ stutterers than the other. The other 12 children were also randomly assigned to groups. The previously mentioned groups were told different things about their “stuttering”, even those who did not have them. The first group he praised and told them things like ''You'll outgrow [the stuttering], and you will be able to speak even much better than you are speaking now.” He planned to see if he could prevent children stuttering this way. The other group was the ‘control’, and they were constantly told and reminded of their stuttering. They were told things such as “Do anything to keep from stuttering….Don't ever speak unless you can do it right.” Undoubtedly, over a short period of time the group that was told that they stutter began to stutter even worse than before. Some, even those who did not stutter beforehand, were now stuttering and very cautious of their speech. The effects of this experiment proved to be truly adverse upon the children and has caused them serious trouble, as demonstrated when “Tudor asked whether her best friend knew about her ‘stuttering,’ Korlaske muttered, ‘No.’ ‘Why not?’ Korlaske shuffled her feet. ‘I hardly ever talk to her.’” This seemingly simple and innocent experiment had very malicious effects on the children participating. The children who were told they had a speech impediment retained one for the rest of their lives, but, however on a happy note, the children who were told they did not no longer had a speech impediment.