The Aversion Project 1980s

Unethical Psychology Experiments
The Aversion Project 1970s and 1980s
Psychologists involved: Colonel Aubrey Levin “Dr. Shock” – former chief psychiatrist
The Aversion Project took place in South Africa in a top secret project in the 1970s and 1980s. The apartheid army force in South Africa would force white gays and lesbians to undergo many torture experiments as a means of turning them into heterosexuals. Dr. Levin would give the soldiers electric shock, sex change, chemical castration and many other abuses. While many are unsure how many people he perform the experiments on, records show 900 people. He did 50 sex change operations in a year. The soldiers who could not be cured using electric shock were forced to undergo sex change which
is cruel. This is cruel and unethical because we all have a choice to decide our sexuality and still perform our duties to society. Many people argue that they were born gay or lesbian, or that they know they are homosexuals from a very early age. This experiment reveals that electric shocks and torture cannot change everyone. Once a person truly believe they are homosexual, their mind tend not to change, regardless of whatever techniques you use to try and get them to change. Base on this study this experiment was definitely not worth doing. To make this study ethical, the people conducting the study should obtain consent from the soldiers before performing sex change operations on them. However the torturing is cruel and unethical and should never been done.

The Monster Study 1939
Psychologists involved: Wendell Johnson and one of his graduate students, Mary Tudor
In 1939, the University of Iowa conducted a stuttering experiment on 22 orphans.
Jonson supervised the research while he chose, Mary Tudor, one of his graduate students to carry out the experiment. Tudor placed the children in experimental and control groups and gave half of them positive speech therapy, praising their fluency of speech. The other half, she belittled for each of their speech imperfections calling them stutters. This resulted in many of the orphans who were initially speaking normally, retaining speech problems throughout their lives. This experiment is unethical because children develop in their early years. Once you damage their self-esteem at a young age, it will hold back the child’s development on a whole. Their confidence to interact with others, public speaking, or reading abilities will be affected. This research shows how important it is to nourish your child’s development from an early age. Our actions can negatively affect a child’s development during the course of their life. I truly believe this study could have worked if they focused on giving the 22 orphans only positive speech therapy. This study only showed me that some of the orphans were given lifetime speech impediments, which was not worth
it.

Landis’ Facial Expressions Experiment 1924
Psychologist involved: Carney Landis
Landis conducted an experiment to determine if everyone shared a common facial expression when exposed to certain emotions, such as sadness, anger, shock, surprise etc.
The participants were mainly students. Landis painted a series of black lines in the participants’ faces, so that he could study their facial muscles based on the movements. After being exposed to a variety of stimuli, Landis photographed the participant’s reactions. Landis did all sort of things to provoke the subjects such as, making them smell ammonia, placing their hands in a bucket with frogs, and watch pornography. The students were made to cut off rats’ head for which only one-third of the students could stand to do. For the others who repelled the idea, Landis would then step in and chop off the rats’ heads himself. This experiment was unethical and cruel as some of the students were scared and some had no idea how to perform the operation, which resulted in great suffering for the rats; this is animal cruelty. This experiment was not worth it as there was no conclusion from the study and Landis was not able to determine if all people had common facial expressions for certain emotions, after subjecting the rats to all that suffering. To make this experiment ethical, Landis should have left the rats out of it as animals should not be subjected to such
cruelty.