The Dark Side of Science: The Horrors of the Facial Expression Experiment 1924 (Short Documentary) 

Any suggestions for future dark side videos let me know 👇

"People are disturbed when forced to look at/do horrifying shit." Hmm. Yes. This floor is made of floor.

The fact he gave up on the joke section after only two people because the second person shrugged it off says everything you need to know about this guy.

I think the worst part is that he already had the answer earlier, there are no universal emotions. That result is very interesting on its own but he really wanted a different answer.

The wild thing about these is they're almost always badly designed and yield no useful results. These universities would give these guys money to do anything. I get the feeling they didn't even have to submit a detailed proposal, they just had to say: I need money to do an experiment and they'd get it!

I love how today we talk about the psychology of the psychologists doing these experiments; bet they'd never expect that 😅

12 human females, 12 human males, and 1 human male child-OK WHO THE FUCK AUTHORIZED THIS STUDY?!

I'd say the percentage of psychopathic personalities inside the field of psychology is greater than any other scientific field. Now that would be an interesting study.

This experiment is so deeply flawed, right down to the fact that it kind of half-heartedly assumes that a single stimulus would produce the same emotional reaction in people with different backgrounds.

We learned about this in my research methods in psych class when discussing ethics in research. I couldn't believe it was a real thing

I’ve always loved how humans often can tell so much just by how they perceive things. My favorite example is talked about by Austin McConell in one of his videos, but the shot version is this; The was an artist named Jean-François Millet, and during his time he was deemed a failed artist . Now we celebrate his amazing paintings. The most famous wound have to be The Angelus; it shows a man and a woman praying over food, in a box they’ve buried (religious thing). This painting was later bought by Salvador Dali; another famous painter. Dali always had a feeling something wasn’t right about the picture. He didn’t think they were praying over food, but something else. They ended up using X-rays to see what’s under the paint, and it shows a child sized casket. Originally the two people praying were actually just morning the loss of a child. It’s unknown why Millet didn’t keep the casket, and later changed it to something less morbid. He was known to draw pictures that he remembered as a kid; maybe this painting was too real for him, or maybe it was so it’d sell better. Either way, we won’t know; what we do know is The Angelus really is a true piece of art that tells two different stories.

The first experiment made me think of every visit to the optometrist. "I'm going to shoot a blast of air into your eye, please try not to blink or move your eye". Well FFS, don't tell them that you're studying their facial expressions and then expect them to respond genuinely.

I have a bachelors of science in psychology and it's freaking weird that we never learned about this. We learned about BF Skinner and Pavlov every 20 minutes but this? We definitely should've!

You know, a study like this wouldn’t need to be done today, because we take so much authentic video of our lives, our reactions to things, etc. We could just study all of that.

The responses to the rat execution would be very different today. Think about it for a minute. This was in the 1920s and it would be quite likely that a good number of the subjects would have grown up on a farm (rats would be considered vermin to be disposed of), where they would have at the least, watched or taken part in the butchering of animals for food. Also if they were from a rural area there could have been hunting as well. The point I'm making is that asking modern group of test subjects to behead a live rat would more than likely produce a major difference of outcome. Just an admittedly, weird thought I had. Great video man. You always present well researched material in a way that is very educational without being boring, and in a non-sensationalist or dramatic way. Have a great week sir. Looking forward to the next video.

Individuals make individual expressions?! WHOA. I had no idea.

I think at least the main idea of the experiment was interesting; it would honestly be super neat to see something similar done (more ethically, and) with samples across different cultures, and perhaps different age groups as well

No matter the area, there's always ONE that has to take research off the rails! Seen a lot in psychology.

Faces are utterly fascinating. A fall onto a concrete floor i had when i was 4 made me unable to focus on the face as a whole for a while, until i got treatment, and looking back it was so disconnecting

It's interesting that this experiment concluded that men typically gave more expressive reactions, even though women are generally considered to be more emotional.

The latter experiment was (not so?) inadvertently a model of 'how to induce trauma 101': 1. Place subject into submissive position, from which they physically or psychologically feel unable to escape; 2. Establish dominance over them - preferably convince them you hold the power of life & death; 3. Alternate unpredictably between provoking negative emotion (pain, disgust, guilt, shame, etc), in your subject, and positive emotion. Ta-dah!! You've trauma-bonded your subject to you, & probably induced a post-traumatic condition too. The fact that this guy inadvertently designed an experiment which 'accidentally' mirrored now-commonly-recognised interpersonal abuse patterns probably says much more about his personal life than it ever said about human facial expressions.

I always end up feeling torn over these kinds of studies. The basic idea is actually really fascinating and could possibly provide some insight into human nature/emotions, but it's strays from a scientific research study into straight up S&M.

“He ended the joke portion after the second test subject was neutral to the joke” So the guy clearly didn’t have a backup job in comedy

The main problems with this study (and many psychology studies) were the limited sample size, sample nature (university undergraduates), and the questionable ethics at best. Couple this with tendency to torture the data and you have a fine mess. The beheading of the rats, rather nasty bit of work, was poorly thought out as many of the study subjects may not have killed an animal ever. Thus, they would not be very good at and would likely be a bit squeamish.

I would have rated this higher, maybe an 8. He outright stated he wanted to invoke the most anxiety and disturb the subjects of his experiments... really seems like he just enjoyed it, I cant fathom what they were even trying to achieve with all this

Imagine if we brought some of these cruel scientists and make them study RU-vid thumbnail facial expressions

There's points at which I have to consider that this experiment was less interested in genuine science and more a byproduct of some kind of sadism.

It would’ve been interesting if he’d done the experiment on people who’d been diagnosed as sociopaths and those who hadn’t; people who’d been incarcerated vs. law-abiding citizens.

Ofc I had to look up the skin disease book bc you told me not to. I’m impressed with how beautiful the illustrations are honestly. The first one that actually freaked me out was the breast cancer wowee

In reference to the person who perceived facial expressions by imagining how it would make them feel: I'm an artist, and I often find myself making the same expression as the character that I'm drawing, which makes for some weird social situations. I swear, I'm not angry! My picture is!

Since all participants knew that their facial expressions were being examined, the couldn't have been behaving naturally. They must have been acting to a certain degree. It rendered the whole thing useless.

bruh i'm autistic 💀 i wouldn't be able to describe the faces

They probably lost some valuable data when they threw out any photos that showed no "notable" reactions, because micro expressions are really important. I guess the photo quality probably prevented them from reading those at all though.

Oddly in group therapy a couple of years ago we were told about a few universal emotions that most people can spot when looking at an image of a person having that emotion no matter from where in the world they are. This was done by also showing us images of people (sometimes the same person) expressing different emotions. This were much more modern images. It was also explained that the exact number of this emotions is still being discussed among those who research this as they are finding different results for a couple of them. So it seems to me like research in this is still active, hopefully in a much more ethical way.

You have to wonder who allowed and/or funded some of these projects. Their conclusions are pretty obvious and basically equivalent to to "water is wet".

The rats disagree, they rate this 9/10. Neither have they consented to the experiment nor did they have their facial expressions recorded, so according to the rats, the experiment was just a waste of life.

Video suggestion: US Army’s unlawful two decade long germ warfare “experiments” on the public around the country, Headquartered mainly at “Fort Detrick” carried out by special operations division beginning in 1950 “Operation Seaspray” among other operations, alarming stuff.

If a scientist electrocutes me by surprise, we're going to discover their facial reactions to fear and pain.

Would I be that guy if I pointed out that the image attributed as “Bouguereau’s Birth of Venus” is Botticelli’s Birth of Venus?

Hey John, just a note about an error some British youtubers commonly make. Many states in the US have their own university, which they'll call X State Uni or Uni of X. They're all unique, so you do have to say the state's name as part of the university's name. Just saying State University isn't actually the name of the uni.

While I love this series, I feel like the smoke effects over the results and the super edited images (to the point of deep fry) really cheapen it. I honestly believe the raw images would speak for themselves in the context of these experiments. Trust me, it's disturbing enough as it is.

"...aged like a fine one pint bottle of milk." I'm going to have to try to remember that.

So, one could say, this whole experiment was some twisted, roundabout way of answering the age old question, “ Ya like jazz?”

8:28 quick correction, the image you had put on screen is Botticelli's Birth of Venus, not Bouguereau's. While its not an insanely important detail, i feel like its worth mentioning that Bougeureau's is generally perceived as being more sultry than Botticelli's

Couple of things: 'Stimuli' is a plural term. The singular is 'stimulus'. The obedience thing: very good spot! All-in-all, as a psychologist myself, I cannot otherwise fault this particular episode ... it is bloody accurate, and highlights the need for ethics codes. Well done, sir. 👍👍👍

I zoned out a little bit, so they MAY have mentioned this; but in that facial expression test, you’d need people from varying cultural backgrounds. A lot of the faces we make are learned through our upbringing and the society we live in. Yes, many expressions like smiling are natural. But I think for more abstract facial expressions, someone from rural Bulgaria might make a slightly different different face for disgust than say an islander from Samoa.

I'm surprised they bothered to do this before having a way of, you know, being able to take photos where you can actually see something.

It’s always such a treat to learn about things that I had no idea about. Thank you.

I think a video on Hisashi Ouchi would fit really well in this series as he was kept alive for months despite being is constant agonizing pain due to radiation damage.

When science gets dark, it gets Hella dark 💀

I haven't seen anyone address this but religious imagery being used to test emotions wouldn't work during this time period. This was a time when it was less acceptable to be critical of or dislike christianity so if test subjects did feel negatively about it they would probably keep their mouths shut about it. Am I misjudging this or is this a good point to bring up?

If told to, "ignore cameras and act natural", I'd immediately do anything other than acting naturally. That's just too much pressure 😅

I just noticed an awful lot of topics in my college psych classes are very controversial nowadays. That was in the 90's, dang I'm old. 😶

I'm autistic and was given a bonus lesson on school to learn to read expressions, where I was given examples so simplistic that it made things really damn difficult. These were bad emojis, not real expressions. It was such a useless lesson that I am sure could never have done what it was meant to. But I never needed it as I had no issue reading emotions. That has stuck with me though as a vivid memory, and made me CERTAIN that expressions were universal to all humans. That idea that they are not, that's now left me quite frustrated. I'm 32 years old now and it is only now that anyone has ever implied that expressions do not obey hard coded rules. Expressions are something that we don't just not know much about, but are apparantly something surrounded with misinformation. This cruel experiment might have seemed like a waste of time learning what we already knew, but sadly not so. Because I learned something new from this. But it is so aggravating because I know I can read emotions specifically because I memorised each expression. I learned the universal signs. And now I'm told that's wrong. So, what does that mean? Can regular people still tell what others are feeling even when they give "wrong" expressions? Do I need to learn facial expression sets like languages? I really thought I understood it, and while some people make faces that goe against what I knew, I always put the blame on them, that they were just bad at emoting when they smiled while sad. Or that this was an attempt to force themselves away from how they really feel. Because there were quite a few people who's crying looked like laughter. I feel like I have to just completely discard all the confidence I had in my ability to read faces.

"This... is a bucket." "Dear god..." "There's more." "NO!"

What a Saturday! Techmoan followed by Plainly Difficult. Doesn’t get better than this ! Landis’s experiment has an obvious flaw that would be difficult though not impossible to eliminate. He’s introduced a bias into the proceedings before any of the “stimuli” have started simply by prefacing the events with an introduction. Even an exhortation ‘not to show emotion’ has inserted a change into thought processes and you aren’t getting a true natural response. I guess the only way to partially get round this is to test for something else and introduce the experiment as something else then perhaps insert the ‘true’ parameters at some stage during the phoney test? But I suppose this would also potentially have some ethical implications as well??? Regardless it’s fascinating stuff. Thank you John.

When you set up a situation to cause it to occur when you want versus the same situation happening naturally, you have already influenced the results you're going to get, thus rendering the results questionable at best. Whatever you find may be of use in deciding more concisely what you want to study, and perhaps show you ways of how to better obtain the natural situation, but otherwise it's a useless pursuit which will only mislead you.

No one ever takes those of us who are hard of hearing into account. I have to stare at mouths, whether I want to or not. I'd prefer eye contact at all times, however I do not have that luxury. It has nothing to do with my psychology, my gender, my age... It's just what I have to rely upon first. Everything is based upon the hearing, sighted, physically "normal." Imagine having cerebral palsy, or autism, and trying to navigate the world of facial expressions. It's a good thing that there are expanded minds out there, otherwise those of the rest of us wouldn't matter at all, would we?

There is one interesting thing about expressions though, sometimes when people witness disturbing events they can sometimes just have no reaction at all and seem to be perfectly okay with what's happening in front of them, when the truth is just that it's so shocking for them that their brain straight up struggles to come to terms with what they're seeing in that moment.

I love your videos! They always are a great way for me to begin my day knowing something new 🤔

It's funny plainly, you say that this experiment set the background for obedience to authority studies as it included subtle emotional manipulation and torture. I call this whole situation the same as what my Da' put me through growing up: shame, manipulation, humiliation when sharing feelings. Sorry if this comment is off, just been mulling through the sentence you made about the study and it being low level torture when the specific telling of secrets and how the study PIs went about it feels too close to home in the crappy childhood feelings.

I had my jaw pop out of place a couple years ago and it was one of the most unbearable thing because it effected how I could show expressions on one side of my face, my trigeminal nerve was being pinched and besides that being extremely uncomfortable. It made that side of my face muscles twitch and tremble anytime I tried to activate my muscles in my face and Holly shit it drove me crazy. It really impacted me because of how uncomfortable it made me. I eventually had to bug the Dr. Enough to get a specialist exam my jaw with imaging and they had to inject numbing stuff and relaxers into the inside of my cheek and around my ear, then a Dr. With gloves on hand to put his foot on me and grab my jaw and use all of his force to manually manipulate my jaw back into it's correct socket point and without my trigeminal nerve being pinched. It was crazy how much force it took to snap my jaw back into place. (I hope I only ever had to go through that, that time, because that was one too many times for my liking!) It sucked, especially because it took so long to get the Dr. to treat my jaw. It's crazy how long it can be for Dr's to be willing to image something or do a certain test, I felt like you had to have like a clear broken arm or something for them to be willing to listen and actually find answers to their patients.. I'm just glad that readjustment procedure was done. I was going crazy before it.

I had to look this up after you said it & learned that "Homely" means the exact opposite of what it means in the USA. Here, homely means ugly & unattractive & the meaning you meant would be "comely" or "cozy."

I happened to stumble across your videos 3 days ago and I have been non-stop watching since then!! Absolutely amazing videos! Please keep it up! 🙌🙌

Just got back from disregarding your advice about the Hautkrackheiten. That is some pretty sound advice, it definitely checks out. But can you imagine living during a time, when just about everything in the world, hasn’t been properly studied. Like literally everything, or is it literally nothing? And especially during a time when safety and regulations was kinda of a wrench in the spokes when it came to science.

Oh 20th century psychology and physiology, you knew nothing yet traumatized so many. Gone but certainly not forgotten...

Love your channel, great info every time

Ethically I’d say a five. The issue of using a child concerns me with regard to obtaining genuine and informed consent.

New episode let’s go!!

I was most affected by my self-imposed task of pausing, sitting in the dark and attempting to multiply 281 X 285 in my head without writing anything down. It took FIVE excruciating minutes. I landed on 78,885. That’s wrong. The RAT drama was welcome relief from my mental exertion and subsequent failure.

Only just discovered your channel , love your story telling method and easy to understand diagrams etc , I’ve subscribed and have enjoyed the content thank you for something a bit different

That experiment pointed at why lots of modern psychologists fail today : that need to classify, and place people in "boxes". They brush aside important things like.. your personality.. once they figured out where they think you should fit after only a few questions.

Please never stop telling us what your weather is like! I am from a currently sunny part of Western Canada and I always look forward to that cheerful ending 😊

I once worked in a clock factory. I got tired of making faces. 😌

6:16 19 men from college. A very diverse group of subjects with a non existing placebo group, great science xD

The question I'm not hearing an answer to is were the frogs in the bucket alive. if we're talking about the cruelty of the rat situation, he either fried during or killed a lot of frogs ahead of time. And then there's the argument on killing a domestic animal in an experiment as opposed to a wild one. Unless he caught a bunch of wild rats, those would have been domestic and technically different from the ones considered vermin.

I wouldn't trust any of the people who killed the poor rat without a second thought.

I'm afraid that if I had to be there, they would record me throwing the ammonia on experimenter face.

Excellent, John!!! Thank you!

Hurra! I love these longer, more in depth, videos.

Did he have body guards for the second bucket experiment? Can't imagine someone not socking him for shocking them

But not all of our emotions are on our face. We use our body to convey emotions too.

Cheers John thanks for another great video! 🍻

Perfect timing. I have physhcology exam on Thursday and this study might be asked

why do all old black and white photos just make everything more creepy and unsettling?

What a unless traumatic experiment

I really identified with the comment about some of the subjects smiling at negatively stimuli throwing off the results. My natural reaction to high stress situations is a wide smile.

Interesting thank you. More of these type of programmes would be a good idea! 😁👍

That Gong sound in quick succession is incredibly annoying in an infuriating way. Great video though

So, of course I went right out and looked at _Atlas der Hautkrankheiten_ and I thought it was absolutely fascinating. But then, I have photographs of my gallbladder both in situ and in the process of being removed. The surgeon, who apparently recognized a kindred spirit, asked me if I wanted pictures. I said, "Heck, yes!" When I was being discharged I asked the nurse to please get the pictures the surgeon had promised and she looked at me like I had grown a supernumerary head.

I come here for the South London weather report. Great reporting! Jokes aside, these are exactly the kind of videos I would have watched as a child had RU-vid been around back then. I read lots of books on gnarly science stuff. Great to see these stories told so well.

Just a note I'm gonna ad is that men in the 1920s probably would've been pretty desensitized to animal beheading with many of them likely even growing up killing chickens the same way I see how this could effect a study

This guy was completely sadistic and sociopathic and clearly enjoyed watching subjects experience trauma and pain. It’s obvious. He also threw out photos that didn’t show what he wanted. So absurd. He was placing subjects in positions to “dominate” them (his words), filming them to “study” later, and then crafting intensely cruel and violent situations to get a “reaction” (lighting firecrackers under a WWI vet is hardly “just a prank bro” - this idiot didn’t understand basic human instincts apparently or rather more likely he was deliberately crafting absurdly violent and sadistic situations that involved extremes of violence and “sex”). Decapitating an animal as part of an experiment into - supposedly - facial expressions? What in the AF? What would the act of decapitating an animal - which the experimenter rates negatively if they don’t do it fast enough ffs commenting creepily on the pain of the animal because a human empathized with the creature - tell us about ordinary facial expressions? Extremes are not good ways to understand norms. It’s also obviously grotesque. It makes zero sense other than a deliberate attempt to shock his colleagues and use genuine emotions against his own subjects so he could win fame etc. It’s a great example of sociopathy in action actually. I have no idea how delivering shocks, decapitating animals, and ridiculing subjects after asking them to confess sexual “secrets” is in any way considered “low level trauma.” That is an appalling level of trauma that is actually used to dehumanize prisoners of war for example. It’s not in any way neutral or “low level” to decapitate a live animal when the subject is not say a butcher - or a sociopath. Or of course any rational way to read “facial expressions,” (and who was supposed to read the expressions since the idiot picked out the photos he liked best? How is that in any way an organic way of studying expressions generated?), which were already a topic of study and understood across species, is destroyed by such extreme behavior on the part of the experimenter.

Really, the biggest issue i see is that they can see their faces but the subjects weren't asked what they were feeling at the time. Which means the expressions can't be properly matched with emotions.

This channel has the best supporting graphics on all of RU-vid.

Thank you for making this, I didn't know of this experiment until now. One thing I would suggest is that you read Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman, as he has proved that truly felt emotions ARE in fact universal, unlike what you state at the end of this video. Response to stimuli of course isn't universal, nor are social expressions, which I suspect wasn't seperated from felt emotion in this study, hence the confusion.

Nah, the 16th test was deadass just a torture method. Imagine being forced to choose between either killing a rat, or getting shocked.

"Don't forget these people were from the 1920s and would probably have had a greater shock value." Ah yes, back in the days before 10-year-olds were looking at porn.

I love this channel. Thanks for rhe always outstanding content!

So he found nothing out. The scared people looked scared, the people in pain looked pained, the people who were embarrassed looked embarrassed. Glad it took a scientist to figure that out.