How Men’s Urination Habits Change when their Personal Space is Invaded

Monday 29 July 2013 0 comments

The ‘watching you pee’ experiment it is the one of the psychology experiment done by the psychologists.


In 1976, psychologists Middlemist, Knowles & Miller designed an experiment to discover how men’s urination habits change when their personal space is invaded. Yeah, this is a weird one.

So how to measure this? Don’t let anyone tell you that psychologists aren’t imaginative; they embedded a periscope within a stack of books. This device was placed on the floor of a toilet stall next to three urinals and an observer used it to record the peeing habits of anyone using the urinal closest to the stall. Sometimes a confederate (someone in on the experiment) would use one of the other urinals. Unsurprisingly, on average the subjects took longer to start and were quicker to finish when the confederate used the urinal next to them.

This study obviously comes up frequently in ethical discussions. All subjects were kept anonymous (the periscope couldn’t see higher than the navel of each subject), and even the location of the restroom used was kept quiet. However, there is definitely something creepy about the whole business. Just spare a thought for the poor grad student who was roped into watching hours of urination as part of his degree.


If you want to read the comically serious article from the original study, click here.
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