by Alex Boese
Pennebaker, J. W., M. A. Dyer, R. S. Caulkins, D. L. Litowitz, P. L. Ackreman, D. B. Anderson, & K. M. McGraw (1979). “Don’t the Girls Get Prettier at Closing Time: A Country and Western Application to Psychology.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 5 (1): 122–25.
The Gay Detector
The experiment began innocently enough. Pairs of Stanford undergraduate men, all of whom had volunteered to participate in a psychological study, were taken to a room. After meeting each other, the two people sat together at a table facing a projection screen. In front of each of them was a dial. The researcher, Dana Bramel, explained that the dial displayed the output of a “psychogalvanic skin response apparatus.”
Now things got a little stranger. The apparatus, they were told, would be measuring their subconscious responses to a series of pictures. The pictures would show men in partial stages of undress. Bramel emphasized the next point—any movement of the dial indicated homosexual arousal on the part of the subject. Strong homosexual feelings would cause the dial to “go off the scale.” But to put the undergraduates at ease, he assured them they alone could see the dial in front of them, and all data would be kept anonymous.
Finally, Bramel informed them of their task. They were to record whatever number their dial reached, and then predict the score of their fellow participant. The challenge was essentially to guess how gay the other person was.
The slideshow began. Bramel hadn’t been kidding when he said the photos would show partially undressed men. The models were, in fact, almost nude, and posed in various seductive stances. Each subject looked at the photos and then looked down at the dial in front of him. The dial was twitching vigorously, as though it had acquired a life of its own. The subject began to realize that, according to the psychogalvanic skin response apparatus, he was getting turned on. As the slideshow progressed and the pictures grew more risqué, the needle pulsed upward ever more energetically, like a finger wagging accusingly, saying, Naughty boy, you’re having dirty thoughts! The machine was telling him he was gay.
In the modern metrosexual age, a Stanford undergrad might easily laugh off learning he has latent “homosexual tendencies.” He might even readily admit to such inclinations. But this experiment did not occur post–Will & Grace. It took place in the late 1950s, at a time when homosexuals were one of the most stigmatized and openly discriminated-against groups in American society. Homosexuality was a legal reason for firing someone, for refusing him service, or for throwing him in prison. The American Psychiatric Association even listed homosexuality as a form of mental illness. Therefore, being flagged as gay was not something an undergrad could easily shrug off.
So as the subject looked at the surging needle on his dial, it must have been with a mixture of dismay and terror. He quietly recorded his scores and tried to guess what the guy next to him had rated. His goal was probably to finish the experiment as soon as possible and get out of there. But he actually had no reason to fear. He wasn’t about to be outed as gay. The readings on the dials were all the same, and all completely bogus. The needles were secretly controlled by the experimenter, who was cranking them up to higher levels as the pictures grew more graphic. Only eight participants ever suspected this. The others, all ninety of them, fell for the ruse completely. Bramel noted, “The expression of relief which often followed the unveiling of the deceptions indicated that the manipulations had been effective.”
Bramel’s true purpose was to determine how people would react to learning they possessed a socially stigmatized quality such as homosexuality. Would they project the same ‘negative’ quality onto other people, in a defensive attempt to get others into the same boat? The answer was yes. That’s exactly what they did. When predicting the score of the other guy in the room, subjects tended to guess it was similar to their own. This was especially true for people who had been judged before the experiment to have high self-esteem.
However, this finding is not the primary reason Bramel’s experiment is remembered today. Instead, the study has become a frequently cited example in the debate over when deception in psychological research goes too far. Critics of the experiment insist that convincing unsuspecting undergrads they were closet homosexuals went well beyond any scientific justification. Imagine, in particular, the fear of any participant who actually was gay, as he sat watching the twitching dial threaten to expose his secret to the world.
Of course, where science now hesitates to go, reality TV has no qualms about rushing in. In 2004 Fox TV produced Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay, in which heterosexual contestants competed to fool their friends and family into believing they were gay. Because of widespread public complaints, the show got canned before making it to air.
Bramel, D. (1962). “A Dissonance Theory Approach to Defensive Projection.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 64 (2): 121–29.
2. SEX
Heart Rate During Intercourse
In 1927 doctors Ernst Boas and Ernst Goldschmidt invented the cardiotachometer. This medical instrument allowed physicians to do something never before possible—measure the heart rate nonintrusively for prolonged periods of time. By modern standards the cardiotachometer was actually quite intrusive. Two rubber straps held copper electrodes to the chest, and these electrodes, in turn, were attached to a one-hundred-foot wire that led to a room full of recording equipment. Being attached to the cardiotachometer was like being on a long leash. But as long as people ignored the cord, they could do everything just as they normally would. So, like kids with a new toy, Boas and Goldschmidt set out to measure the heart rate during every activity imaginable.
They recruited volunteers to come to New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital and have their heart rates monitored going about the actions of daily life—standing, walking, exercising, dancing, sitting, talking, and eating. They observed people playing poker and discovered the cardiotachometer was a useful bluff detector. “One poker player, in particular,” they recorded, “invariably showed a brief acceleration of the heart when he held a good hand.”
They monitored people going to the bathroom: Enters bathroom—86, defecating—89, washing hands—98.
And, in an effort to leave no stone unturned, they measured the heart rate of a husband and wife during intercourse. The results were illuminating. During orgasm the heart rate rose to 148.5. This exceeded the rate of any other recorded activity, including strenuous exercise. “The curve of heart rate clearly indicates the strain placed on the cardiovascular system,” they warned, “and helps to explain some cases of sudden death during and after coitus.”
But they noted something else: “The record illustrated in Figure 47 was taken on the first evening. It shows four peaks of heart rate for the woman, each peak representing an orgasm.” Four orgasms! The researchers make no more mention of this, as if to say Nothing to see here, keep moving along. But clearly the rubber straps, tether, and audience in the next room hadn’t detracted from the wife’s experience.
Almost thirty years would pass before another researcher, Dr. Roscoe G. Bartlett, next recorded the heart rate during intercourse. When he did, he took far more elaborate steps than his predecessors to protect the modesty of everyone involved. He refused to disclose the location of the experiment, or the identity of the subjects (three couples). He himself did not know their identities—only an intermediary did. Between the time each couple arrived at the research facility, entered a private room, attached electrodes to themselves, pressed the appropriate buttons to indicate the occurrence of “intromission, orgasm and withdrawal,” and subsequently left the building, they were never seen by the investigators. Bartlett’s three female subjects did not exhibit the same orgasmic frequency as the 1928 subject. Perhaps these efforts at modesty were to blame.
Bartlett subsequently left science and embarked on a profession that has placed him in more intimate contact with sex and sleaze. From 1993 to 2013 he served in the U.S. Congress as a Republican representative from Maryland.
Boas, E. P.
, & E. F. Goldschmidt (1932). The Heart Rate. Baltimore, MD: Charles C. Thomas.
The Multiorgasmic Male
Dr. Beverly Whipple specialized in studying the health and sexuality of women. However, when, in the late 1990s, a man contacted her claiming to have a unique physical ability, her curiosity was piqued. The man—never named by Whipple—stated he was able to have multiple orgasms.
Many women are able to have multiple orgasms. Doctors Boas and Goldschmidt, as we just read, encountered such a woman in their 1928 study. But after a man experiences an orgasm his body is flooded by hormones that shut down the sexual response, making it temporarily impossible for him to achieve orgasm again. Earlier researchers had recorded a handful of cases in which men taught themselves the ability to suppress ejaculation, thereby allowing themselves to have multiple orgasms, but the talent of Whipple’s correspondent went beyond this. He claimed he could have an orgasm with ejaculation, remain erect, and then promptly have another orgasm—time after time.
Whipple invited the mystery man to visit the human physiology laboratory in the College of Nursing at Rutgers University, where she was a professor. The experiment she had in mind was simple. She challenged him to sit in the lab and perform his trick for as long as possible.
The man did not disappoint. He proceeded to bring himself to orgasm six times with six ejaculations in a period of thirty-six minutes. He maintained an erection throughout the entire process, despite the discomfort of the laboratory conditions. There was a blood-pressure cuff on his arm, a heart-rate monitor on his big toe, and an infrared camera in front of his face, constantly scanning the diameter of his pupil. The research team observed him through a window. There was also no air-conditioning in the room, which was the reason he gave for stopping at six. He said it had grown too hot and stuffy. He swore that in a more comfortable environment he could have carried on to ten, or more.
Whipple reports that since she published this study, numerous men have contacted her claiming the same ability. While this is of scientific interest, the existence of such overachievers offers little comfort to the vast majority of men who do not enjoy such a talent.
Whipple, B. (1998). “Male Multiple Ejaculatory Orgasms: A Case Study.” Journal of Sex Education and Therapy 23 (2): 157–62.
Pushing the Pleasure Button
Patient B-19 was a troubled young man. After dropping out of high school, he drifted through a variety of dead-end jobs—stock clerk, janitor, factory worker. Eventually he ended up in the military—and was promptly kicked out for displaying homosexual tendencies. He then fell into a life of vagrancy, drug use, and homosexual prostitution. When he came to the attention of Dr. Robert G. Heath of Tulane University, he was complaining of feelings of apathy, boredom, inferiority, depression, and alienation. He confessed he frequently contemplated suicide.
Heath took one look at B-19 and saw the perfect candidate for an experiment he had been contemplating. Heath had been researching electrical stimulation of the brain. In particular he had focused on the septal area, which, when stimulated, triggers feelings of intense pleasure and sexual arousal. Heath wondered whether he could use this to change a person’s behavior. Could he transform a homosexual man, such as B-19, into a heterosexual?
The peculiar pleasure-inducing properties of the septal region had been discovered by James Olds and Peter Milner of McGill University in 1954. They had placed an electrode inside a rat’s brain and noticed that when they delivered a small shock to the septal region, the rat seemed to enjoy the sensation. In fact, it craved it. The rat learned to press a lever to deliver a shock to itself, and soon it was pressing the lever two thousand times an hour. Rats would press the lever rather than eat. Mother rats would abandon their young to get a few jolts. Olds and Milner declared the septal area to be the brain’s pleasure center.
Heath lost little time applying Olds and Milner’s discovery to human subjects. He discovered that, in addition to a pleasure center, the brain had an “aversive system,” a punishment center. By stimulating these regions he could temporarily turn a person into a homicidal maniac, or the happiest person in the world. He once inserted a thin tube into a woman’s brain and delivered acetylcholine, a chemical stimulant, directly to her pleasure center; he recorded that she experienced intense orgasms for over half an hour.
The experiment meant to transform B-19 into a heterosexual took place in 1970. Heath implanted stainless steel Teflon-insulated electrodes, 0.003 inch in diameter, into the septal region of B-19’s brain. Three months later, after B-19 had fully healed from the surgery, the conversion program began.
Heath first showed B-19 a pornographic film. An EEG measured brain activity as B-19 sat in the lab viewing the scenes of “sexual intercourse and related activities between a male and female.” B-19 displayed no significant response. He sat passively. His brain waves showed only “low amplitude activity.”
With B-19’s homosexuality (or lack of interest in heterosexual pornography) thus confirmed, Heath commenced the septal stimulation. B-19 received a few minutes of therapy each day—mild shocks conducted into his brain. B-19 liked the sensation. He remarked that it was similar to the effect he felt when he took amphetamines. After a week of this, his mood had remarkably improved. He smiled more, looked relaxed, and reported stirrings of sexual motivation.
Heath then rigged up a device that allowed B-19 to push a button and deliver a one-second shock to himself. Giving him this power was like letting a chocaholic loose in a candy shop. During one three-hour session, B-19 pressed the button 1,500 times, approximately once every seven seconds. Heath noted, “During these sessions, B-19 stimulated himself to a point that, both behaviorally and introspectively, he was experiencing an almost overwhelming euphoria and elation and had to be disconnected.” At the end of each session B-19 whined and begged not to have the pleasure button taken away: Please, let me press it just one more time!
By this stage in the therapy, B-19 was feeling pretty good. His libido had been so jacked up he was expressing sexual interest in just about everything, including the female nurses. When Heath showed him the stag film again, B-19 “became sexually aroused, had an erection, and masturbated to orgasm.” Truly, a changed man.
Over the next few days, B-19’s state of arousal grew ever stronger, and Heath decided it was time to take the next step. He would give B-19 an opportunity to have sex with a woman—something B-19 had never done before. All his prior sexual experiences had been homosexual.
After receiving permission from the state attorney general, Heath arranged for a twenty-one-year-old female prostitute to visit the lab. He warned the young woman the situation was going to be a little weird. Undeterred, she agreed to do it for fifty dollars. Heath draped black curtains around the lab to allow the couple some privacy. Some candles and a Barry White record would have really set the mood, but this was, after all, a place of science, not a bordello. Heath then prepared B-19 by giving him free rein with the self-stimulator. When good and buzzed, B-19 was ushered in to see the prostitute.
The prostitute must have thought “weird” was an understatement. B-19 was not only charged up from the self-stimulation, he had wires coming out of his head to allow the researchers to monitor his brain waves during the encounter. The research team waited in the room next door for the action to begin.
B-19 got off to a slow start. He spent the first hour nervously delaying, talking about his “experiences with drugs, his homosexuality and his personal shortcomings and negative qualities.” At first the prostitute allowed him to take his time, but as the second hour began, she became restive. Evidently she didn’t want to spend all day there, so to speed things up she stripped off her clothes and lay down next to him. At this point, Heath’s description of the experiment, published in the normally rather unexciting Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, suddenly turns into something akin to a letter from “Penthouse Forum”:
In a patient and supportive manner, she encouraged him to spe
nd some time in a manual exploration and examination of her body, directing him to areas which were particularly sensitive and assisting him in the initial manipulation of her genitalia and breasts. At times, the patient would ask questions and seek reinforcement regarding his performance and progress, to which she would respond directly and informatively. After about 20 min of such interaction she began to mount him, and though he was somewhat reticent he did achieve penetration. Active intercourse followed during which she had an orgasm that he was apparently able to sense. He became very excited at this and suggested that they turn over in order that he might assume the initiative. In this position he often paused to delay orgasm and to increase the duration of the pleasurable experience. Then, despite the milieu and the encumbrance of the electrode wires, he successfully ejaculated.
Mission accomplished! B-19 was now, as far as Heath was concerned, a bona fide heterosexual. A few days later Heath released the virile young man out into the world. Heath checked on his progress a year later, and noted with satisfaction that B-19’s new heterosexual inclinations had apparently persisted because B-19 reported having had an affair with a married woman. Unfortunately, he also confessed to engaging in homosexual behavior twice, “when he needed money and ‘hustling’ was a quick way to get it.” Nevertheless, Heath declared the experiment a success. He predicted “future effective use of septal activation for reinforcing desired behavior and extinguishing undesired behavior.”