Episode description

Ahhh 1920s psychology… back when you could do anything in the name of science. Like traumatising a baby or making people believe they'd killed someone. The good old days. 

Picture this: It's 1924, and Carney Landis, a psych graduate student at Minnesota University, has an ambitious idea. He wanted to determine if humans had universal facial expressions for various emotions. 

Now in order to do this, he needed to recruit his fellow graduates, who were more than willing to be subjected to Landis’ various experiments. At first, it started out quite tame. A bit of jazz music, a bit of Bible reading, but no pattern of repeatable facial expressions emerged with such basic stimuli. 

Time to turn up the dial, bringing in new stimuli to elicit fear, disgust, sadness, and pain. Yes, that was his goal. Remember this is 1920s psychology. No rules. 

In comes pornographic images (likely contraband pictures of ankles and armpits) and to really get things going, some medical photos of people with horrendous skin conditions. Ewww. 

But still no average response.

Now Landis brought in the big guns. Literally. He fired surprise gunshots in the hopes of getting some kind of universal response… But still nothing! 

What about getting them to stick their hand in a bucket without knowing what was inside?! It could be anything! It was in fact a bucket full of live frogs with a little surprise down the bottom - electrical wires that produced a shock. The man was a genius.

Have we mentioned that one of the test subjects was a 13-year-old patient with psychological issues and high blood pressure? All above board. Carry on. 

Just when you’re thinking Landis would’ve packed it all in and given up on the elusive average facial expression response, he escalated the stimuli even further. Participants were presented with a live mouse and a sharp knife. Have a listen/watch to find out what he made them do (remembering the 13-year-old was roped into the study too).

So did Landis reveal any universal facial expressions in response to his ever-escalating stimuli? Or did the aftermath of this classic 1920s psych experiment leave only electrocuted frogs, blown eardrums, and traumatised children? 

While Landis's experiment was extremely subpar on the ethical front, it does raise intriguing questions about our ability to read emotions. Humans possess a nuanced understanding of each other's emotions as seen through facial expressions alone, even if we can't pinpoint the exact facial patterns that we are picking up on.

Thanks, no thanks, Landis.

SOURCES

• Landis, C. (1924). Studies of emotional reactions. I. 'A preliminary study of facial expression." Journal of Experimental Psychology, 7(5), 325–341. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076072
• CARNEY LANDIS | American Journal of Psychiatry
• The psychology experiment that involved real beheadings
• The Carney Landis Experiment | Bizzarro Bazar

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