Landis' Facial expressions experiment
In 1924, Carney Landis, who was a psychology graduate at the University of Minnesota came up with an experiment that would tell if different emotions create different facial expressions. The idea was to see if everyone had a common facial expression for different emotions that they feel. The participants (mostly students) were taken to the lab and their faces were painted with black lines so that the movements of their facial muscles. The participants were all expressed to a series of stimuli designed to create a strong reaction. As each person reacted to the stimuli, a picture was taken of their expression. They were made to smell ammonia, to look at pornography, and to put their hands into a bucket of frogs. The controversy behind this experiment was in the final part. The participants were asked to behead a live rat.
Landis did not get the conclusion that he had anticipated. What was enforced was that people would pretty much do anything that they were asked to. However, one third of the participants refused to behead the rat. Landis did not prove that facial expressions are universal. It's safe to say that the experiment was not successful, and it only succeeding in creating controversy.
This experiment was selected because of what it was able to show the world. While it didn't prove Landis' theory about facial expressions, it did show that people will do just about anything that is asked of them, no matter how odd the task. It is also important because it brought about another interesting topic. While Landis spent the rest of his career researching facial expressions and emotion, somebody else would look into the topic of obedience about forty years later.