When going to observe a cult meeting, it is important to follow certain guidelines. Use a fake name. Don’t bring jackets or anything that might hold up a swift departure. Don’t park too close—you don’t want them to copy down your license plate number.
But the most important rule? “Don’t eat anything or drink anything,” says Scott Thompson. “That’s obvious.”
Thompson, ’06, is one of five undergraduate TAs for psychology professor Philip Zimbardo’s new course, Exploring Human Nature. In it, 160 students delve into five diverse and sometimes strange aspects of the human experience: social influence; mind control and cults; the psychology of evil and terrorism; hypnosis and time perspective; and human sexuality.
“I picked topics that I had done research in, that I was somewhat an expert in, that I knew had high student interest,” Zimbardo explains. And while the syllabus may sound like the table of contents from a witchcraft manual, the hallmark of the course may not be its topics but its methodology: requiring students to participate in three “experiential projects” during the quarter.
“The point of the experiential projects is you experience, personally, the phenomena we are studying in class,” Zimbardo says. “I can describe how salesmen use certain social influence tactics; it’s a very different thing when you go to a used-car dealer on El Camino and they are trying to hustle you.”
Hence the warnings issued to a small group of students on their way to a Chinese New Year celebration of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s followers, commonly known as “Moonies.” At the group’s nondescript hideaway in the hills above Berkeley, Zimbardo’s students witnessed firsthand examples of social influence such as “love-bombing”—the extensive use of compliments and friendly body language—and isolation techniques.
One participant, Anthony Viola, says that the Moonies’ tactics were very persuasive. “If it wasn’t an experiment and I didn’t have anyone or I was kind of lost, I feel like it would be easy to get sucked into something like that,” says Viola, ’06. “Everyone there was really caring and into world peace.”
And despite the precautions, Viola sampled their lo mein and fortune cookies. The verdict: “I thought the food was horrible.”
During the segment of the class devoted to evil and terrorism, nearly 70 students participated in a terrorist simulation. Each of 13 “cells” had to adopt a mock ideology and then “bomb” a symbolic target—meaning they had to place a three-foot-high X on their target and hope that it was not noticed by passersby or the “CIA” (read: TAs). Infiltrators planted in each cell tried to thwart them. One group attacked Casa Zapata, another struck Hoover Tower and a third went after a Starbucks on University Avenue.
“Most of the terrorist cells failed,” Zimbardo says. “Only three or four of the 13 succeeded, partly because [the unsuccessful ones] were not sufficiently suspicious of infiltrators.”
Some infiltrators were quite effective. Knowing that he had to provide hard evidence of his cell’s plans, Graeme Mullen set up a condenser microphone and digital recording station in his room and taped a conversation between himself and his girlfriend, another member of the cell.
When they found out who had betrayed them, the members of the group were “really surprised,” says Mullen, ’05. “My girlfriend was really mad that I had recorded her. It was pretty funny.”
Overall, Mullen gives the course a thumbs-up. “I was really, really caught from the first day,” he says. “I went home and told everyone. The next time I went to the lecture hall, it was spilling out into the streets. [The course’s topics] are things that don’t usually get taught in other classes, and they’re things Zimbardo knows a lot about.”
The professor tries to make his lectures just as exciting as the field experiences. He incorporates a lot of pop culture references into his PowerPoint slides (the psychology of The Manchurian Candidate, for instance), hypnotizes his students and invites guest speakers. During the segment on human sexuality, a former prostitute named Veronica Monet and a dominatrix named Mistress Morgana fielded student questions such as “Do you report your taxes?” and “What’s your favorite toy?” Exploring human nature, indeed.
