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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