User reviews

Mind Field is a great edutainment show about human psychology. If you have YouTube Red, it's by far the best thing I've seen on the platform thus far and well worth the watch.

Mind field is mostly replicating and demonstrating famous concepts in human psychology, like how isolation influences the perception of time, or how people conform to the larger group even when they know the group is wrong. It is an incredibly fascinating series that takes VSauce's trademark style of mixing comedy with science, mathematics and philosophy that made him one of the largest educational channels on Youtube, and giving it a little extra budget.

Is Mind Field worth getting Red over? I'm not sure but I would consider it. I got Youtube Red because it came as a package with Google Play Music streaming, which I got as a replacement to Spotify. There isn't too much good or interesting on the Red platform yet IMO, but if you are interested in ad-free Youtube and music streaming for about $10 a month, than Mind Field is a great cherry on top of that deal.

Overall, Mind Field is a well made and fun show that, while not offering anything new to the scientific field per se, is a great way to introduce some psychological concepts to a wider audience.

I've only seen two episodes so far but I'm already hooked beyond my mind with this show! Michael, the host, whose Youtube series I loved strongly throughout the years, really makes 20+ minutes fly away as you learn stuff that quite literally shape our daily lives.

Filmed to a high standard, produced with heavy effort reflecting in show's quality, we are led into the depths of new cognition, by Michael (now finally recognized for being a super-talented brainiac he is) leading the show in a chilled, information-packed and comical manner, never failing to captivate your imagination with new facts while cracking you up in the process.

Many thanks from a massive fan and I hope you reach the heights you deserve, Michael. Keep our minds in your field.

This is by far one of the most psychologically educational shows I've ever seen in my entire life. This show is beyond interesting. It takes interesting to an entirely new level.

I recommend this show to everybody! I love it so much! It's well worth getting YouTube red, even for this show alone. This is now my favorite show. Along with my favorite youtuber!

This show is for everyone who is interested in psychological concepts and experiments. It's full of all these famous experiments and concepts you might have heard of: the Milgram Experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Trolley Problem, the Bystander Effect, etc.

But Mind Field doesn't just show these experiments and explain the results. It also tries to do something new in each episode. This can be taking a psychological/philosophical concept and then make an experiment to see how people act in real life, when confronted with these problems and dilemmas. Or they take an already existing experiment and try to go a step further or approach a different angle.

To make sure the experiments are as good as possible and results are actually useful, Michael (the host) always consults with scientists and such before and during the experiments.

All this is absolutely great and you learn a lot about these topics even if you are familiar with the experiments.

BUT: There are some things about the way the show does (most of) the experiments that I didn't like or think could be done way better.

My first problem is how a lot of these experiments are designed: There are some voluntary participants who think they are about to do an experiment ablout one thing, but it's actually about something different and all the people around them are actors. There is always a good chance that the participants are aware of that possibility, because it isn't something shockingly new. A lot of famous experiments most people know work just like that. So you always have to wonder, if these people know what's up and just play along, which makes their data invalid. In addition a lot of the experiments are based on other experiments a lot of people know. So they might not anticipate anything unusual at first, but then see the pattern and remember this experiment they heard so much about.

This gets even worse, when Michael Stevens, a webshow host with 13 Mio subscribers pretends to be a scientist who directs a new experiment. If anyone who participates knows him, they must know that something is off.

My last problem is the number of participants in the experiments. Of course it is not possible for a web show to do an experiment with 1.000 people and then film the whole thing. But there are a lot of experiments where they take about 8 people and then pretend that this is enough for the results to be proof. I saw a podcast with Michael about the show and it seemed as if there is a lot of unused data that didn't make it into the final cut and that makes perfect sense, because otherwise these videos would go for hours without anything new. But if there were mir participants than we are shown, it would be nice to have some numbers. Even as a short text between to scenes. It would give these experiments a lot more credibility.

Nevertheless: It is an awesome show and I strongly recommend watching it. My review might sound like the show is unprofessional and stupid, but that is definitely not the case. It teaches you a lot about psychology and human behavior while always trying to find out something new by doing actual experiments that haven't been done before with real scientists to help and advise them. And the results make perfect sense and everyone who knows and loves Vsauce can probably imagine how great Michael explains these complex topics to an audience that doesn't know to much about it. I just think that such an awesome show could be improved by trying to eliminate these little weaknesses as good as possible.

And as always: Thanks for reading!

This show does a great job in making "hard" science easy to understand. Many of the science shows of today cannot explain complex topics in a simple to understand manner so they drub down the content which is a real shame. I have seen a major degradation in shows such as NOVA and journals such as "Scientific American." What is great about this show is that it explains, a very hard scientific topic, the how the human mind processes information in an easy to understand, entertaining, and accessible way. Kudos.

What I really like in Mind Field is the way how they approach the psychology and how they explain in details to us as well as the subjects in their episodes using a simple language and as subjects.

Mind Field replicates some concepts and show how our brain works and trick us many times and if you have courage to try one of these you'll probably enjoy.

I strongly agree that Mind Field should continue with more of these experiments.

There is a rich content inside this serie and as always with sense of humor.

The series is an experimental type series that focuses on human senses, the human psyche and other psychological and technological concepts. Very interesting and gets you thinking.

As always.. keep watching..(background music in your head)

This show is beyond marvelous! I have rewatched it several times and I can't believe it isn't even more regognized than it already is.

I would love to see this more used in the classroom or elsewhere. I think Micheal Stevens is one of the best YouTubers I have ever watched. As it becomes even more common for content creators to upload less frequently and better quality it is really nice to see that Micheal Stevens uploads videos that contain subjects that fascinate and interesting him. For years and years on end I have watched Mindfield and learned alot about human behaviour and the mind in general. This show is just a masterpiece!

It's hard to know where to begin. Many of the conclusions drawn in this documentary are insufficiently well thought out. Further, some of the experiments lack rigour ... for no good reason. Let's address concern #1. Seeing pictures of puppies makes people click bubble-wrap because they have alternative thoughts. What happens if you give people those blowable windmills or sand-timers? The conclusion from everyone I spoke to was that these people wanted to pat the puppy and the stimulation from their fingers was directed toward the bubble wrap (as one volunteer said herself). So, why focus the conclusion elsewhere? Then the science. 30% more bubbles were popped when people saw puppies. Was that on average? What were the actual figures? Or the people who were given choice of tea and had to decode words. Was this linked to their spelling ability? How big was the group size? The problem is that it's hard to tell (these and quite a few other cases) if it's like the Stanford Prison Experiment (aiming for a conclusion), poor communication or ignorance. It's really hard to tell. I've studied behavioural psychology a lot over the years. I knew many of these topics already. This is not the starting point you want to start with. The science is sufficiently sketchy that it's hard to pick what's credible and what's not. I'd give the hit rate about 6/10 ... so that's what I'm scoring this series.

Despite I liked the show very much I'm giving it 2 because this is not a documentary.

They hired actors and manipulated. Later on they lied to people about this. What is sad is that Michael did too :( Hope we haven't lost him to showbiz for good...

If you want more you can start investigating from Season 02 Episode 1 "The Greater Good"