9 Controversial experiments already carried out with children

Wisdom and knowledge do not come to people out of nowhere, but are acquired after many trials and errors. Thanks to researchers who weren’t afraid to experiment, make mistakes, take risks and repeat tests again and again, the world today has, for example, electric light bulbs, X-rays, vaccines and understanding about DNA.

But the study of human nature is something much more delicate. And when we talk about experiences involving children, the controversy is even greater. In such cases, mistakes can have dire consequences in the life of a small person.

O awesome.club recalls below 9 questionable experiments that have already been done with children and that cause a flood of indignation. It’s not for less. Many scholars and researchers have clearly crossed the line in their quest for knowledge, even though it was thanks to one of them that the world gained the smallpox vaccine.

In the middle of the 20th century, psychologist Albert Bandura wanted to find out how far children could go when repeating the aggressive behavior of adults. Using an inflatable doll known as João Bobo, he filmed some videos. In one of them, an adult appears hugging the doll and playing with it. In the second, the person fights with the toy, pushing it and hitting it with a rubber mallet.

Then, children were divided into three groups. One was shown the video without violence. The other group saw the violent video, and the third group saw no video at all. In shifts, the children were taken to the room where João Bobo was, in addition to hammers and toy guns.

Children who saw the aggressive video began to treat the doll badly. Just as the adult had done, the little ones began to attack the toy, punching, kicking, hitting with the hammer and making threats with the pistols. In the other two groups there was no violent reaction.

Moral of the story: Children mimic the behavior of adults, and they often do so without thinking. So, if your child has started to say nasty words, hit the neighboring children and be rude to the grandparents, stop and think: who could he be imitating?

In the 1930s, scientists were still trying to figure out what part of human intelligence was inherited, and what could be changed through education. A theory in force at the time said that chimpanzees just couldn’t speak or develop good manners because they weren’t raised like humans.

Psychologist Winthrop Kellogg decided to test the theory in practice. When their son, Donald, was born, the family was entrusted with the education of a 7-month-old female chimpanzee named Gua. The animal began to be raised together with the child, as if they were brothers.

But things didn’t go as planned. Although Gua has learned to hold a spoon and understand some human speech, his development has not progressed beyond the usual. Donaldo started to repeat many things that his “sister” did: she jumped, screamed and bit. In a year and a half, he learned only three words. The experiment had to be stopped immediately.

Moral of the story: Children can also start to imitate the behavior of animals, in the best ‘Mowgli’ style. On the other hand, the attempt to humanize an animal, even if it was a primate so close to us, failed.

Psychologists from the University of Iowa, USA, decided to find out, in a rather cruel way, how the feeling of guilt arises in children. For this, they did an experiment with a broken doll. An adult would show the toy to a child, saying that it was an object of great value to him, that he loved that doll and that he associated it with beautiful things. Afterwards, he handed the doll to the child, asking him to be very careful.

When the child touched the toy, a mechanism was activated that caused it to break. According to the psychologists’ instructions, the adult should spend a minute looking at the child in complete silence.

It’s hard to imagine what was going on in the child’s head, who already felt guilty and still had to endure the disapproving look in the most absolute silence. After a while, the adult returned with the same toy, but in one piece, and explained to the child that he was not to blame for anything. We doubt the little one felt immediately relieved.

Moral of the story: In the following years, the children who participated in the experiment behaved quite moderately and correctly. But this hardly happened because they dealt with the feeling of guilt. Most likely the reason for this behavior was the fear of hurting people, and perhaps the conclusion that they could expect anything from adults.

Bruce Reimer and his twin brother were born in 1965 in Canada. At 8 months old, Bruce was circumcised and, due to a medical error, a part of his genital organ was burned. Psychologist John Money gave the child’s parents radical advice: have a sex reassignment surgery and that they start raising the boy as a girl.

Parents agreed. For Money, it was an excellent opportunity to test his theory that education, not nature, is responsible for shaping a person’s gender identity.

But Bruce didn’t want to turn Brenda. He didn’t like dresses or playing with toys associated with the world of girls. He wanted to be a boy, just like his brother was. John Money claimed that everything was just a ‘difficult age’, and that everything would pass. But as the years went by, the problem only got worse. When the young man learned the truth, he underwent several surgeries, became a man named David and even got married. But he committed suicide at the age of 38.

Moral of the story: Experiences of this kind can compromise the child’s psyche. The issue of gender identity is seen today in a completely different way. Current psychologists and psychiatrists agree that only the person himself should determine which gender he identifies with, regardless of the genital organ he was born with. Cases of transsexuality are still controversial, but fortunately, they are becoming increasingly well understood and accepted.

In 1933, psychologist Clarence Leuba decided to investigate why we laugh when we are tickled. Is it an instinct or do we smile because we see that the person who is tickling us is also smiling? He decided to experiment with his own young son.

Leuba forbade the child to be tickled, except during specific sessions that he personally conducted. The psychologist even forbade his wife to laugh when touching the baby.

During her sessions, Leuba would put a mask on her face so that her easy expression would not be seen as she tickled the child. But the experiment was compromised by the researcher’s wife, who once smiled as she cradled their child. After some time, the experience was repeated with the couple’s second child.

Moral of the story: The psychologist gave his verdict: “Children smile even when they don’t imagine they should.” Yet it is strange to think that this study was so important as to cause a father to deprive his own child, even for a time, of the ordinary joys of life.

In the 18th century, the English physician Edward Jenner decided to test whether a person infected with the non-lethal form of cowpox would become, after recovery, immune to the dreaded human smallpox.

To demonstrate the seriousness of his intentions, Jenner infected his own son with cowpox. That moment was even immortalized in a sculpture. When the baby recovered, Jenner decided to take a big risk and inoculated the child with human smallpox. If his theory was correct, the child shouldn’t get sick.

Moral of the story: To great relief, the doctor’s thesis was completely correct, and the boy did not get sick. If the opposite had happened, Jenner would have gone down in history as a mad murderer of his own son, and not as a hero who created a vital vaccine for humanity.

Scientist John Watson decided to study how conditioned emotional reactions are formed in children. To do this, he experimented with a 9-month-old baby named Albert, instilling in him a fear of white things.

First, he showed the boy a white mouse. After the baby got used to the animal and began to play calmly with it, the scientist started to give scares, hitting an iron plate whenever Albert brought his hands close to the mouse.

The boy developed a fear not only of the mouse, but also of any other white thing that looked like it. Upon seeing any of these objects, he immediately began to cry. But soon the experiment was cut short.

Moral of the story: This feature is used to train circus animals, but it has been proven that it is also possible to ‘teach’ a certain emotion to a baby. But the current awareness involving moral and psychological violence against children no longer allows for the realization of other such cruel experiences.

A no less monstrous experiment was carried out in 1939 by researchers Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor, who were studying the factors of speech development. They gathered 22 children, divided them into two groups and tried to artificially formulate stuttering in one of them.

Children in one group were constantly praised, while those in the other group were ridiculed and humiliated, convincing them that they spoke wrongly and would stutter forever. Many of the children in the second group stopped communicating with each other, and some actually began to stutter.

Journalists who covered the story said the experiment was a monstrous study. It is much better to study the dynamics of creation with the help of positive attitudes (or at least the absence of negative ones).

Moral of the story: We cannot say that these researchers discovered something important. When you constantly yell and mistreat a child, he will possibly become an insecure person. But when praised and supported, the child is even able to overcome the defects that already exist.

Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov became known for his experiments with dogs, studying their eating reflexes. There is even a sculpture representing the famous “dog…