5 awesome psychological studies

I was talking with someone today and explaining my roots in math and psychology, and explained that while I had always been better in math, psychology had always been way more fun, because of its applicable nature. As badass as math is, psych comes across as a little more relatable, so with that, here are five of my favorite psychological studies, in no particular order.

1. Cutting people in line (Ellen Langer). This study is the crux of why psychology can get you far in life. Langer simply asked to cut people in line to make copies, and about 60% complied. When she mentioned that she was in a rush, this number jumped to 94%. However, when she asked to cut in line because she needed to make copies, this number was still above 90%. The simple existence of the word "because" is pretty important.

2. Asch's conformity study (Solomon Asch). While the article may not be the best-written, it has some useful bits of information and a handy video. Participants were in a room with a number of other people, who all claimed the single line on the right to be line B, when in fact it is clearly line C. Thirty-two percent of participants conformed, but what's telling here is the reason they did so. The majority of the 32% believed privately that line C was in fact correct, but did not want to appear in disagreement from their peers.

3. A class divided (Jane Elliott). While this study wasn't conducted in a lab setting, it's a pretty unsettling experiment nonetheless. During the days of segregation, Elliott walked into her classroom and told her students that blue-eyed children were superior. The children quickly bought into this idea of the blue-eyed people being the better people and all it took was one authority figure telling them so. Check out the beginning of this video to see the true power of this study.

4. Change blindness. One of the coolest parts about psychology is that you never think that you'll fall victim to what you're seeing other people consistently do. Try this one - you're giving someone directions, and two people holding a large painting get in your way. Would you notice if there was a different person jumping in the conversation? Watch this video and see what happens.

5. The Milgram experiment (Stanley Milgram). This might be the most famous psychological experiment, and once again goes to show how much obedience to authority, even subtle, subconscious hints of it. Participants were told that they were the "teacher" in an experiment involving another human as the "learner," who would repeat lists of words back and would be shocked by the teacher (the participant) if any mistakes were made. Now, no one was actually shocked in this experiment, but the participants didn't know that. Not only did 65% of participants shock what they believed to be was another human to lethal levels in response to the experimenter, but these results held strong across variations of the experiment. There were distinct differences between the attire of the authority figure (white lab coat vs. regular street clothes), the building setup (Yale academic building vs. an old warehouse), proximity of the learner and the authority figure (out vs. in the same room)...lots of variations that make for some very powerful results. Shocking, even.