# Need cite for famous sociology experiment - too well-behaved students **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 17, 2011, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192 "2011-11-17T01:01:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![yelimS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/54ee81/32.png) [@yelimS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yelimS)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/1 "2011-11-17T01:01:25Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![asharksrevenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/898d66/32.png) [@asharksrevenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asharksrevenge)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/2 "2011-11-17T01:56:34Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/3 "2011-11-17T03:01:08Z")
> [@yelimS](#): > > 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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![yelimS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/54ee81/32.png) [@yelimS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yelimS)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/4 "2011-11-17T03:04:28Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/5 "2011-11-17T03:31:10Z")
The parents got suspicious when the kids tried to [electrocute](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) them. ---
**Author:** ![yelimS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/54ee81/32.png) [@yelimS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yelimS)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/6 "2011-11-17T03:37:26Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/7 "2011-11-17T06:22:45Z")
> [@asharksrevenge](#): > > 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. The concept was Jeremy Bentham’s. Foucault picked up on it a couple centuries later: > **[Panopticon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon)** > > The panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single prison officer, without the inmates knowing whether or not they are being watched. > Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they... ---
**Author:** ![Lucretia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/13edae/32.png) [@Lucretia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucretia)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2011, 10:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/8 "2011-11-17T10:32:32Z")
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?” ---
**Author:** ![yelimS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/54ee81/32.png) [@yelimS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yelimS)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2011, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/9 "2011-11-19T14:50:25Z")
In case anyone’s interested, I found out who this was - Harold Garfinkel, in a ‘breaching’ experiment > [@James Halls](#): > > In one experiment, Garfinkel asked his students to imagine they were lodgers when in their family home, and act out this imagined role of a stranger for up to an hour(1992: 47). Of forty-nine cases, nine students either refused to do it or were unsuccessful. In all the remaining cases the families were ‘stupified’, and ‘vigorously sought to make the strange actions intelligible and to restore the situation to normal appearances’ (1992: 47). Whereas normally the students would make use of the background knowledge about their families and ways in which to interaction with them, in acting the part of a stranger this was not undertaken. Shared assumptions which bring the impression of normality were temporarily discarded so that family members could not make sense of the situation, leading to intense frustration and aggression. [pdf](http://www.essex.ac.uk/sociology/student_journals/ug_journal/UGJournal_Vol5/2011SC301_JamesHalls.pdf) The original text can be found [here](http://books.google.com/books?id=OuwDc3vZ8OoC&pg=PA25&dq=Studies+in+Ethnomethodology+garfinkel&hl=en&ei=C8HHTsb8Ls334QSDxPhP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=stupefied&f=false), page 44 onwards. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/10 "2011-11-20T12:55:20Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2011, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-cite-for-famous-sociology-experiment-too-well-behaved-students/603192/11 "2011-11-20T22:59:28Z")
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.