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



#science #history #dark

In 1924 Carney Landis sought out to study human facial expressions, but in order to get authentic reactions he used some pretty horrific methods.

The experiments would involve men women and children alike, and get increasingly bizarre.

00:00 Intro
01:13 Background
05:34 The Experiment Before
11:59 The 1924 Study
28:18 Critisim

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Sources:

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/epdf/10.1176/ajp.119.4.390

http://archive.org/details/experimentalpsyc00schuuoft/page/n9/mode/thumb?view=theater

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=F1146&viewtype=text

Schulze, R. (1912). Experimental psychology and pedagogy: For teachers, normal colleges, and universities. (R. Pintner, Trans.). George Allen & Co. https://doi.org/10.1037/13764-000

Langfeld, H. S. (1918). The judgment of emotions from facial expressions. The Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 13(3), 172–184. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0070231

https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/contagion/catalog/36-990057014290203941

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/03/06/90136813.html?pageNumber=35

source

36 thoughts on “The Dark Side of Science: The Horrors of the Facial Expression Experiment 1924 (Short Documentary)”

  1. This experiment would probably get somewhat different results these days because of the internet and normalization of sexuality. The guys who didn’t have a strong reaction to the paintings depicting naked women were probably gay lol, although back then they would’ve had to keep it a secret due to it being taboo. Also, for those of us who’ve been around sites like LiveLeak and Rotten for a while, we’ve seen far worse things than beheading a live rat, maybe even becoming desensitized to this sort of thing.

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  2. am i hearing correctly that they made a child view porn and commit/witness animal mutilation? did i get that right? or did he leave that out of the experiment ? cause if not that had to be traumatizing for that poor boy

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  3. Not only would I have not hurt the rat, I would have taken up whatever implement they had left for me to behead the rat and made it clear that they were not going to hurt an animal while I'm around. That's not something I could allow. I will not senselessly kill something and will defend it from harm.

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  4. 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.

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