The Title of This Exercise Is the Rat-Man Experiment

Phillip Tyson 12C

Rat-Man Experiment

ERA 1 – Unit 3

Title: The title of this exercise is the Rat-Man experiment.

Abstract: The aim of this experiment is to test visual perception and sensation

when shown ambiguous stimuli, and to demostrate the interaction

between prior experience and expectancy. We are to randomly

select 10 people and individually show each person either the rat

card or man card, and then show them the ambiguous card, and

record their response. The results showed that the vast majority of

subjects who were shown the rat card first, stated the ambiguous

card to be the rat, whereas nearly half of the subjects initally shown

the man card, said they saw a rat in the ambiguous card.

Introduction: This experiment was originally conducted in 1961 by Bugelski and

Alampay. The results of their experiment were that the first figure

observed appeared to create an expectancy that influenced the

perception of the second figure (VCE Psychology: Units 3 & 4,

1996). The hypothesis is that when shown a stimulus of definite

description, and then shown an ambigious stimulus, we expect to

see the same thing in the ambiguous stimulus due to previous

experience.

Method: To complete this experiment, we will each randomly select 10

subjects who were completely unaware of the experiment. The

apparatus involved in this experiment is the cards that the pictures

will be on (See appendix 1).

5 of the subjects will be shown the rat card first, and the other 5 will

be shown the man card first. We will show them the initial cards and

record their responses which must be within 5 seconds. Then they

will be shown the ambiguous stimuli, and once again their responses

will be recorded within 5 seconds of showing the card. The class'

results will then be collected and tabulated.

Results: Our results are as follows:

Page 1 of 5

Phillip Tyson 12C

Rat-Man Experiment

ERA 1 – Unit 3

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Rat

Ambiguous

Ambiguous

Other

Man

Man

Rat

59

1

0

Ambiguous

Rat

Man

Other

Discussion: The hypothesis was found to be correct. The results show that the

51

8

1

Rat

Ambiguous

Man

60

0

0

vast