Chapter 6 – Observational methods – watching and being with people
This chapter covers most methods that are generally classed as observation.
Exercises
Exercise 6.1
Select True or False for each item to test your understanding of observational methods.
Further Information
Festinger’s end-of-the-world study: ‘UNDER COVER’
In a famous participant observation case study, Leon Festinger, Henry W. Reiken and Stanley Schachter (1956) studied a woman they called Mrs Keech who had predicted the end of the world by a mighty flood. After reading about Mrs Keech in a newspaper, Festinger’s group joined her followers to see what would happen when the world did not, in fact, come to an end.
Mrs Keech claimed to have been receiving messages from a group called the Omnipotent Guardians from the planet Clarion. They had sent her messages through a combination of telepathy, automatic writing and crystal ball gazing to indicate that at midnight on a particular December evening the world would be destroyed, killing all humanity except for Mrs Keech’s group. They were to be rescued by flying saucers sent from Clarion to Mrs Keech’s home. During the weeks before the ‘end of the world’, several of the group members quit their jobs and spent their savings in preparation for the end. Messages continued to arrive daily to Mrs Keech. At meetings Festinger and his associates frequently would excuse themselves and write down their notes while in the bathroom. At one meeting, the members were asked to look into a crystal ball and report any new pieces of information. One member of Festinger’s group was forced to participate, even though he was hesitant to take a vocal role in meetings. After he remained silent for a time, Mrs Keech demanded that he report what he saw. Choosing a single word response, he truthfully announced, ‘Nothing’. Mrs Keech reacted theatrically, ‘That’s not nothing. That’s the void.’
On the final evening, members of the group waited for midnight. During the evening other instructions arrived. Cultists were told to remove their shoelaces and belt buckles since these items were unsafe aboard flying saucers. When midnight passed without any end of the world in sight – and without any flying saucers visible – members of the group began questioning whether they had misunderstood the instructions. Mrs Keech began to cry and whimpered that none of the group believed in her. A few of the group comforted her and reasserted their belief in her. Some members re-read past messages, and many others sat silently with stony expressions on their faces. Finally, in the wee hours of the morning, Mrs Keech returned to the group with a new ‘automatically written’ message from the Omnipotent Guardians. Because of the faith of the group, the Earth had been spared. The cult members were exuberant and during the weeks that followed actually attempted to secure additional converts.
One can find both insight and some entertainment in such a participant observation study. To Festinger’s group of scholars, the experience permitted them to provide a field study examination (in the form of a case study) of the theory of cognitive dissonance that they were trying to develop at the time – a theory that became a major force in communication and social psychology.
Excerpted from John C. Reinard, Introduction to Communication Research. Boston, McGraw-Hill, 2001, pp 186–8.
Weblinks
This is a link to the original paper by Watson and Rayner (1920) describing the conditioning of ‘Little Albert’. (‘Conditioned emotional reactions’, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3(1), 1–14):
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Watson/emotion.htm
An interesting brief Psychology Today account of HM by Jenni Ogden, one of HM’s researchers:
www.psychologytoday.com/blog/trouble-in-mind/201201/hm-the-man-no-memory
An Observer magazine article on Clive Wearing and his memory loss at:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/jan/23/biography.features3
Film of the Milgram experiments at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W147ybOdgpE
Film of the Zimbardo studies with Zimbardo talking at: