Sublime

In an experiment that became an instant classic, the psychologist John Bargh and his collaborators asked students at New York University—most aged eighteen to twenty-two—to assemble four-word sentences from a set of five words (for example, “finds he it yellow instantly”). For one group of students, half the scrambled sentences contained words asso

The “bystander effect” is that, when someone is in trouble, solitary individuals are more likely to intervene than groups.

Psychologists have come across an interesting phenomenon: a person put in a sensory-deprivation room (a so-called anechoic chamber, a room designed to dampen all sound and block out light) after only a short amount of time reports experiencing visual hallucinations, paranoia, and a depressed mood.61 Put simply, without outside stimulus, we go mad.

Faulty alarm systems lead to blowups or shutdowns in response to innocuous comments or facial expressions.

The bottom line is that in lab experiments that give people invisibility combined with plausible deniability, most people cheat.

Enfin, dans cet esprit, Skinner a inventé, dès la fin des années soixante, l’enseignement programmé (The Technology of Teaching, 1968), ce qui était une contribution majeure à la pédagogie (traduction française, chez Mardaga, La révolution scientifique de l’enseignement, 1969). Il s’agissait d’un dispositif technique où l’élève devait répondre à de

the word “because” trigger an automatic compliance response from Langer’s subjects, even when they were given no subsequent reason to comply.