Research and Experiments
A shill in a psychology experiment, or the like, is called a confederate. In Stanley Milgram's experiment in which the subjects witnessed people getting electric shocks, a confederate would pretend to be one of the experimental subjects who would receive the fake shocks, so that the real experimental subject would think that a draw of names from a hat was random. The confederate would always play the role of the learner, and the subject would be the teacher, and the subject would think that this was a random draw from a hat containing papers that say "learner" and "teacher".
In performance art, such as DECONference (Decontamination Conference), the confederates were called deconfederates. When a large group of DECONference attendees were asked to remove all clothing prior to entry to the event, the deconfederates, planted among the attendees, would comply immediately with the request, causing all of the others to follow the orders and disrobe as well.
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Famous quotes containing the words research and, research and/or experiments:
“I did my research and decided I just had to live it.”
—Karina O’Malley, U.S. sociologist and educator. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A5 (September 16, 1992)
“The research on gender and morality shows that women and men looked at the world through very different moral frameworks. Men tend to think in terms of “justice” or absolute “right and wrong,” while women define morality through the filter of how relationships will be affected. Given these basic differences, why would men and women suddenly agree about disciplining children?”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)
“The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation, and not in augmenting animal existence. Nor is the man enriched, in repeating the old experiments of animal sensation; nor unless through new powers and ascending pleasures he knows himself by the actual experience of higher good to be already on the way to the highest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)