New semester, therefore the academic stuff started.
During last days, I was feeling myself like a collector who looks at everything
whether it would be a nice piece in her collection. This habit of human beings is old as history. We love to identify ourselves with our
belongings. Probably, there is some deep psychological roots behind this habit.
Anyways, who cares? Today, we only care about experiments…
What makes an experiment is the manipulation in it. Although an
experiment is supposed to be under controlled conditions, it cannot be a real
experiment without manipulation. This very basic definition lets me think
whether I am an experiment conductor. Because I often love manipulation but not
by the means of bad intentions. Just to watch. You know, that’s fun.
Basically, there are two types of experiments: laboratory and field experiments.
Well, it is easier to imagine first group. You can think of Marie Curie in her
laboratory. On the other hand, field experiments are the ones which economists
are more interested in using in their studies like Colin Camerer etc. The major
difference between laboratory and field experiments is controlling. In
field experiments, there is a limited scope of control. Despite this, I
believe that the results of field experiments are reflecting the real life more
than laboratory stuff if they are conducted by experts of their specialization
areas.
Up to now, economists have used field experiments to analyze
discrimination, health care programs, education, information aggregation in
markets, and micro-finance programs. But filmmakers were not idle, they were
working as hard as economists. For example; the director; Oliver Hirschbiegel
and one of my favorite German actors; Moritz Bleibtreu. Here is the result of
this experiment, ladies and gentlemen: Das Experiment (2001) is a German movie
inspired by the events of the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971. 20
very different men participate in a prison-simulation experiment. The
candidates are selected by a computer to be either prisoner or guard. The
experiment begins smoothly, but quickly deteriorates as the guards start to
behave unexpectedly. Although it is an irritating but very interesting material
for a movie, it is not difficult to see the failure of the German director. I
couldn’t find any creativity in the movie when I was watching it. But it is
still interesting and worth to see because of the real story behind.
Bu yazı, ilk defa 19/10/2006 tarihinde havadansudan.azbuz.com’da yayınlandı.
