Social psychology: how did this psychology develop in the period after Mesmer? - Chapter 10

Johann Joseph Gassner (1727-1779) was a priest who claimed that he could cure disease through exorcism. A lot of patients reported improvement after treatment, but many others thought he was going too far and applied it carelessly. That is why the Viennese physicist Franzz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) was asked to investigate the treatments of Gassner. Mesmer could try to cure patients in a similar way, but then through magnetism rather than of supernatural exorcism. Mesmer duplicated the effects of Gassner and stated that the effects were the result of a strong magnetic force. He explained Gassner's results in a naturalistic and scientific way. Gassner was banished and was not allowed to perform any more exorcisms. Mesmer did a number important discoveries about the phenomenon of hypnotism and has made an attempt to explain this scientifically. He also researched the social influence processes.

What is animal magnetism?

Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) was able to cure patients in the same way as Gassner, but he did also provoke a natural force as a therapeutic mechanism, instead of a so-called supernatural exorcism. He healed many patients and explained that this was due to a strong magnetic force that was concentrated in his own body. So he delivered a naturalistic and 'scientific' explanation. Gassner was then exiled and was not allowed to exercise exorcisms any longer. Mesmer made important discoveries about hypnosis, the process creating a mental concentration that leads to a state of high influenceability and tried to explain this in a scientific way. He also did important research in the field of social influence, which have led to many developments in the social psychology. 

Of his life before 1766, little is known. In 1766 Mesmer got his doctorate in medicine. Much of his dissertation he had taken over from someone else, but one of the parts that he had not copied was about a force he called animal gravity. He argued that magnetism was caused by a group of invisible and mysterious liquids such as electricity, gravity and gases such as helium. His plagiarism remained unnoticed. He married a rich widow and became an active socialist. He was also a good amateur musician and became friends with Mozart. In 1773, Mesmer began to treat a patient who suffered from periodic seizures consisting of symptoms such as convulsions, vomiting and inflammation. He let his patient swallow some pieces of iron and placed magnets on different parts of her body. Then she felt a certain force through her body, followed by the symptoms she had during the attacks. After the attack was over, the symptoms disappeared for six hours. He repeated this treatment a number of times and it seemed to work. Then he also applied the therapy to others but this time he indirectly suggested that once the magnets were placed, it would simulate an attack (he knew what he could expect). Most patients responded as expected.

Then he tried the treatment without magnets, but still suggesting that they were about to have an attack. The method also worked, but instead of concluding that magnetism nothing to do with his therapies, Mesmer came to the idea that his own body was a strong source of animal magnetism and that this was therapeutically just as effective as a real magnet. According to him, each person - and the associated environment - contained a magnetic strength that could sometimes be weakened. This then produced symptoms of illness. The use of a strong magnetic source strengthened the field again, which could make the symptoms disappear. This practice was called mesmerism from then on.

Mesmer became involved in two controversies. When he published his magnetic therapy, Father Hell wanted credits for his idea. Mesmer reacted badly, and this idea was soon removed from the table. A second controversy had more serious consequences for Mesmer. This was after the treatment of a young pianist, Maria Theresia Paradis, who had been blind since her third. Mesmer claimed he had restored her sight with magnetism until her parents removed her from his care, and she became blind again. Her parents then sued him. What really is happened, is uncertain. Perhaps she suffered from a psychologically induced blindness, that Mesmer actually temporarily illuminated. Nevertheless, Mesmer then fled to Paris. Here he soon got more patients than he could treat individually. When there were too many patients that came to ask for a treatment, he came up with the idea of ​​his baquet (literally: "cockpit"), which could be used for mass production of magnetic cures.

By treating people in groups there was an increase in the reactions of the patients, by the phenomenon now called social contagion by social psychologists. The reactions which were first shown by a number of patients, which showed the other patients how should respond so that they could participate too. Eventually there was also someone sent to research Mesmer, just like before with Gassner. The researchers that underwent the magnetic therapy, discovered that they were insensitive. They also discovered that people, if something was presented of which they were convinced that it was magnetized, experienced attacks, while that in fact, it was not. So they concluded that there was no evidence that magnetism existed. They did not deny that patients were sometimes influenced, but suggested that the influence was imaginary, rather than one of a physical force. According to them, animal magnetism was a false science, and after this conclusion, it was therefore no longer taken seriously. When Mesmer retired in 1784, his enthusiastic students ensured that magnetism still continued to be applied. One of these students, Amand Marie Jacques de Chastenet (1751- 1825), thereby made a number of important discoveries.

What is artificial somnambulism?

Instead of patients having attacks because of his treatment with magnetism, Chastenet managed to bring his patients into a peaceful and sleepy trance. Once in that state patients answered questions and performed complicated tasks or behaviours, without them remembering what happened afterwards. He first called this state perfect crisis, but he soon replaced the term with artificial somnambulism. In these patients, he and his colleagues soon discovered many effects that are still known today in the modern hypnotism.

Chastenet discovered that patients, once in trance, could easily be influenced to do or think things. Not being able to remember what happened during the trance is also called post-hypnotic amnesia. Posthypnotic suggestion is the effect that the participants during the trance are told what to do when they wake up, without that they are aware of this in their waking state or know what they have been instructed before. In addition Chastenet had two convictions: 1) participants in trance could do things that normally would be impossible and 2) participants cannot be hypnotized against their will or do things during the trance that go against their moral principles. An explanation for the first conviction is that hypnosis makes someone more relaxed and secure about their skills to do something which then in turn improves their performance.

Another amateur, Jose Custodio di Faria (1746-1819), was sceptical about the magnetic theory. He tried to explain why not all people reacted equally well to the magnetic procedures. He tried to explain the phenomenon by looking at the vulnerability and the predispositions of the participants. He demonstrated that trance could also be provoked without any magnetic force. One in five participants responded in his experiment the same way that Chastenet’s patients had reacted. Faria called this reaction lucid sleep. He showed that lucid sleep is possible with everyone and that it depends on the sensitivity and belief of the participants instead of magnetic forces.

Mesmerism is one of the most successful early anaesthetic methods that was used in Western countries of surgery. In 1843, W.S. Ward carried out a leg amputation and reported that the mesmerized patient had not experienced any pain. They were not convinced of this. James Esdaile (1808-1859) also applied mesmerism for his operations, reducing the death rate of dangerous operations from 50% to 5%. That too was not recognized. Despite the fact that these experiments were not acknowledged, they are historically seen as the first successful cases of anaesthesia during operations, tested by Western surgeons. In 1844, a dentist named Horace Welles found out that he could draw teeth painlessly by making his patients fall asleep with laughing gas. Other methods were ether and chloroform. These chemical ways were more reliable and universally applicable. The idea of ​​anesthetization with mesmerism disappeared this to the background. James Braid (1795-1860) concluded after a brief investigation that mesmerism was indeed real and confirmed earlier results of Chastenet and Faria. He demonstrated mesmeric effects and emphasized the sensitivity of the participants. He also came with the term neuro-hypnology as new to mesmerism. Braid published his ideas in scientific journals.

What was the contribution of Liebeault and Bernheim?

The Nancy School of Hypnosis developed greatly with the help of Ambroise Auguste Liebeault (1823-1904). He started a practice and started experimenting with hypnotic therapies. He showed that physical complaints could be manipulated through psychological and suggestive factors. He used a simple method that the patient had to stare is deep into his eyes while giving them instructions to sleep. As soon as the patient got into a trance, Liebeault told them that the symptoms would quickly disappear. Often, this was also the case. 

Hippolyte Bernheim (1840-1919) heard about Liebeault and decided to study these methods as well. He compared the characteristics of people who reacted strongly to hypnosis and people who reacted weakly to it. He concluded that the most successful results came from people from lower social backgrounds classes. He stated that patients from lower classes were probably more conditioned to obey, giving them more hypnotic sensitivity. He introduced term susceptibility, which referred to the suitability to convert an idea into an act. Strong hypnotizable patients often had this characteristic stronger.

Who was Jean-Martin Charcot?

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) was the leader of the Salpetriere School. A couple thousand poor and sick women stayed here in more than forty buildings. There was a separate institute for it men. Charcot became a doctor there. He soon gained a reputation as an excellent physician, and argued important work in the field of epilepsy, MS, and organ diseases. He became the Napoleon of the Neuroses. He also gave public lectures, which were very popular among celebrities. Charcot contributed to the rehabilitation of hypnosis as a scientific subject by presenting it as a somatic expression of hysteria. He had found similarities between hypnosis and hysteria, and he stated that hysteria and hypnosis were two aspects which came from the same underlying abnormal neurological condition. 

He disputed Liebeault's claim that hypnotic susceptibility is a normal feature. The Charcot diagnoses were based on the assumption that many neurological diseases occurred in their rare, pure form (this he called "type"), or in a partial or incomplete form ("forme fruste"). He decided to observe different groups of patients with a certain disorder, until he would encounter a group that could represent this "type" (pure form). People who suffered from epilepsy and people who suffered from hysteria formed such groups. Both in hypnosis as well as in hysteria, he found physical and mental abnormalities that were not anatomically logical and outside the control of the participant. Charcot concluded that hypnotic effects and hysteria symptoms probably have the same cause and that hypnotic susceptibility is really only a symptom.

He decided to observe Blanche Wittman (1859-1913), a woman with hysteria. He observed three phases. The first phase was catalepsy where muscle weakness took place. The second phase was lethargy, in which cramps and involuntary movements took place. The final stage was Somnambulism, involving complex automatic movements and actions (such as sleepwalking). He named these three phases grand hypnotism.

Alfred Binet (1857-1911) and Charles Fere (1852-1907) distrusted the experiments with Blanche Wittmann. They introduced the magnet into the hypnotic sessions and transported the effects in the somnambulistic phase from one side of her body to the other. Joseph Delboeuf (1831-1896) had always accepted the theory of grand hypnotism but began to doubt when he saw these new results. He replicated the effects of Charcot and concluded that the effects of grand hypnotism were artificial. He did precautions against the transfer of expectations on patients, which Charcot did not do. After Delboeuf published these findings, the tide began to turn in favour of the Nancy School. In 1891, even the patients from the Salpetriere admitted that they were wrong. Binet then did a lot of research into intentional suggestion, and in this way helped the discipline of experimental psychology. Charcot also admitted his mistakes. Yet Charcot was one of the first who investigated the interactions between emotions and physical factors, and hysteria and hypnosis had been brought to the attention.

What did Le Bon write about the masses?

Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) stated that the most fundamental social reactions of a person came from unconscious ideas and motives. He noted that when people have a new task, they focus their conscious attention on their behaviour. Once the task was well learned, the behaviour became more unconscious and automatic. He concluded that the best learnt, most effective and most motivating ideas always work on an unconscious level. He suggested that the most fundamental difference between nations and cultures came from different unconscious ideas and aptitude. He also stated that the degree of conscious control over the behaviour of an individual was reduced as soon as the person was placed in a group. Individuals in a group tend to let go of individuality and rationality and they do things they would never have done on their own. Le Bon tried to approach the behaviour of individuals in groups by explaining three factors: People in a group are aware of their large number, and the anonymity of their individuality. Together you are stronger (and more anonymous). People then feel less personally responsible. The effect of social contamination: Increased susceptibility to influencing people in groups. The last two factors have been observed before. Le Bon investigated the relationship between hypnosis and the group phenomenon  through the analyses he made about the qualities of more effective leaders in groups. The most effective but also dangerous leader is someone who is non-reflective, irrational and fanatical. Le Bon also noticed that effective leaders used three techniques to communicate with their followers – the same techniques that were used by hypnotherapists at that time. Confirmation: an effective leader always emphasised the positive more than the negative to avoid doubt and discussion. Then the repetition of this confirmation to make sure it becomes part of the subconscious. Lastly, making sure that there are always fanatic followers among the public to make sure social contamination can occur. Le Bon’s book, ‘The Crowd’, was about many social-psychological ideas: the power of social influence and suggestion, the qualities and techniques of leaders that display such influence and the behaviour of individuals that are part of such groups.

What was Binet’s experiment?

After Binet was debunked by Delboeuf, he called the unintentional suggestion the cholera of the psychology". Together with Victor Henri (1872-1940) he developed a simple test (and later several) in 1894 to test the visual memory of school children. In the test participants got to see a straight line. Then it was asked of them to choose one that is equally long from different, non-straight lines. The researchers tried to manipulate the answers with different types of suggestion, for example: 'are you sure?' The studies of Binet showed how social phenomena such as conformity, susceptibility and the eyewitness testimony of children could be easily examined in a laboratory. Norman Triplett (1861- 1931) conducted a similar investigation. His research was the first, published, English research in experimental social psychology.

Who was Floyd Henry Allport (1890-1978)?

Allport was the eldest of two brothers. After a suggestion from his teacher Münsterberg, Floyd studied the performance of individuals who act alone versus act as a group member during a number of simple time tasks. The quantity of the presentation per member of a group was more than when an individual works alone, but the quality did not represent anything. The intensity of it work (energy) that increased in the presence of others, he called social facilitation. Also he discovered that in tasks where one has to judge with the aid of a scale (such as pleasant / not enjoyable), participants often avoid the extreme and stay more in the middle of the scale. The homogeneity of the reactions is due to the "conformity-producing tendency". 

Allport met Morton Prince (1854-1929) at Harvard. He was a prominent neurologist with interest in work on hypnosis and its associations with psychopathology. In 1906, he founded 'the Journal of Abnormal Psychology ', and in 1921 Allport became co-publisher. The name soon became changed to Journal of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology. Allport gained a position the University of North Carolina, where he wrote his first book for the new field: Social Psychology. Allport was of the opinion that social psychology consists of objectively observable reactions, produced by individuals in an objectively specifiable social situations. He rejected the "group fallacy" group thinking. Allport was therefore a supporter of a social psychology that is experimental and objective, focused on the reactions of individuals in controlled situations.

What research did Solomon Eliot Asch do (1907-1996) do?

Asch was born in Poland and emigrated to the US as a teenager. He studied in New York with Wertheimer, and eventually became a colleague of Köhler at the Swarthmore College. Asch pointed his focus on social conformity. He had the same social concerns as the Gestalt psychologists. The Holocaust, where people obeyed others and thus performed the cruellest of actions, pointed out that the tendency to belong was not limited to atypical personalities. It seemed to be a universal tendency which could be affected by situational factors. These social conditions, that affected conformity and obedience was exercised, interested social scientists and philosophers immensely. Asch went again back to the term "susceptibility", adding that the term suggested a kind of passive acceptance at social pressure. Asch wondered if the participants really believed everything they were told or if they were aware that what they were told was not true.

In his experiment (which he called "visual judgment"), he brought together a group of people. The subjects first looked at a map with a standard line on it and then another card with three lines, of which only one of the lines had the same length as the standard line. The subjects were asked to say out loud which line they thought had the same length. A pre-test had shown that this was an extremely easy task for people when they were alone, in that case almost 100% gave the right answer. This experiment was very similar to it Binet experiment with remembering the length of lines.

In the experiment of Asch was there is only one real participant in the group (together with a number of actors), and that real person would be the last one to give his opinion. The other fake participants gave a reaction according to a previous rehearsed script. In a typical session, all fake participants in the first two trials gave the correct reaction, and the real participant of course gave the same answer. In the third trial, all fake participants gave an incorrect answer. The real participants appeared to react differently here, but they did all show the same observable signals that were based on surprise and discomfort being. In the first trial about 20% gave the wrong answer and this percentage doubled in later trials. Only 25% of the persons remained completely independent and never agreed with the majority. Later, in interviews, they admitted that some felt obliged to follow the rest of the group with their answer, while others had more confidence in their own judgment. In follow-up experiments, Asch varied the size of the group with fake participants. When they only had one 'opponent' in a group of two, the real participants went only 4% of the time with the wrong reviews. With two opponents this increased percentage to 14%, and three to about 32%.

What is cognitive dissonance?

Leon Festinger (1919-1989) investigated cognitive dissonance, a subject in which experimental social psychology is combined with cognition. This concerns two or more ideas or beliefs that someone has about a certain subject. These ideas are with each other in conflict. If someone becomes aware of the conflict, then the person experiences an uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance and is motivated to reduce that feeling. An alternative idea, even if it is incorrect, can cause the dissonance to diminish, if it more widely accepted by other people. One of the most well-known experiments that is investigated in cognitive dissonance is the one dollar experiment.

Participants must first perform two extremely boring tasks in one hour. Then the participants are asked to interview the "next participant" – who actually is connected to the researchers - short according to a script (in which the work is extremely interesting or fun to describe) about what they should have done during the task. Some subjects received one dollar for running this script while other test subjects got twenty dollars. In the end, all participants had to make their judgment about how they told it to the next test subject. The results were that participants alone but got one dollar, judged this task more positively than those who got twenty dollars for it. The reason was that the participants in the one-dollar condition experienced significantly more cognitive dissonance because they gave false positive reports about the experience when it was actually a tedious task for so little money. The twenty-dollar participants had received more money, which made it easier for them to conduct their behaviour to justify without having to come up with an alternative explanation. The one-dollar participants had to reduce their cognitive dissonance by not accepting their real opinion about the experience.

What did Stanley Milgram's research look like?

Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) was interested in the experimental psychology of Asch and became his assistant. He replaced Asch's distinction task with a hearing task. He wanted to test first how individuals behave on their own, to the basic level of their obedience and to determine how peer pressure can increase the compliance. Two participants were put together in a laboratory. There were cards to determine who would be the teacher and student. However, there was teacher on both cards. The accomplice always said that he had drawn the card with student, after which he placed in a cell where he could not see the teacher, but they could still communicate with each other. An electrode was attached to the pupil's arm, and they said that it was connected with a shock generator. In the experiment the teacher read a list of paired words out loud, and he “tested” the student by mentioning the first word of the couple, and asking the student to mention the second corresponding word. The teacher was instructed answer to at each incorrect reply with a shock. The more mistakes, the more violent the shock would become. The student was instructed to give many wrong answers, and the goal of the researcher was to look how the teacher would respond to giving punishment. Over time, the student would show signs of being in pain and suffering, for example by striking the walls. If the teacher doubted or the researcher asked questions about what was going on, the researcher responded with authoritarian commands that the person simply had to go ahead.

What are the ethical concerns and consequences?

The results showed that after the first cries of pain, almost everyone continued to administer shocks. Two-thirds of the participants went through up until the very worst shocks. From the results, it showed that normal participants would follow instructions from a reliable (often authoritarian)figure, even if they hurt an innocent person extremely in the process.  The second discovery that Milgram did was that there was enormous pressure and tension that arose in the subjects during the experiment, which manifested itself in sweating, vibration and stuttering, or even laughing uncontrollably. 

Milgram's experiment was a demonstration of the power of how a certain situation may affect the social behaviour of individuals. This makes them behave drastically differently than they would normally have done. Even the most normal people can behave differently in a certain situation and do things that they would never normally dare to do. The strength of the situation and the associated social expectations often weigh heavier than the personal predisposition.

This point was also confirmed with the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo (b.1933). Twenty-four students were randomly assigned a role: they had to be a prisoner or a guard. Many of the participants got so deep into their role (guards showed fast sadistic behaviour and some prisoners were highly traumatized) that the experiment was cut off after six days to prevent any further psychological damage from being done. Recently, however, studies have shown that it is not necessarily justifiable to explain the behaviour of Nazi criminals such as Eichmann on the basis of the Milgram studies. Some subjects would have participated in the experiments because they knew they were participating in an experiment. This could have led to them going higher shock levels, because they knew that they did not cause any real damage. These researches have provided evidence that Eichmann and others knew very well that their actions were terrible consequences, and even continued with murders in the absence of direct orders to go ahead.

Milgram did his best to ensure that the emotional stress experienced by his participants was temporary. The majority of its participants were happy that they had participated. Also , they were allowed to ask questions about the deception used in the experiment. The debate resulted in an informed consent, which had to be completed by the participant before the start of an experiment. In the informed consent, the participant is informed about the goals of the research and procedures. Experiments like those of Milgram can no longer be performed in the same way. In another research conducted by Milgram, he investigated the small world phenomenon. Here he gave the name and address of a person (target A) in Boston to a group of people in Nebraska and he asked them if they knew that person. If not, they had to pass it on to someone from whom they thought that the person would most likely know person A. Most of these chains eventually came very close to person A and more than a quarter the message really did get received correctly. This was the basis for the idea that two random persons in the world are separated no more than six steps in such a chain.

There has been a change in social psychology with regard to the species situations that can be studied. High-impact situations such as those of Zimbardo and Milgram can never be examined in a laboratory again. Many situations that can now be investigated be limited. High-impact situations now have to occur in natural surroundings and according to experimental methods are investigated, for example by interviewing and studying people who have already experienced a traumatic experience.

"Lost in the Mall" is a research conducted by Elizabeth Loftus (b.1944) and Jacqueline Pickrell. They conducted a research in which false memories were created among participants. For ethical reasons they chose a scenario for a hypothetical event in the childhood, and which is mildly traumatizing without any negative consequences. The participants were young adults. Four short stories were given to the participants, where three of the stories really took place. The fourth was fiction and described how the participant as a child was lost in a shopping centre and how they then were reunited with their parents. The participants were asked to give their own version of the story. Despite the fact that most participants could only remember the false story, they accepted it and gave small details. One of the benefits of this experiment that reminders of criminal abuse now require more validation before they can be accepted as proof.

ExamTips

• Why would an experiment like Milgram's or Zimbardo's cause complete outrage in our current day and age?
• How can Asch's experiment explain how people sometimes act strangely in groups?
• How can cognitive dissonance help with, for instance, sales techniques?