Do the results of psychological studies change our behaviour?

Question

This is a question that has been bugging me for a very long time. Let me illustrate with a silly example. Suppose that a study finds out that the majority of the population associate the number 1 with the colour blue (again, this is is a *very* silly example). Suppose this study becomes very popular and the result comes to be known to most people. How will this knowledge of the experiment change behaviour? Will the result still be the same after the study is known to the entire population? I am not talking about the kind of results where we do not have influence on our behaviours, like our heart rate during a tense situation or how we react when our life is threatened. I am talking about experiments where we can make a conscious choice and is apparently "inconsequential" (so, nothing that poses harm to us). Many of us by now have realised that laugh tracks are used in sitcoms to direct how the audience should react and make them think that what they are watching is funnier than it actually is (Example of Social Proof, which is nicely explained by Robert Cialdini. After I knew this, I actually found TV shows employing the technique to be less funny and in some cases, even annoying. (I assume that many people reacted the same way after finding out about it). So the study of this particular behaviour actually made me react in the opposite way that the TV show producers intended and how the study says I should be behaving. Thus, changing the results of the study. Are there other studies like this? How do we design experiments that are tolerant to this?

Answer 1

It's a quirky question which has occurred to me a few times too. I believe that when we come to know about some study like these, there are two kinds of responses. For one set of people, they may feel the outcome of the study as a revelation and since they feel the particular object of the study can mess with their mind, they respond to it sort of like the way our body responds to a microbial attack. Whether a person cares about their physical health or not, somewhere deep down they know that their thoughts are what they are and anything which affects this hits close to home. So, like the immune response, they take the 'once bitten, twice shy' approach of actively blocking everything that has to do with it and since more often than not the subconscious aggressiveness is huge for the stimulus, it tends to have an opposite effect of what a person used to feel.

For another set of people, the study may hold some truth to them which they feel they cannot avoid and they feel they might have to knowingly engage with it as opposed to fighting it. (One can avoid sitcoms with forced jokes, but try telling an IT guy that sitting continuously at a place and staring continuously at one thing both have severe psychological effects. He'll simply shrug it off). These people realize what's happening and since they don't do anything about it.. that thought keeps cycling inside their head thereby mimicking the original stimulus and magnifying the effect on the system manifold. Eventually, they become neurotic, paranoid and depressed if they can't find a way to cope with their own feelings soon enough.

As for other studies, I can give you a few examples of real incidents. Incidents which shaped history. The Indian freedom struggle and the anti- apartheid movement of South Africa. The colonizers beatings and punishments used to incite fear amongst the community..until the community realized that that fear was what enabled such a small set of people to lord over all of them. From the time that realization struck a person, either he was moved to passion and strength with an open spirit of rebelliousness fighting against the oppressiveness or he was moved to feel even more helpless cowering under the overlords like slaves. But eventually, the fittest survived and the former group made history.