Ahhh 1920s psychology… back when you could do anything in the name of science. Like traumatising a baby or making people believe they'd killed someone. The good old days.
Picture this: It's 1924, and Carney Landis, a psych graduate student at Minnesota University, has an ambitious idea. He wanted to determine if humans had universal facial expressions for various emotions.
Now in order to do this, he needed to recruit his fellow graduates, who were more than willing to be subjected to Landis’ various experiments. At first, it started out quite tame. A bit of jazz music, a bit of Bible reading, but no pattern of repeatable facial expressions emerged with such basic stimuli.
Time to turn up the dial, bringing in new stimuli to elicit fear, disgust, sadness, and pain. Yes, that was his goal. Remember this is 1920s psychology. No rules.
In comes pornographic images (likely contraband pictures of ankles and armpits) and to really get things going, some medical photos of people with horrendous skin conditions. Ewww.
But still no average response.
Now Landis brought in the big guns. Literally. He fired surprise gunshots in the hopes of getting some kind of universal response… But still nothing!
What about getting them to stick their hand in a bucket without knowing what was inside?! It could be anything! It was in fact a bucket full of live frogs with a little surprise down the bottom - electrical wires that produced a shock. The man was a genius.
Have we mentioned that one of the test subjects was a 13-year-old patient with psychological issues and high blood pressure? All above board. Carry on.
Just when you’re thinking Landis would’ve packed it all in and given up on the elusive average facial expression response, he escalated the stimuli even further. Participants were presented with a live mouse and a sharp knife. Have a listen/watch to find out what he made them do (remembering the 13-year-old was roped into the study too).
So did Landis reveal any universal facial expressions in response to his ever-escalating stimuli? Or did the aftermath of this classic 1920s psych experiment leave only electrocuted frogs, blown eardrums, and traumatised children?
While Landis's experiment was extremely subpar on the ethical front, it does raise intriguing questions about our ability to read emotions. Humans possess a nuanced understanding of each other's emotions as seen through facial expressions alone, even if we can't pinpoint the exact facial patterns that we are picking up on.
Thanks, no thanks, Landis.
SOURCES:
Landis, C. (1924). Studies of emotional reactions. I. 'A preliminary study of facial expression." Journal of Experimental Psychology, 7(5), 325–341. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076072
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[00:00:00] Rod: Pull out a mouse. Live mouse, put in their left hand, other hand he'd put a sharp knife. And he says to them, behead the mouse. He said, if they don't do it, he'll do it for them in front of them. This is a good point to mention most of the subjects were his peers and colleagues with one notable exception. And there was a 13 year old boy who happened to be in the department as a patient because he had psychological issues and high blood pressure.
[00:00:23] Will: Jesus fucking Christ.
[00:00:25] Rod: So he got him in
[00:00:26] Will: oh my God. Just bring in a 13 year old
[00:00:29] Rod: who already has high blood pressure and psych issues.
[00:00:31] Will: So 13 year old, either you kill the mouse or I kill the mouse.
[00:00:34] Rod: It's for science son.
[00:00:36] Will: Oh my God.
[00:00:36] Rod: At least one third of the people beheaded the mouse. So the other two thirds, he did it.
[00:00:41] Will: Yeah. And look, I know a lot of mice are killed for science, but I'm not quite sure if mice need to be killed to see if people have a consistent facial reaction to the killing of mice.
[00:00:58] Rod: It must have been wonderful to be a psychologist in the first half of the 20th century.
[00:01:02] Will: Jesus fucking Christ.
[00:01:06] Rod: It seems you could do anything to people from traumatizing a baby who is patting a cute little animal to making people believe that they'd kill someone. You seem concerned.
[00:01:17] Will: I'm not concerned. I am just, holy shit. We managed to find a fucking pack of assholes don't we
[00:01:23] Rod: like finding horrifying old time psych experiments is like shooting fish in a barrel. We know this uhhuh, but I think barrel fish dishes are delicious.
[00:01:31] Will: They are the best fish. The fish that barrel fish rejects make barrel fish the best fish
[00:01:37] Rod: anyway. Yeah, look, I know it's good fish. And so look, I'm gonna give you a belter from the world of 1920s Emotion research.
[00:01:51] Will: Welcome to the Wholesome Show, the podcast that believes you can never go too far to pull stuff outta the whole of science. Ah, yeah. I'm Will Grant.
[00:02:02] Rod: I am Roderick G. Emotion studying Lamberts. 1924. The Journal of Experimental Psychology, published this innocuously titled Paper Studies of Emotional Reactions one, a preliminary Study of Facial Expression. Sounds fine. So it was written by Carney Landis. So he is this psych graduate student at the, at Minnesota University. So he wanted to find out if all human beings made the same facial expressions in response to the same emotions. So he's kinda looking for you Emotional expression universes.
[00:02:34] Yeah.
[00:02:34] Will: Does shock look like this? Does fear look like this? Does happiness look, yeah, I kind of feel like we kind of know this already, that happiness looks like a certain thing, not like that.
[00:02:46] Rod: It's fair looking for these sort of human universals. And I get that. Like one of my arguments, one of the reasons I stopped doing psych after while, is because I'm like, you talk about human universals, but I don't think you look for them very well.
[00:02:56] Only in white undergraduate students in America, England, and Australia, for example. They're better than that now. Oh, they're universal. And that's true. Okay. So anyway he didn't believe, however, if he was gonna look for this, that the average person could intentionally make the emotional faces. So he said, show me happy. Like you, you're like, I can't show you happy.
[00:03:13] Will: Yeah. It's kind of hard to authentically do shock or anger or happy
[00:03:17] Rod: stereotype. Like if I say, you know, show me angry, and you go and show me shocked, you go. Gracious goodness me
[00:03:24] Will: yeah and they look different from the actual version of them, or at least they're close but we can tell the difference, I'll bet
[00:03:30] Rod: That's part of his thing. So he went, okay, I'm gonna come up with ways to simulate people's reactions to things. So I'm gonna give them things that will unambiguously offer stimuli for them to react in different ways. Like he's looking for joy, curiosity, contentment, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:03:48] Which seems fine. So, yeah, specific stimuli. So he recruits a bunch of his fellow graduate students and he paints their faces with his standardized marks. Pictures on different parts of their face so it's easy to sort of look, you know, eyebrows are descending. Cheek bones are high or low.
[00:04:02] Will: No, literally that's motion capture. Yeah. It's just making bits of your face more obvious.
[00:04:07] Rod: Yeah, exactly that. So, and again I'm like, makes sense. Because and we're talking 1920s tech, so he's, he'll stimulate an emotion, take photographs, and then, you know, look at them.
[00:04:16] So then he does the face painting and he subjects 'em to different stimulant, takes the photos. First stimulant. Jazz music. Cool.
[00:04:25] Will: What is he trying to stimulate here though? Is it his anger?
[00:04:28] Rod: Confusion? He'd read a passage from the Bible
[00:04:32] Will: again. What is he stimulating here?
[00:04:35] Rod: Bible face.
[00:04:37] Will: Put it on your Bible face.
[00:04:39] Rod: Mine is really? So he also, another one was, you know, telling a lie and I dunno exactly the details. Did all this, took the photos, looked at the faces.
[00:04:48] Will: I really thought you were gonna gimme some worse stimuli then.
[00:04:51] Rod: So he looked at those. No real patterns. Time to beef shit up. New stimuli. Trying to elicit fear, disgust, sadness, and pain.
[00:05:02] Will: So just a reminder, this is 1920s psych trying to elicit fear, disgust
[00:05:07] Rod: sadness, and pain. First up
[00:05:12] Will: modern psych grad students love you. We love you. This is great. I know that some of you are listening to this. I do love when you hear these things, you think, what bit of you is going, that's horrible. And what bit of you is going, fuck yeah. Oh, I wish I could do that. I wish I could do that.
[00:05:29] Rod: Honestly, when I started psych, I've told you this before, I thought I really want to end up like working for McDonald's or a TV show because, no ethics committees. Do what you want.
[00:05:37] Will: You are a terrible person though.
[00:05:38] Rod: But I didn't stick with it.
[00:05:39] Will: Our listeners are not terrible persons
[00:05:40] Rod: but I didn't stick with it. Second round of stimuli. Pornographic images obviously.
[00:05:46] Will: Yeah. But this 1920s porn. I don't want to sledge our 1920s women but they, well, no, I was saying that our porn actors of the 1920s, I'm just imagining it's very low res and yeah.
[00:05:57] Rod: So anyway, pornographic images, then medical photos of people with horrendous skin conditions.
[00:06:01] Will: Oh, okay.
[00:06:03] Rod: So check that out. Looked at the lines in the faces. Still not clear. Not good enough.
[00:06:08] Will: Well, it wasn't provoking disgusted enough?
[00:06:10] Rod: No, there weren't clear patterns in the expressions. It was like, here's, you know, Griselda, Wadsworth's ankle. Yep. And a little bit of lower thigh.
[00:06:18] Will: Well, no. Could it be potentially that trying to average these responses might be a silly thing to do because we all might respond to porn a little bit differently? A, if it's our favorite porn or not, or B if we like porn or not, or if we're ready for porn, you know, maybe averaging is dumb.
[00:06:34] Rod: Like all dogs are good dogs. All porn is good porn. Anyway, so he wasn't getting the averages he was hoping for.
[00:06:39] Will: Yeah. Okay.
[00:06:41] Rod: Next. Surprisingly firing gunshots.
[00:06:49] Will: All right. That's good. That's a good one. Because I assume as well, they're not socially conditioned. That is a deeper level of brain stimulus. That is instantly muscle spasm reaction sort of thing. Your reptilian brain
[00:07:01] Rod: you could bang two bits of wood together. Same effect. You don't need a gun. He just wanted a gun for sure. He just wanted a gun. Like, I'm a psych student, gimme a gun and heroin research.
[00:07:11] Will: I'm gonna fire some heroin at you.
[00:07:13] Rod: See what happens. Still not good enough. Next. Got people to stick their hand in a bucket without looking in the bucket.
[00:07:22] Will: Great. Great. Inside is like I, I did a poo in there. There you go. There you go. And it's mine. It's mine. Look at me in the face right now.
[00:07:34] Rod: Always maintaining eye contact. What's your expression?
[00:07:40] Will: Oh Jesus.
[00:07:43] Rod: No bucket was full of live frogs
[00:07:44] Will: oh, okay. Alright.
[00:07:46] Rod: So he encourages people to, once they get their hand in there, it's like live frog. So you're getting the ribbit rivets. He then goes, keep swelling your hand around and get to the bottom of the bucket. So as it was put in one source, overcoming their revulsion, they rummaged around through the slimy life frogs until they found the actual surprise electrical wires that will give you an electric shock.
[00:08:08] Will: You fricking genius.
[00:08:09] Rod: I know. I know.
[00:08:11] Will: Oh wild. These poor frogs though, they're swimming around on electrical wires.
[00:08:15] Rod: No one thinks of the frogs.
[00:08:16] Will: No. No one does. No one does.
[00:08:17] Rod: Terrible. So he did that. They rummaged around in the bucket of frogs, get an electric shock. Not good enough. So going for gold. This is.
[00:08:27] Will: They're still not exhibiting consistent emotional face reaction,
[00:08:30] Rod: not good enough. Get them sitting there, face is painted, ready to go. Pull out a mouse. Live mouse. Put in their left hand and the other hand he'd put a sharp knife and he says to them, behead the mouse. He said, if they don't do it, he'll do it for them in front of them.
[00:08:52] Will: Jesus. Okay.
[00:08:54] Rod: Now, This is a good point to mention. Good time. Most of the subjects in his research, and this is when psych people, participants were called subjects because they really were, most of them were his peers and colleagues. With one notable exception, there was a 13 year old boy who happened to be in the department as a patient because he had psychological issues and high blood pressure.
[00:09:18] Will: Jesus fucking Christ.
[00:09:19] Rod: So he got him in.
[00:09:20] Will: Oh my God. Just bring in a 13 year old
[00:09:23] Rod: bring in the kid who already has high blood pressure and psych issues.
[00:09:27] Will: So 13 year old either you killed the mouse or I killed the mouse. You're not leaving here.
[00:09:31] Rod: It's for science son.
[00:09:32] Will: Oh my god.
[00:09:33] Rod: So he did it. It happened. This wasn't a fake.
[00:09:36] Will: 13 year old did it?
[00:09:37] Rod: No. So the sources, there are two main sources and they contradict each other. One said one third of them did it, and the other said one third of them didn't. Okay. So bottom line, at least one third of the people beheaded the mouse. So the other two thirds he did it.
[00:09:50] Will: Yeah. And look, I know a lot of mice are killed for science. But I'm not quite sure if mice need to be killed to see if people have a consistent facial reaction to the killing of mice. That's, I don't see what the research question is benefiting us there.
[00:10:06] Rod: So at this point you're thinking, look, surely by now it's gonna show some kind of reaction. You know, we're gonna get some kind of baseline for universal human emotion expressions. Yeah, it didn't. Some started crying. Some hysterically laughed. Some froze. Others started swearing in here, like insanely. So final result of the experiment as summarized. It's from the paper, but summarized in one website, bizarobizarre.com. One, there is no typical facial expression accompanying any emotion aroused in the experiment. None. Emotions two are not characterized by a typical expression or recurring pattern of muscular behavior.
[00:10:46] Three, I love this one. Smiling was the most common reaction to anything. Yeah. Okay. Pleasure or unpleasant. So you know, you've got your real smile, you've got your grimace emoji, you've got the awkward.
[00:10:57] Will: Well, there's two things. Two things. One, one is I remember my first Covid test. And obviously by this time everyone has had many.
[00:11:05] This is one of those drive up and the attendant pokes it in your nose, and I was hysterically laughing. Like it was like being tickled as hard as I, it hit straight. The tickles, the tickle center. I was laughing so hard. And so I know that other people have not experienced in that way.
[00:11:21] So there is difference. But the thing I wanna ask about this is that we can still read emotions pretty reliably.
[00:11:28] Rod: We can
[00:11:28] Will: like we as humans seem to be able to go, we know what sort of emotion is going on, even though, you know, you're saying here the common stimulus is a smile. It's not a smile. It's a
[00:11:40] Rod: more common as measured by these, yeah. These blunt instruments
[00:11:43] Will: as measured by such a blunt instrument of, okay, your face goes up a little bit there. But our ability to read a face is so much more nuanced than that. I think we would be able to read millions of different micro sorts of emotions on things. And now they wouldn't also be necessarily be accurate. But I think what you,
[00:11:59] Rod: but you would probably have a good idea of how to react it. Being able to label it is not critical to being able to respond in the appropriate way or at least an appropriate way. And the final one, men were more expressive than women.
[00:12:12] Will: Even in the, in, in the blunt force, sort of
[00:12:15] Rod: the murdering of mice?
[00:12:17] Will: Well, no. Like the gun sort of thing. The instant reaction that is not
[00:12:20] Rod: apparently. So when people used to say squealed like a little girl, they should have said squealed, like a grown man.
[00:12:26] Will: Well, sure.
[00:12:27] Rod: So that was his study. Didn't go anywhere, didn't go well, no one repeated it, but he himself went on, moved into sexual psychopathology and had a long and distinguished career and he ended up, he died in the role of chief research psychologist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, thank you Carney Landisfor another beautiful story from the history of psychology.
