The Thud Experiment

THE 'THUD' EXPERIMENT

(Image from wikimedia commons)
Sometimes an experiment is conducted whose results are both eye-opening and quite disturbing. Examples include the 'Milligram Experiment', which showed how ordinary people will obey an authority figure, even when that authority figure has them apparently inflicting lethal electric shocks. And then there is the 'thud' experiment, which is what I want to talk about here.

WHAT IS THE 'THUD' EXPERIMENT?

The 'thud' experiment refers to a study into psychiatric practice and was conducted by a psychology professor at Stanford University called David Rosenhan. After listening to a lecture by R.D Laing, Rosenhan set out to test whether or not psychiatrists actually had the ability to distinguish people with actual psychiatric disorders from those who had no such condition.

In order to test this, Rosenhan and several other men and women went to twelve different psychiatric hospitals of varying levels of prestige. The volunteers in the study were to tell staff that they heard a voice in their head saying 'thud', 'empty' and 'hollow' (words not recognised in any published literature as symptomatic of psychiatric disorder but vaguely suggestive of existential crisis of some sort or other). If admitted, the volunteers were then to drop the pretence, say they no longer heard voices and act completely normally.

(David Rosenhan. Image from Paul Rosenfels Community)
WHAT HAPPENED

Every single volunteer managed to get him or herself admitted to a psychiatric ward on the basis of feigning an auditory hallucination. But it was after they were admitted and stopped pretending they suffered any kind of disorder that things get really interesting.

The patients were not discharged. The experts in charge refused to believe that these people were not actually mentally ill. Even though they had all reported the same symptoms, the volunteers were diagnosed with different disorders, from schizophrenia to manic-depressive psychosis. The volunteers were kept for an average of 19 days, with the longest stay lasting 52 days. During that time, the volunteers were kept under constant surveillance by the staff, who interpreted their perfectly normal behaviour as symptomatic of mental illness. For example, one nurse noticed a psuedopatient was making notes and recorded this 'writing behaviour' as pathological.

(Shrinks know best? Image from Wikimedia commons)

Although some of the actual patients seemingly correctly identified the volunteers as imposters, the experts never figured out the ruse, even though the volunteers dropped all pretence of having mental health issues immediately upon gaining admission. Indeed, the only way they could get staff to release them was to admit that they were mentally ill and to submit to a course of antipsychotic medication, pretending the treatment was curing them while actually flushing the medication down the toilet without staff noticing.

As Rosenhan himself said in an interview for a BBC documentary, "I told friends, I told my family: 'I can get out when I can get out. That's all. I'll be there for a couple of days and I'll get out". Nobody knew I'd be there for two months...The only way out was to point out that they're correct...I am insane; but I am getting better".

WHAT THE EXPERIMENT TELLS US

After what was effectively their incarceration, the psuedopatients reported severe invasion of privacy; for example having their possessions randomly searched and being put under constant observation, sometimes even when they used the toilet. They also reported an overwhelming sense of dehumanisation, with some attendants prone to verbal and physical abuse of patients when no other staff were present.

Rosenhan's 'thud' experiment highlighted the unreliability of psychiatric diagnosis at that time, and is an example of 'confirmation bias' or the tendency to interpret information in a way that reinforces pre-existing beliefs. The experiment highlighted the dangers of labelling individuals and showed how even well-meaning professionals with a duty of care can behave toward people in ways that are objectifying and dehumanising.

REFERENCES

Wikipedia

BBC Documentary 'The Trap' by Adam Curtis