Is humanity really that bad? While there are countless tales of people exhibiting kindness and doing good, we can't help but feel downhearted to know that, sometimes, we are our own worst enemies. As proof, here are some experiments that show just how dark and dismal our nature can really get.
10Rich People Are Terrible
There are plenty of stories about rich people willingly sharing their wealth with the less-fortunate folk. However, a US study conducted in 2012 confirmed that the rich are more ruthless in their everyday dealings. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Toronto observed that drivers of fancy car brands cut off their fellow drivers a whopping four times as often as those who drove cheaper cars. They were also seen cutting off pedestrians who had the right of way three times more than their less-moneyed counterparts. In addition to the field observations, the researchers conducted a series of lab experiments. They found that rich people had a bigger tendency to lie and cheat to get what they wanted. Last but not least, it was also proven that rich people would actually be more willing to take candy from a baby. The researchers concluded that wealth can distort an individual's moral and social norms, thereby making them more prone to engage in what the rest of us deem unethical behavior.
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9People Eat With Their Eyes Our eyes really can deceive us, especially when it comes food. Brian Wansink, a psychologist and nutrition expert at Cornell University, demonstrated the power of visual stimuli in a series of food experiments he conducted on unsuspecting consumers. In his most famous experiment—which incidentally won him an Ig Nobel Prize—Wansink made his 54 subjects eat from four bowls of soup in a typical restaurant setting. Unbeknownst to them, Wansink rigged two of the bowls with a hidden mechanism so that they would keep on refilling. As expected, those who ate from the bottomless bowls ingested 73 percent more soup than those who ate from the regular ones. Amazingly, they also said that they didn’t believe they ate more nor felt any fuller than the rest of the participants. The experiment confirmed Wansink’s theory—the more food there is on our plate, the more we tend to overeat.
8Some People Intentionally Run Over Animals On The Road
How many human beings in their right mind would run their car over a poor, defenseless turtle? Apparently a lot, as Clemson University student Nathan Weaver found out during his study. His experiment—originally conceived to help endangered Eastern box turtles safely cross South Carolina's roads—took an ugly turn when he saw that 1 in 50 drivers would intentionally hit a plastic (thank goodness) turtle he had placed on the road.
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To make sure this wasn’t just a fluke, Weaver placed the plastic turtle on another road and got the same results. Although the discovery came as a shock to many, some veteran scientists weren’t so surprised. Hal Herzog, a psychology lecturer at the Western Carolina University, explained that some people occasionally feel they must prove that they are at the top of the food chain. What better way to prove their dominance over the rest of the animal kingdom than by running over some turtles?
7Another Obedience Experiment With Dismal Results
In a more realistic variation of the infamous Milgram obedience experiment, psychiatrist Charles Hofling all but one of them followed the order. In the aftermath, the nurses defended themselves by saying that it was normal procedure for them to follow doctors’ orders given over the phone. What made the findings more intriguing was the fact that during the experiment, another group being interviewed said that they would not follow such an order. According to Hofling, this represented famous Conformity Experiment. He showed a set of vertical lines to a group of five students and asked them one-by-one which of the lines was longer. Unbeknownst to the fifth student, his fellow participants were actually in league with Asch and were given prior instructions to answer the question wrongly. Asch repeated his experiments with several groups of students. He found that one-third of them gave the same answer as their peers, even though the answer was clearly wrong. Only few
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defied the other four students and gave a correct answer. Even then, Asch discovered that those who gave the right answer showed more signs of stress than those who went along with the group.
4We Can Be Blind To Things Right In Front Of Us Let's face it, we are all sometimes guilty of inattentional blindness—failing to see the unexpected because our attention is focused elsewhere. In 1999, American psychologists Daniel Simons and Chris Chabris demonstrated this in a humorous fashion with their now-famous become Nazis themselves during the experiment. Read more: http://listverse.com/2014/05/30/10-experiments-to-lessen-your-faith-in-humanity/ 10 Experiments To Lessen Your Faith In Humanity To read more on this topic click here
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