Was this experiment about emotions actually done?

September 30, 2012 4:52 PM

I was recently in an Emotional Intelligence course where the facilitator discussed the "Three Chair Experiment," where three people sat beside each other without saying a word for 10 minutes. The result was the experiment was that all three people would eventually take on the emotions of the "emotionally strongest" individual - ie if someone was really happy, the other two would end up being happy too, even without talking. Or if someone was really angry, the other two would end up also being angry after the 10 minutes. I thought it was really interesting so I googled it, but couldn't find any more information. Has anyone else heard about this experiment? Are there any sites or papers out there that provide more information about this?
posted by ajackson to science & nature (12 answers total)

It seems very unlikely this could be done as a real "experiment" in the proper sense. I don't know how you would control it or how you measure things like who is "emotionally strongest."

Frankly it smells like psuedo-science. In general I have a ton of doubts about the concept of "Emotional Intelligence" - I've never heard it explained in a way that made it sound like a legitimate psychological concept. I mean even IQ is rejected by most psychologists as being of questionable value. And normal intelligence is at least something that can be measured objectively: we can safely say Einstein is smarter than a mentally challenged person- he can solve problems better and faster, etc. I don't quite get how the same type of measurements can be applied to emotions.
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:02 PM on September 30, 2012 [6 favorites]

What drjimmy11 said, the concept seems suspect to me, and the experiment equally fishy.
posted by mermayd at 5:05 PM on September 30, 2012

I'm tangentially involved in some emotion research. This phenomenon is not part of the basic set of facts and observations that are the domain of experimental psychology. Not to say that no one has ever claimed to observe something of the sort, but i vote for "phooey."
posted by Nomyte at 5:18 PM on September 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have heard about this experiment, and though I've certainly been in situations where objectively overwhelming personalities have the ability to dominate a room, even I would vote Grade-A Hooey on it because there is no way to empirically measure the variables being tested.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 5:39 PM on September 30, 2012

I mean even IQ is rejected by most psychologists as being of questionable value.

You were doing well until this part. While IQ is not the same thing as general intelligence, it is used to measure the general intelligence factor and is used interchangeably with it. The general intelligence factor is the single most predictive psychological factor currently known. Perhaps general intelligence is what you mean when you say "normal intelligence"?

I agree that EQ thus far has woo explanations and the described experiment strikes me as hooey.
posted by Tanizaki at 6:15 PM on September 30, 2012

I just asked my current couch neighbour / wife / social psychologist researching teaching associate professor and she said "What the hell are your reading?" . So yeah this doesn't exist in her freakishly encyclopedic knowledge of the psychology research literature so I would put money on it not being science.
posted by srboisvert at 6:50 PM on September 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

This doesn't sound so much like an "experiment" as much as it is an "exercise". And an interesting one at that.

Did your class actually enact the experiment, or just hear about it?

If you enacted it, did anyone in any of the three chairs disagree that they had taken on the emotions of the others? There's plenty to talk about as participants and observers, without having to operationalize, observe, and measure the constructs.

It can be a useful exercise -- whether it's "objectively true" or not -- it can lead you to think about how you are in groups -- you can now play with the idea of emotionally dominating a room (positive or negative) or be reflective about your own response to emotionally dominant people (or, if you're more comfortable, "people feeling strong emotions" ) in a group and decide how you want to respond. (whether you want to consider this as increasing your emotional intelligence or not--meh, you decide.)

But if you only "heard" about it, then my guess is that either you misheard or misinterpreted the experiment -- or your instructor did -- might be getting it confused with some other experiment. My guess is that there are a ton of experiments around "mirroring" emotions in groups (not wanting to feel out of step with others, peer pressure, etc), and there are exercises where two people look at each other, in silence, to see how it feels...but the looking at each other is an interaction, albeit nonverbal.

It is totally legit (and will get you brownie points) to ask the instructor for more reading material about the exercise.
posted by vitabellosi at 7:49 PM on September 30, 2012 [3 favorites]

vitabellosi, you're almost certainly right - I likely misinterpreted his words and will follow up with him. I just wanted to see if the green knew anything about it before asking.

We didn't do the exercise ourselves but later in the week when I was working in a group, a strong negative personality was part of the group. I purposely became a strong positive personality to try to change the direction of the discussion. Lo and behold - the negative personality started to lighten up! Like you said - I played with the idea of emotionally dominating the room, and it worked in this case!

It's interesting that others have heard of the experiment - I wonder where the idea came from. Are there any exercises that people have done that are similar in nature?
posted by ajackson at 9:54 PM on September 30, 2012

Some of the exercises you'll learn in this course may certainly have value; learning to listen, theory of mind, empathy, dealing with folk feeling pissy, etc.

But this course sounds like it may be built on sand; in terms of theory, scholarship, evidence-based understanding of the human mind, in the same way that some martial arts work really well, but are based on the idea of 'qi', or how we used to do medicine based on the four humors.

So when you dig too deep, you start chasing your tail, because it works, but it's based on a wonky understanding of the world.

I strongly suggest keeping notes, and later, look at them, and asking yourself: 'how do I know that the person who said this knows it is true?' 'How do I know this is true?'.

Because there's a lot of nonsense out there.

You may enjoy poking around here a bit.
http://skepdic.com/

but the looking at each other is an interaction, albeit nonverbal.
Pretty much.

Has anyone else heard about this experiment? Are there any sites or papers out there that provide more information about this?

It sounds as though it may be a real grab-bag of a course, albeit a useful one. Here are some old aikido anecdotes:
http://www.therealcenter.org/NVCInAction.php
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:46 PM on September 30, 2012 [1 favorite]

I haven't heard of the 'Three Chair Experiment', but I have heard of emotional contagion. If you do a Google Scholar search on it, you'll find lots of papers.
posted by katherant at 11:54 PM on September 30, 2012

Oops! That was supposed to be this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion
posted by katherant at 11:56 PM on September 30, 2012

I have no doubt that a strong personality can dominate a group and change its emotional mood. It happens all the time. I do doubt this can happen when the people in the group are sitting silently in chairs, not interacting, especially if the people do not know each other.

My opinion of the broader concept of emotional intelligence is that it was thought up to be comforting to those who do not do well on IQ tests; "I may not be intellectually smart but I'm friendlier and nicer than you." Which of course many people are, people are all different and have different strengths and weakness, but calling this a measurable form of intelligence is what is suspect.
posted by mermayd at 3:59 AM on October 1, 2012 [1 favorite]