Social experiment

A social experiment is a research project conducted with human subjects in the real world. It typically investigates the effects of a policy intervention by randomly assigning individuals, families, businesses, classrooms, or other units to different treatments or to a controlled condition that represents the status quo. The qualifier "social" distinguishes a policy experiment from a "clinical" experiment, typically a medical intervention within the subject's body, and also from a laboratory experiment, such as a university psychology faculty might conduct under completely controlled conditions. In a social experiment, randomization to assigned treatment is the only element in the subject's environment that the researchers control. All other elements remain exactly what they were.

Social experiments are often referred to as "the gold standard" for program evaluation and reform processes. In measuring the impact of a social program, the researcher has to assess what the outcomes of the relevant population would have been in the absence of the program. Almost every naturally occurring comparison group, however, will differ from the composition of a non-random treatment group, usually because of selection bias (outside of an experiment, people choose to receive the treatment or choose not to). Randomization creates a control group that is statistically identical in large sample with the group that is assigned to receive the treatment, and in principle there is no selection bias.

Social experiments are usually imagined as scientific research where there is assumed an elite strata of professional experts that design and control the "experiment." The gross arrogance of this approach misses the conceptual and pragmatic opportunity to design and implement a social entity that has the power and intention of representing a collective world view for a participating population — a participating population that plays and modifies the collective social intention, beginning with heuristically defined structures that classify the world and the community in terms of a logical game. But don't forget Shakespeare's axiom (?) "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." Humans are players (sine quo non of all other species of animals) and humans begin life imitating and acting: wearing costumes and playing roles; directing, participating in relationships of the family and society: this is the strength and future of human evolution. It is within the conceptual grasp of humans to create a structure of groups that represent a collective world view that have modifiable definitions and rules for tweaking and modifying the community with certain criteria in mind: user friendly, operationally defined "truth, freedom, justice, and enjoyment"; and other criteria of shelter, hygiene, defense, commissariat, travel, entertainment, etc. Participation and engagement in social evolution, as a part of chromosome analogous information sets, has not yet appeared within the social matrix; but the concepts and tools already exist in biological and human evolution. A concept of social intelligence and social design is just around the corner.

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