You’ve signed up to participate in a psychological study on your university campus.
It’s run by an esteemed professor, you’ll earn some pocket change, and as a side bonus perhaps
contribute to the greater scientific knowledge of humanity. But the next thing you know,
you have electrodes strapping you to machines and a camera recording you
as a lawyer berates and belittles every belief and value that you hold dear.
Today on Nutty History, we’re putting a magnifying glass on the Harvard Experiments,
the mysterious and unethical series of experiments conducted on unwitting students from 1959 to 1962.
The year was 1959, the setting was Harvard yard. I’m sorry, I had to do an accent once. 22 Harvard
students were asked, or possibly pressured, to participate in a vague series of psychological
experiments that would “contribute to the solution of certain psychological problems.”
You don’t have to be a Harvard grad to know that that description is kind of sketchy.
The subjects were paid for their time, typically 2 hours a week. For step one of the experiment,
they were instructed to write an essay about their life philosophy, and were told that they would be
debating it with another student. Instead they were straight up duped. These human guinea pigs
were led into a brightly lit room, seated facing a one-way mirror. Through a hole in the wall,
a camera recorded everything. Electrodes were attached to their bodies to measure
their heart and respiratory rates. The students were then instructed to defend their personal
life philosophy. But instead of being met with the promised discussion with a peer, they were
interrogated by a lawyer, an older and more experienced opponent whose aim was to humiliate
and completely desecrate all of the student’s most core beliefs. The interrogator prepared for each
subject by studying their essays, learning about their hopes and dreams with the aim of causing
them to question everything they thought they knew. The subjected students, given Code Names,
describe their helplessness during the experience as the verbal abuse continued.
While 2 hours might not seem like the end of the world, over the course of three years,
each student spent on average 200 hours in the chair, which one student, code named Cringle,
compared to being strapped into the electric chair. After interrogations, students were forced
to watch themselves be berated, reliving the embarrassing ordeal all over again.
So what the hell was the point of all this? And who gave the okay on psychologically traumatizing
the school’s own students for 3 years? The Harvard experiments were led by Henry Murray,
a respected psychology professor whose contributions to the field
can still be found in modern day psychological assessments. Like many of the greats, though,
Murray’s career wasn’t squeaky clean, ethically speaking. By his own words, Murray called the
interrogative attacks of the Harvard experiments, “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive.”
So it certainly wasn’t a case of good intentions gone wrong. The goals of this experiment weren’t
and aren’t entirely known, and it seemed Murray often deviated from an exact scientific method.
One of his graduate student assistants described him as “not the most systemic scientist,” and the
professor himself often gave varying answers, at times suggesting his data had no value at all.
Cool, well that’s a good reason to emotionally scar a bunch of developing minds!
There’s other evidence from Murray’s background, however, that suggests he wasn’t conducting these
experiments just for kicks. In World War II, he was part of the Office of Strategic Services
(later known as the CIA), where he helped assess agents and collaborated on a psychological profile
of Hitler. The profile report specifically mentioned that Hitler would commit suicide
if defeat was near. How about them apples? He also monitored military experiments on
brainwashing. Hmmm. Get your tinfoil hats ready. A popular theory is that Murray’s
ties with the CIA continued post WWII, and into the Cold War. During this time,
the CIA was focused on interrogation training and techniques - how to ensure their own men
would stand up to interrogation, and how to effectively break enemy prisoners.
This involved tests and experiments designed to psychologically break down the subject. Sound
familiar? Much of this testing was encompassed under the notorious Project MKUltra, which would
use many unknowing participants to test the use of drugs and procedures in interrogations
for potential mind control. Some allege that the Harvard Experiments were actually part of MKUltra,
which did utilize a variety of other institutions to secretly conduct its operations.
Also adding fuel to the fire? MKUltra drugged many of its subjects with LSD (without their consent,
for your information), thinking that bad acid trips were the key to controling someone’s mind.
Henry Murray, funnily enough, also had an interest in psychedelics. Right around the same
time period, he supervised and supported a young Harvard researcher by the name of Timothy Leary
in a study of hallucinogenics. According to our data, that’s one coincidence too many.
It’s impossible to tell what lasting impact the Harvard experiments may have had on its subjects,
but one went on to make history in a way that didn’t exactly earn him a spot in the alumni
hall of fame. Ted Kaczynski, AKA the Unabomber, terrorized the nation with a bombing campaign
for seventeen years that killed three people, and injured 23 more. Kacsynski, at the time,
was living as a recluse in a cabin in the woods, and used the bombs as a twisted way to
draw attention to his anti-technology beliefs. Which aren’t actually so crazy compared to the
methods he used to advertise them. But before that rap sheet, Ted was a young Harvard student,
enrolling in the Ivy League school on scholarship at just 16-years-old. Kaczynski was a mathematical
whiz, who was also unlucky enough to be, according to him, pressured into partaking in
Murray’s experiments. Many believe that Murray’s humiliating and traumatic experiments, which
Kacsynski called the worst experience of his life, were instrumental in shaping Ted into a well,
a very talented serial killer. As a younger and less mature student,
he may have been more susceptible to manipulation and taken a harder hit,
psychologically speaking. Others theorize that the ordeal made him increasingly isolated from
Harvard society and led to a hatred of technology and psychology that later turned murderous.
Prior to undergoing the Harvard experiments, Ted was described by a Harvard health-services
doctor as “exceedingly stable.” Uh, well here’s some crow you can eat, Doc.
Although the methods of Murray’s Harvard experiments seem stunningly unethical
by today’s standards, at the time they really didn’t go against any research code of conduct.
It wasn’t until a whole bunch of other disturbing experiments occurred that the American
Psychological Association instituted in-depth guidelines on research ethics and a review board.
You know, disturbing experiments like the one where participants were made to believe that they
had fatally electrocuted other participants. But that’s another video for another day. Let us know
in the comments what other deranged debacles from history you’d like to hear about next.