It’s the one where the lecturer told his students, going home for Christmas or somesuch, to behave extraordinarily well, and do everything that could be expected of them and more - without telling why. Turns out that the parents were provoked by this behaviour, and I think some of them even complained to the university when they found out about the experiment.
I’m not certain if this is the answer you’re looking for, but the sociology experiment reminds me of Michel Foucault’s Panopticon, a system designed to oversee and maintain a body of people (here, students) to achieve orderly and positive results. Though the Panopticon is often used in reference to prisons, it can be applied here, as the main point behind Foucault’s idea is that the observed (students) are never aware how or when they are being observed (by the professor) and so must maintain proper behavior all the time, thereby self-policing their behavior without the direct need of the authority system (the professor).
Again, though I don’t know if this is the information you were looking for, I do think there is a parallel here somewhere.
This sounds highly implausible. Why would they follow their lecturer’s instruction, even in his absence, if they were not, in previous years, willing or able consistently to behave as their parents would wish, even when their parents are right there? I just can’t see a lecturer’s instruction having that much effect on students actual behavior.
Well, I think it was only for a weekend, and they may have been motivated by it being an experiment. We’ll see if a cite comes around.
asharksrevenge: Thanks, but that’s not it.
The parents got suspicious when the kids tried to electrocute them.
Not that one either, I’m afraid. I think actually it was more informal homework than actual experiment. They were supposed to help with chores in the house, and be extraordinarily polite, to the point that their parents got very annoyed by this unprecedented behaviour.
I wrote famous, because I think I’ve heard about it several times, but I might be wrong.
The concept was Jeremy Bentham’s. Foucault picked up on it a couple centuries later:
I’ve never heard of this, but in thinking about it, I can actually see the hypothetical parent’s point. My kids are great, and they were a pleasure to live with when they lived at home, but like all normal kids, I sometimes had to break out the reminders/prodding for room cleaning, dish doing, etc. I think my reaction to a suddenly over-solicitous and helpful offspring would be something along the lines of “What the hell is wrong with you?”
In case anyone’s interested, I found out who this was - Harold Garfinkel, in a ‘breaching’ experiment
The original text can be found here, page 44 onwards.
Interesting. I find the large reactions so very odd, especially since I would expect several students to have never had a chance to react all that differently. It would seem to me that you’d have to go out of your way to indicate your outsider status in order for this to work in just an hour.
I am also curious why you made the jump from acting like a stranger to being too well behaved.
Social interaction is permeated with all sorts of unspoken and even unconsidered assumptions. Comedies of manners touch upon this. Those writing laws, rules and contracts also learn that you can’t cover every contingency. A great many of our expectations never cross our minds.