Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Register
Advertisement
Farm-Fresh balanceYMMVTransmit blueRadarWikEd fancyquotesQuotes • (Emoticon happyFunnyHeartHeartwarmingSilk award star gold 3Awesome) • RefridgeratorFridgeGroupCharactersScript editFanfic RecsSkull0Nightmare FuelRsz 1rsz 2rsz 1shout-out iconShout OutMagnifierPlotGota iconoTear JerkerBug-silkHeadscratchersHelpTriviaWMGFilmRoll-smallRecapRainbowHo YayPhoto linkImage LinksNyan-Cat-OriginalMemesHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconicLibrary science symbol SourceSetting

In another attempt to gain extra credit — and thus a greater chance of escaping Greendale — Annie manages to secure a place in Professor Duncan's experiment, in which the "Duncan Principle"[1] is to be tested, by convincing Troy and Abed to volunteer to be test subjects. However, this leads to unforeseen factors the researchers did not anticipate, which ends up making it unclear who are the real test subjects.

Jeff and Shirley begin to bond over a recently-discovered mutual shared interest — making fun of Britta's new boyfriend, Vaughn. However, their mutual passion for gossip about him will end up creating rifts in their friendship group.


The Community episode "Social Psychology" provides examples of:[]

  • Berserk Button: Upon being informed that the experiment was going to start late, Chang immediately exploded in a violent, childish temper tantrum, involving throwing furniture and screaming "MOMMY!" Since the purpose of the experiment was to test how long people would put up with being delayed before exploding, and Chang literally didn't last more than a few seconds, his Sitcom Arch Nemesis Professor Duncan was quite pleased:
Cquote1

 Duncan: Houston, we have an idiot.[2]

Cquote2
Cquote1

 Annie: I just got the first three because...

Annie and Abed: ... the fourth one blows!

Cquote2
  • Giftedly Bad: Vaughn's poetry
  • Gossipy Hens: Shirley and Jeff. Troy and Abed in The Tag.
  • Hollywood Science: Duncan has a total breakdown when he encounters the outlier of extreme patience that is Abed, ranting that his Duncan's Principle has been completely broken. Of course, one outlier is hardly enough to totally disprove a hypothesis concerning human psychology, but...
  • Hot for Teacher: Professor Duncan assumes Annie is hitting on him before she even asks him anything, then immediately rates her an 8 (which is "a British 10"). This, too, was oddly not present in the DVD release.
  • Hypocritical Humour: After ranting — at length — about a student evaluation feedback card he received, how hurtful and racist it was, and the lengths he went to in order to discover who the evaluator was:
Cquote1

 Senor Chang: [To Annie, very very creepily] Who's erratic and unstable now, Princess Gringa? [Kisses her on the forehead]

Cquote2
Cquote1

 Vaughn: I asked politely and the panda took his pants off.

Britta: (exaggerated laughter) I never even knew that's what asexual meant.

Cquote2
  • No Control Group: If this had been a real experiment, the subjects should have been isolated from each other. Experiencing previous breakdowns may have influenced the breakdown of later subjects. Of course, neither the professor leading the experiment nor the institution in this case are exactly exemplars of scientific research...
  • Professor Guinea Pig: Inadvertent, Prof. Duncan becomes the subject of the Duncan Principle.
  • The Rainman: Lampshaded after Abed has managed to sit perfectly still for twenty-six hours waiting in a room simply because Annie asked him to:
Cquote1

 Professor Duncan: It's you! It's your fault!

Annie: But... you told me to bring subjects!

Professor Duncan: Yeah, subjects! Not Rain Man!

Cquote2
Cquote1

 Pierce: You see Jeff. There was certain things man was not meant to hear. We were designed, by whatever entity you choose, to hear what's in this range and really this range alone because you know whose talking to us in this range? The people we love.

Cquote2
  • The Stoic: Upon being told to just sit and wait, while everyone else around him ends up throwing childish tantrums and storming out, Abed just calmly, without expressing any apparent emotion (as he tells her later, he was actually livid), sits and waits. For twenty-six hours.
Cquote1

 Professor Duncan: [Watching video footage of Abed sitting perfectly still, staring into space] ... Is it on pause?!

Annie: Nope. That's just him.

Cquote2
  1. The longer people are forced to wait, the more control is lost by the ego, the more gained by the id, resulting in "a surprisingly predictable emotional eruption" — i.e. a good old-fashioned temper tantrum
  2. This line is oddly not in the DVD release, instead replaced with "And they're off..."
Advertisement