Aitana Vargas

Ever wonder what would happen if you were left alone in the dark for days? This is exactly what six volunteers have done for a BBC Horizon documentary. The experiment is set out to determine whether this technique, known as sensory deprivation, makes people more suggestible. For two days, psychologist Ian Robbins has monitored six subjects confined to a cell in a nuclear bunker.

As the hours go by without hearing, seeing anything and not knowing what time it is, the volunteers become increasingly disoriented. Among them is Brian Keenan, someone familiar with the experience after having been held in captivity for four years in Lebanon. Thirty hours after the start of the experiment, he has begun hallucinating. And so have others. Some of the volunteers are noticing strange presences, such as other people in the room, mosquitoes or musical instruments getting louder and louder.

Once the subjects are released and given the psychological tests, several of them show very high levels of suggestibility. The tests included reading out the colors of a card whose letters were printed in a different color. The results shed some light on what happens to people who are exposed to solitary confinement for months or even years.

Sensory deprivation, a subject not exempt from controversy, is allegedly used as an interrogation strategy at Guantanamo Bay. Moreover, thousands of inmates around the world are exposed to a certain degree of solitary confinement.

Professor Robbins points out that the evidence gathered in such situations is unreliable because at some point people start combining the views of the interrogators with their own.

Original Source (s):

BBC