"MY FINGERNAILS TASTE TERRIBLY BITTER"

INTRODUCTION🌃

• When? Summer of 1942 Where? The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, camp in Upstate New York
• Performing a sleep-learning experiment- Professor Lawrence LeShan
• Those attending this camp were chronic nail-biters

HYPOTHESIS😴🛏

• Leshan wanted to find out, while the boys were sleeping, if subjected to a negative suggestion about nail biting, would cure them of their bad habit.
• With this experiment you might think that Leshan is a bit crazy, and that he could get sent to jail for watching little boys sleep ; but it's nowhere near that idea

METHOD🗣

• What this professor did was use a phonograph that played the message, "My fingers taste terribly bitter"
• It went on 300 times each night as the boys slept. Resulting in one boy kicking the habit and having healthy skin, rather than the 'coarse wrinkled skin of the habitual biter.'
• 5 weeks in, it broke and stopped playing, and so Leshan stepped in and spoke the words himselff
• Surprisingly, LeShan's voice had a greater effect on the boys. They thought, 'If I stop biting my nails, maybe the voice will go away.'

RESULTS✊🏽

• The summer ended, and the result of the experiment, after examining the boys' nails, was that 40% of them broke this habit
• A 1956 experiment at Santa Monica College, William Emmons and Charles Simon used an electroencephalograph, making sure the participants are fully sleep. playing a message.

REACTION TO THE STUDY👀

• Very interesting! I can relate because I was a former nail biter. But what helped me was painting my nails so I wouldn't bite them
• I've heard I snore in my sleep, so I think someone should do something to help me stop that habit

RELATION TO CLASS

• The main connection between this study and class is the act of conditioning
• The boys had words spoken to them in their sleep and conditioned a few to stop biting

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