Psyched up

Students act as guinea pigs for extra credit in psychology

Some people will do anything for extra credit.

They attach electrodes to their bodies and fill out probing questionnaires. They gather by the dozens in a classroom as one man hypnotizes them.

They stand inside a spinning drum until they are nauseous. They count backwards by sevens. They try to learn Dutch.

These are the guinea pigs of Psychology 002 (Introduction to Psychology).

As extra credit for the large lecture course, students participate in a wide array of experiments -- letting professors and graduate students get inside their heads in exchange for gaining up to 5 points on their grades.

Students choose among experiments described on the Internet, which are often designed to sound appealing without being deceptive.

In one experiment, students are asked to stand inside a spinning drum, with electrodes attached to their bodies and a camera watching them, until they become nauseous or ask to stop. The description of the experiment uses some artistic license.

"It said 'You will be induced to feel as if you are moving,' " said Max Levine (graduate-psychobiology), who conducts the experiments alongside their creator, psychology professor Robert M. Stern.

"They got the idea that they were on some amusement ride," Levine said.

Some students treat the experiments as a challenge. In Stern's experiment, designed to explore ways of curing motion sickness, some students try to "beat" the experiment by blurring their vision or closing their eyes to avoid getting sick.

In another experiment, participants perform a task that makes them commander of a submarine, steering around obstacles while performing other tasks.

Though the experiment is hardly a fun game, its designer, Andrew Peck (graduate-psychology), attracts students with an appealing blurb that calls it a "video game-like experiment," Peck said.

Before each experiment, students are told exactly what they will be doing and fill out a consent form. Then the experiment begins, usually in a lab in Moore Building.

Students who have selected an experiment designed by Karen Quigley, assistant professor of psychology, are then given stressful tasks to perform as their heart rate and respiration are recorded. Sometimes they are asked to perform mental arithmetic tasks, while others are made to answer personal questions while holding an ice pack on their heads.

When the experiment is complete, the subject is told what was tested and why. Quigley's experiment examines the implications of stressful activities on a person's health.

While the experiments are valuable for the experimenter, Cathleen Moore, an assistant professor of psychology who teaches Psychology 002, said they also should teach students how experiments work.

Dan Quigley said the hypnosis study, in which he was hypnotized along with a classroom of 50 people, was more fun and educational than others.

"The other ones were less rewarding," he said, such as one in which he tried to learn Dutch. "They were just done to get the extra credit."