Celebrating the Mind Changers

Mind Changers is a radio series presented by Claudia Hammond.

In each 30-minute episode, Claudia explores a classic psychology experiment and discovers what impact the study had.

As Claudia recently collected together all her radio and podcast offerings in a fantastic new website, we thought we'd take the opportunity to each episode, and point to our own content on the same topics.

1800

• The Wild Boy of Aveyron

1848

• The Main with a Hole in His Head
• Phineas Gage – Unravelling the myth (Malcolm Macmillan)
• What the textbooks don't tell you about psychology's most famous case study (Christian Jarrett)
• Neuroscience still haunted by Phineas Gage (Christian Jarrett)
• First ever photo of Phineas Gage discovered 

1904

• Little Hans

1905

• Dora – The Girl Who Walked Out on Freud
• What every therapist should know (John Marzillier)

1919

• John Watson & Little Emotional Albert
• Looking back: Finding Little Albert (Hall P. Beck & Gary Irons)
• Little Albert – one of the most famous research participants in psychology's history – but who was he? (Christian Jarrett)

1927

• The Hawthorne Effect
• Walking through snow to get to work (Joe MacDonagh)
• Is it time to ditch the Hawthorne Effect? (Christian Jarrett)

1932

• Sir Frederic Bartlett – The War of the Ghosts
• Bartlett speaks: What makes a good experimental psychologist? (Julie Perks)

1948

• BF Skinner and Superstition in the Pigeon
• The 'strange death' of radical behaviourism (Freddy Jackson Brown & Duncan Gillard)
• The everyday magic of superstition (Ella Rhodes)

1951

• Solomon Asch – Conformity
• The line between conformity and resistance (Jolanda Jetten & Matthew J. Hornsey)
• Textbook coverage of this classic social psychology study has become increasingly biased (Christian Jarrett)
• Asch's "conformity study" without the confederates (Christian Jarrett)

1952

• Anna Freud and Child Observation

1953

• HM – The Man Who Couldn't Remember
• Looking back: Understanding amnesia – Is it time to forget HM? (John P. Aggleton)
• Brenda Milner: A colourful life, an inspiration, and living legend (Andrew Wickens)

1954

• Abraham Maslow and the Hierarchy of Needs
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs – the sixth level (Hazel Skelsey Guest)
• There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about Abraham Maslow and self-actualisation – a new paper puts the record straight (Alex Fradera)

1956

• Jean Piaget – The Three Mountains
• Looking back: Recollections of Jean Piaget (Joan Bliss)
• Children and time (Sylvie Droit-Volet)

1958

• Donald Broadbent and the Cocktail Party
• Donald Broadbent's explicit and implicit influences on psychological science and scientists (Dianne Berry)

1958

• The Heinz Dilemma
• The uncensored truth about morality (Chelsea Schein, Amelia Goranson, & Kurt Gray)

1958

• Joseph Wolpe and Systematic Desensitization
• Eysenck and the development of CBT (Jack Rachman)

1959

• Harlow's Monkeys
• Neuro Harlow: The effect of a mother's touch on her child's developing brain (Christian Jarrett)

1961

• The Bobo Doll
• Disengaging morality from robotic war (Albert Bandura)
• Book extract: The disengagement of morality (Albert Bandura)
• Social cognitive theory goes global (Albert Bandura)

1963

• SB – The Man Who Was Disappointed with What He Saw
• One on One – with Richard Gregory
• Why is learning slow? (Richard Gregory)

1964

• Carl Rogers and the Person-Centred Approach
• What passes between client and therapist? (Stephanie M. Cobb)
• People first, science second (Ann Wood)
• The real deal (Stephen Joseph)
• The coach-athlete partnership (Sophia Jowett)

1964

• Kitty Genovese
• More than 50 years on, the murder of Kitty Genovese is still throwing up fresh psychological revelations (Christian Jarrett)
• The Bystander Effect is about more than the diffusion of responsibility (Christian Jarrett)

1965

• John/Joan – The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
• Interview with Cordelia Fine 

1966

• Julian Rotter and Locus of Control

1970

• Walter Mischel's Marshmallow Study
• The master of self-control (Walter Mischel)
• This is what happened when psychologists gave toddlers a version of the classic Marshmallow Test (Christian Jarrett)
• Rural Cameroonian pre-schoolers just aced Mischel's iconic Marshmallow Test (Christian Jarrett)
• Children of today are better at delaying gratification than previous generations (Christian Jarrett)
• Circle time rituals help children beat the Marshmallow Test of self control (Christian Jarrett)

1971

• Henri Tajfel's Minimal Groups
• Unlocking the social cure (S. Alexander Haslam)
• Shifting patterns of social identity in Northern Ireland (Peter Bull)

1971

• The Stanford Prison Experiment
• Tyranny revisited - Groups, psychological well-being and the health of societies (Stephen Reicher & S. Alexander Haslam)
• Questioning the banality of evil (S. Alexander Haslam & Stephen Reicher)
• Letters: Dealing with toxic behaviour (Craig Haney, Alexander Haslam, Stephen Reicher, Philip Zimbardo; Joanna Wilde)
• What the textbooks don't tell you – one of psychology's most famous experiments was seriously flawed (Christian Jarrett)
• Newly analysed recording challenges Zimbardo's account of his infamous prison experiment (Christian Jarrett)

1973

• The Pseudo-Patient Study
• Striking the golden section in stigma research (Jonathan D. Raskin)
• Textbook fail: Rosenhan's classic "On Being Sane In Insane Places" covered without criticism (Christian Jarrett)

1974

• Elizabeth Loftus and Eye Witness Testimony
• One on one - with Elizabeth Loftus
• Imagining the past (Elizabeth Loftus)
• Prestige-enhancing memory distortions (Elizabeth Loftus)
• One nagging thing: Nightmares (Elizabeth Loftus)
• False memories of childhood abuse (Chris R. Brewin & Bernice Andrews)
• How reliable is our memory for our own previous intentions? (Christian Jarrett)

1975

• Hans Eysenck
• Looking back: The controversial Hans Eysenck (Roderick D. Buchanan)
• Eysenck and the development of CBT (Jack Rachman)
• The centenary of a maverick (Philip J. Corr)
• Judging Hans Eysenck
• On the shoulders of giants (Alan D. Pickering, Andrew J. Cooper, Luke D. Smillie, & Philip J. Corr)
• Personality and Psychology: Hans Eysenck's unifying themes (Philip J. Corr)
• Individual differences – the British context (Gerald Matthews & K.V. Petrides)

1976

• Arden House
• Psychology to the rescue: Combating ageism (Ellen Langer)

1978

• Mary Ainsworth
• Looking Back: The making and breaking of attachment theory (Barbara Tizard)
• State of the art: Attachment theory (Howard Steele)
• 'All psychologists want to solve the secret of their history!' (Robbie Duschinsky)

1986

• James Pennebaker and Expressive Writing
• 'Real things are just endlessly fascinating' (James Pennebaker)
• Writing about your relationship could help it last (Christian Jarrett)

2006

• Carol Dweck and Growth Mindset
• Parents who think failure is harmful to learning have children who think ability is fixed (Christian Jarrett)
• This cheap, brief "growth mindset" intervention shifted struggling students onto a more successful trajectory (Bradley Busch) 

Some of these famous case studies are summarised by Christian Jarrett in 'Psychology's 10 greatest case studies – digested' and '10 of the most famous animals in psychology'.