L’expérience est, à tort ou à raison, une des bases de la science moderne. Hier, sur Neatorama, on remarquait que trois fameuses expériences, dans le domaine de la psychologie, seraient, aujourd’hui, totalement inconcevables pour des raisons éthiques.

What happened to the good old days, when a scientist could just rustle together some test subjects and let loose in the lab? You know, without having to worry about petty humane things…like ethics!

Ces trois expériences sont :

1. l’expérience de Milgram,
2. celle de Stanford et
3. celle dite du Petit Albert.

Les deux premières sont les plus troublantes par ce qu’elles prouvent ; la troisième, par sa méthode. En effet, l’expérience de Milgram menée à Yale et de Stanford mené par Zimbardo portent, toutes deux, sur la violence et son lien à l’autorité (et à l’impunité).

La première consistait à demander à un étudiant d’infliger de (fausses) décharges électriques à une personne qu’il ne connaissait pas, bien que ce celui-ci, au bout d’un moment, le supplie d’arrêter. La seconde portait sur un groupe d’étudiants répartis en gardiens et en prisonniers dans uns situation carcérale.

Dans les deux cas, le degré de violence atteint a été extrême. 65% des “cobayes” de Milgram ont obéi aux injonctions des examinateurs malgré les cris de la victime (qui, Dieu merci, ne faisait que jouer son rôle) et l’expérience de Stanford a dû être arrêtée au bout de six jours… En même temps, je ne vois pas là de quoi révolutionner la connaissance de l’Être humain… Le pouvoir corrompt, la belle affaire ! Qui l’ignorait ? Bien sûr, il faut l’admettre, il est toujours dérangeant de le rappeler…

La dernière expérience ne révèle pas, dans son résultat, de choses trop noires sur l’être humain, puisqu’elle ne prouve qu’une chose : l’homme est un chien de Pavlov qui associe le souvenir du contexte à la peur qu’il éprouve. Rien que de très banal, en somme. En revanche, la mise en œuvre de cette expérience est assez terrifiante, puisque la peur a été délibérément provoqué chez un enfant de 11 mois. Ce n’est pas pour rien, d’ailleurs, qu’elle trouve un terrible écho dans Brave New World (chap. 2) d’Aldous Huxley :

INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the notice board.

The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.

The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in.

“Set out the books,” he said curtly.

In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out–a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird.

“Now bring in the children.”

They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.

“Put them down on the floor.”

The infants were unloaded.

“Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books.”

Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.

The Director rubbed his hands. “Excellent!” he said. “It might almost have been done on purpose.”

The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, “Watch carefully,” he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.

The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.

There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.

The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.

“And now,” the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), “now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.”

He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.

“We can electrify that whole strip of floor,” bawled the Director in explanation. “But that’s enough,” he signalled to the nurse.

The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror.

“Offer them the flowers and the books again.”

The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.

“Observe,” said the Director triumphantly, “observe.”

Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks–already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.

“They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.” The Director turned to his nurses. “Take them away again.”

Mais, après tout, le temps du dressage de l’être humain est-il derrière nous ?

Source : Neatorama.