The waiver she had signed at the beginning of the experiment included the phrase “this study may involve deception.” That should have been her first clue (seriously, if you ever participate in a study of any kind, definitely look for that one). But she was too angry to listen as I tried to point out that critical line right above her signature. After listening to her scream at me for several minutes, I finally dropped the paper and simply said, “What do you want me to do?” Then she covered her face, burst into tears and ran out of the room. And that was when I learned a very important lesson about people: They have very strong emotions about what they eat and how they eat it. And who watches them eat it.
Research Assistants in Dark Basements
Back in the day, when I was a psychology student in need of a summer job, I signed on as a research assistant to a prominent professor. This had two major benefits: one, I got to learn about how to conduct a good study and two, I got to do some really awesome things to unsuspecting people – a favorite pastime of mine and one I highly recommend if you ever get bored.
All studies involving human subjects had to pass an ERB (Ethical Review Board) first so you’d think people would be safe but you’d be amazed at what got through. My classmates and I did the silly and standard stuff like filming people from behind a one-way window to see what they’d do alone with a mirror (pop zits was a biggie) but I hit research gold when I got selected for the Ice Cream Study.
The Set Up
The idea was to bring people in and tell them we were doing a taste test of new flavors of ice cream for a local creamery. All they would have to do is try some of each new flavor and then rate them on a survey sheet. For this they would get $50. Nice, eh?
There was a catch. What we were really studying was how much ice cream people would eat if they thought nobody would know (i.e. they threw away their own bowls) versus how much they would eat if they thought somebody would know (i.e. I collected their bowls when they were finished) and if gender made a difference. All subjects were left alone in the “taste-testing” room.
The Study
My job was easy. I set up the room exactly the same before each subject. I measured out three bowls of 300 grams each of ice cream (about 9 cups total), much more than any person could presumably eat in one sitting. (Interesting aside: all 3 “flavors” were exactly the same – I scooped it all out of the same big bucket of the dairy equivalent of two-buck chuck.) And then for the group who got to throw away their own dishes, I weighed the garbage can. This would enable me to see how much ice cream the subject had eaten by weighing the can again after they left. Then I collected their surveys, paid them their money and headed back to my dank office to plug in the data.
The Results
This will not surprise you – the subjects who thought no one would know how much they ate, ate more than three times as much ice cream as those who knew I’d be picking up their bowls. Women were more apt to do this than men. This lead to a very interesting paper which I helped write and yet received no credit for (not that I’m still bitter like 7 years later or anything) in which the professor theorized that making people eat in front of others would help them lose weight, especially women who tended to hide when eating “bad” foods. I rather imagine that this would work – I always eat less with someone staring me down. Although that someone might get stabbed in the eye with a fork. Just saying.
The Real Results
The angry woman happened at the end of the study. It turned out she was the wife of one of the other professors in the department and heard about the “real” purpose of the study several days after completing it. She was one of the subjects who had eaten an embarrassing amount of cheap ice cream and now she knew that we all knew it. Especially me, The Garbage Can Weigher (Who Only Makes Minimum Wage Which Is Totally Not Enough To Put Up With This Kind of Crap). At first I thought I understood why she was so angry. We had deceived her and people do not like to be tricked (they also, apparently, do not like to read waivers before they sign them).
But when she burst into tears, I suddenly realized that it was not at all about the deception but rather that she felt ashamed of the amount of ice cream she had eaten. Being overweight and constantly dieting, ice cream held a strange power over her. It was not just a food, it was a moral judgment. And binging was the equivalent of a one-punch homicide. All of which was bad enough on its own (I can only imagine how she felt after she went home after eating nearly 9 cups of ice cream) but to be publicly shamed, even in the name of research, was more than she could bear. And for that I am truly sorry.
So I am curious, how would you have felt if you had participated in that study and then learned the real purpose later on? Ever participated in a study?
PS> Thank you all so much for your kind comments & encouragement & e-mails on my last post. You will be proud of me for not exercising today. I only had minor panic attacks but no smurfs appeared so all was well. Although you can still send me socks if you want to Lucas;)
How come I never got to participate in the cool ice cream studies?
I think your study made a mistake in using participants who were known to you. The shame she felt was probably higher as she knew you folks. If it had been some random folks who cares?
Aww, I feel bad for the poor lady! I might have been a little miffed myself if I found out the true reason behind that study, but I tend to take the “what’s done is done” approach to life.
Being in a research hospital, most of the studies are about digestion/heartburn and the link those have to your natural flora. So you get to do things (not that I have) like collect all your excrement for days on end. Fun! But at least they pay really well.
I wouldn’t like to be part of your experiments regardless ice cream could be in the middle of them.
Agree believing increasin shames comes after someone knows the individual involved in a plan.
Getting paid to eat ice cream?! Bottoms up! 🙂 The only thing I do differently around my friends is eat slower. If I’m doing a lot of the listening I tend to get through with my food much faster, so I try to talk more, stuff face less.
Of course to the person collecting the bowl I would probably say – “good grief, that stuff is so good, I just can’t stop!” just to lessen the appearance that I’m a pig! 🙂
I think I may have laughed about it. At least I like to think so. Of course, if it was just average ice cream, I may not have eaten all that much. I’m trying to do the whole “if it isn’t that good, it’s not worth wasting your calories on it” thing.
I lost some socks recently, but I haven’t seen any smurfs.
Being a researcher by nature, you should do more polls. Like “what would you like to see in a fitness bra?” or “do you change your under things after your workout?” Tee hee. (or some serious ones, whatever!) That might be fun for your week off 🙂
WHY don’t people read contracts/agreements? I don’t get that.
I can totally feel for this woman. Eating large quantities in secret is shameful enough, but having people you know find out about it…THE WORST. I’ll never forget one time when I was at the height of my bulimarexia, my roomate walked in on me binging out of our garbage! Totally gross I know. I felt doubly shameful because of the food & knowing my ‘secret’ was out…
On the study front, I have partcipated in two. One was bulimia related which I ended up quitting because at the time I was trying to get better and all of the participants were trying to ‘outshine’ each other with the number of binge/purges. Sick!
The other was related to our monthly ‘visitor’ – that too was totally gross (think specimens & coolers) but it paid A LOT of $$$ and I’m a sucker for that kind of thing 😉
I probably would’ve had a similar reaction of shame had I been in that womans place… if I was alone eating that ice cream I’m sure I’d eat more than if other people were around. Although, if the ice cream wasn’t that great, then I probably wouldn’t have eaten so much of it. And I’m with Andrew, too- if its people you don’t know, then its less of a big deal. But it would be kind of humiliating if you found out that you were the subject of an experiment like that (even if you DO sign up for it… and after all, everyone knows not to trust any experiments done by psychology students! Its never actually what you think its going to be).
It’s just so sad (and wrong!) that we attach a moral judgment to food. Food isn’t “good” or “bad,” it just us.
Having said that, I would totally eat ice cream for money, deception or no, lol!
I’d have suggested you pay me $50 for each set of three bowls, and gone for AMRAP. (Could I have sued afterwards for incentivizing my initiation into bulimia?)
When I was still a freshman, and not fully clued-in to deception in psych studies, I volunteered for a study and started typing some form of transcription into a computer. At some point (although I think the mistake itself was somehow engineered or coerced), I made a mistake. It was setup so that the mistake was somehow consequential. The mistake was also clearly not my fault, but the researcher pretended (poorly) to be upset over the consequences, and asked me to sign a statement that I had caused it. In short, poorly designed experiment, poorly executed. Though I didn’t know about deception and misdirection for studies, I saw through it and found the whole thing kind of silly. I was hardly surprised to find out the test was not a measure of spatial-visual skill but a test of whether I could be manipulated into signing a false confession. It was dumb.
A close friend who is now in a grad psych program at UNC Chapel Hill was part of a poorly designed study at Arizona S.U. two years ago, in which subjects leaving the psych building after volunteering for a study late at night were approached by suspicious, aggressive males, in very vulnerable circumstances (this was the actual intent of the study). Talk about stupid.
Didn’t people catch on that they all tasted the same? odd.
I know for a fact that I eat FAR less when eating in front of people. That’s why I have no fear of baby showers, buffets, dinner parties etc. And all my poor eating happens at home. I think this is even more common among “bigger” people. It’s bad enough for everyone to see your size, but to be the fat person who also cleans up the dessert tray, very humiliating.
She must have been REALLY upset to actually confront you about it. If I were ashamed I would probably never face any of you again.
hmm im thinking if i would actually eat more or not. im thinking i probably would, because you know, free ice cream!
When i was bulimic i wouldnt care how much i would eat in front of people, because all they thought was “wow, kelly eats and is skinny.” they knew though. i was juts fooling myself. ive never held back eating in front of people though, because i still feel like i need to prove that i eat sometimes, even though im healthy as could be (except for the whole coffee addiction)
I agree — the Ethics board should have caught that or at least disallowed relatives from participating. The board had to have known this isn’t going to end well —- “Surprise! Check out how much you ate when you thought you were in secret! Cool, huh?! You’re quite a glutton there!” (But I’m still fascinated by your humiliation story like a rubber-necker to a highway accident)
But it wasn’t quite like the Yale Milgram experiment and Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment.
I did one in college, paid to sample mashed potatoes. I don’t think they were playing tricks as the serving size was like a ketchup container at Wendy’s. Poor, starving students like me would have kept eating and eating… “I think this is too salty; better try another round!”
I’d be curious if ladies that ate it all would be more likely to try and excuse it to the experimenter out of social sensitivities. Where I’d bet your average guy like me couldn’t care less and would shrug and grunt, hunh, good ice cream.
Personally I’m more interested in whether they could tell that all three ice creams were the same or not. =)
I wouldn’t have cared, and I probably would have been one of the ones to eat too much. I loves my ice cream. But I don’t participate in studies just because you never really know what they are doing with/to you.
Hey Charlotte — I think you’re awesome (read: funny, smart, fit, honest). Hope you’re resting like you know your body needs. Training smart is just as important as training hard : ) And like my best coach always told me, rest is an important part of your training plan, don’t ignore it!
I felt bad about the woman in your story, and I recognized she should have read the waiver… still sucks to be embarrassed though.
My psyche lab story was during my sophomore year at Florida State University. Our Psyche101 class expected us to participate in a study of our choice or write an essay. I was curious about the whole study thing (and hated writing at the time — pre word processer!), so naive me signed on. I don’t think I even knew the subject of the study. I just signed up and showed up at the appointed time and place.
Back story: I was a young single mother, very embarrassed about my situation (none of my friends had kids, they were all good school, fast track types).
So… when my study involved ostensibly explaining my biggest shame to someone my age, while being videotaped, to be analyzed by others at my university I was very very very nervous. Oh and by the way please take this breathalyzer and here’s some beer you indicated you liked on your intake survey.
I was given time to prepare (30 minutes, I think) and every so often someone would come in and ask if I’d like any more beer.
I was so nervous that I didn’t drink. I was afraid I would say something stupid and compound my embarrassment. Plus I was so busy trying to organize my “presentation.”
At the end of the 30 minutes, I had to do another breathalyzer test, then was told I was free to leave. I’m not sure if they told me the purpose of the study or if I just figured it out. I remember being stunned that I had been lied to… then I was happy that I didn’t have to bare my soul. Then I was like, damn, I would have really enjoyed that beer (that I couldn’t afford to buy on my own)!
No lasting trauma. No harm, no foul.
Wow, you all have been in some interesting studies! And hey, Kamboja – glad you’re here:)
Sounds like you all are pretty good sports. Good to know in case I ever need future subjects…;)
man, that’s an interesting story! and in trying to put myself in the woman’s shoes, made me think hard about my own social eating habits. huh.
I would love to be part of any study involving ice cream. Then again, even as someone trying to lose weight and get fit, I still brag about being to eat anyone under the table when it comes to ice cream…and I don't care who sees it or knows it!
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So how many ice creams did people eat? At my business school they had a similar situation – one of the big FMCG companies sponsored a new chair (for marketing I believe), and they brought in three big ice-cream coolers that were constantly refilled over the day. I think I ate five ice cream (out of which 3 Magnum, my favorite) then I could not have any more. AFAIK noone was watching, but after reading your article…. 🙂