Social groups have specific characteristic; they consist of two or more people who interact in an ordered fashion, share specific values and norms and have at least some sense of unity and common goals. One of the main influence that groups exercise over their members lives in their capacity to induce conformity the process through which modify their behavior to comply with the groups norm or decision.
In this essay, we discuss some of the group conformity related experiments and their reflection in society.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a landmark psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular to the real word circumstances of prison life. It was conducted by in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University.
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Experimenters led by Solomon Asch asked students to participate in a "vision test." In reality, all but one of the participants was the shill of the experimenter, and the study was really about how the remaining student would react to the confederates' behavior. The participants (the real subjects and the confederates) were all seated in a classroom where they were told to announce their judgment of the length of several lines drawn on a series of displays. They were asked which line was longer than the other, which were the same length, etc. The confederates had been prearranged to all give an incorrect answer to the tests. Many subjects showed extreme discomfort, but most conformed to the majority view of the others in the room, even when the majority said that two lines different in length by several inches were the same length. Control subjects with no exposure to a majority view had no trouble giving the correct answer.
The Asch experiments may provide some vivid empirical evidence relevant to some of the ideas raised in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. As G. Orwell put in his book “A party member is required to have not only the right opinions but the right instincts. (Page 174) G. Orwell appeared to have anticipated conformity when he described the main character Winston as feeling relaxed and happy after conforming to postulate that two plus two equals
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Conformity may be much less salient than authority pressure. Would ordinary people, under the direction of an authority figure obey just about any order they were given, even to torture? It’s a phenomenon that’s been used to explain atrocities from the Holocaust to the Vietnam War’s My Lai massacre to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. What is the degree of self-responsibility practiced by a person under the authority affects their level of obedience to unjust
The Stanford jail experiment, which was carried out in 1971 by Phillip Zimbardo, was designed to examine the function of power in a prison environment. In a mock jail setting, subjects were randomly assigned to the roles of "prisoners" and "guards." The experiment was intended to run for two weeks but was discontinued after six days. In the Stanford experiment, a few ethical principles were not adhered to.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by Phillip Zimbardo at Stanford University in 1971 and was funded by the US Naval Office. The experiment consisted of 24 volunteer college students who were paid $15 a day to serve as guards and prisoners in a simulated prison environment. Prior to the experiment, each volunteer was given a diagnostic interview to eliminate anyone with “psychological problems, medical disabilities, or a history of crime or drug abuse.” The experiment “was intended to measure the effect of role-playing, labeling, and social expectations on behavior over a period of two weeks,” but Zimbardo ended it after six days due to abuse by the guards and the psychological wellbeing of the prisoners. By the second day of the experiment, Zimbardo already noticed behavioral changes in both the guards and prisoners.
While arguably one of the defining psychological studies of the 20th Century, the research was not without flaws. Almost immediately the study became a subject for debate amongst psychologists who argued that the research was both ethically flawed and its lack of diversity meant it could not be generalized. Ethically, a significant critique of the experiment is that the participants actually believed they were administering serious harm to a real person, completely unaware that the learner was in fact acting. Although Milgram argued that the illusion was a necessary part of the experiment to study the participants’ reaction, they were exposed to a highly stressful situation. Many were visibly distraught throughout the duration of the test
In summary, the purpose of the Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to demonstrate that powerful situational forces, much like Abu Ghraib, could over-ride individual dispositions and choices, leading good people to do bad things simply because of the role they found themselves
The human mind is a very complex organ which contains many psychological components that are infinite to comprehend. Social constructionism is a field that can be broken down into two different paths, socials and psychological behavior. The two films the Stanford Prison Experiment and The Hunting Ground are good examples of both of these processes. The topics of these films are very relevant to the field of psychology due to their contribution to our everyday psychological brain functions.
This experiment was conducted in Stanford University by Dr. Zimbardo. During this two week long session, Dr. Zimbardo had several volunteers agree to act as prisoners and as prison guards. The prisoners were told to wait in their houses while the guards were to set up the mock prison, a tactic used by Dr. Zimbardo to make them fit into their roles more. The official police apprehended the students assigned to the role of prisoner from their homes, took mug shots, fingerprinted them, and gave them dirty prison uniforms. The guards were given clean guard uniforms, sunglasses, and billy clubs borrowed from the police.
Conformity and group mentality are major aspects of social influence that have governed some of the most notorious events and experiments in history. The Holocaust is a shocking example of group mentality, or groupthink, which states that all members of the group must support the group’s decisions strongly, and all evidence leading to the contrary must be ignored. Social norms are an example of conformity on a smaller scale, such as tipping your waiter or waitress, saying please and thank you, and getting a job and becoming a productive member of society. Our society hinges on an individual’s inherent need to belong and focuses on manipulating that need in order to create compliant members of society by using the ‘majority rules’ concept. This
Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo questioned, “What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?” (Zimbardo, 1971) In 1971 a psychologist named Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment on the effects prison has on young males with the help of his colleague Stanley Milgram. They wanted to find out if the reports of brutality from guards was due to the way guards treated prisoners or the prison environment.
In the article of “The Perils of Obedience”, written by Stanley Milgram, the experimenter explains that the experiment is to see how far a person could hurt a victim in a situation where he is ordered to do so. Also, in the article “The Stanford Prison
The Stanford Experiment The most controversial psychological experiment is the Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment was put together by Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo who conducted this experiment in between August 14-28 1971. The experiment was conducted to show the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. Zimbardo studies have proven the psychological effects of today’s prison system on the human brain. This experiment was going to have students play the roles of prisoners and guards for 14 days.
In the movie, there are 24 students chosen to participate in the experiment. The researchers conducted series of interviews to eliminate applicants that have psychological
Analyzing Psychological Experiments • Milgram experiments. The major takeaway from the Milgram experiments was how many people were willing to comply simply due to the inherent desire to listen to authority regardless of the individual’s gender or background (Davidson, 2022). Even though these people were aware that innocent people were being caused pain by their actions, these participants still shocked the learner just because they were instructed to by authority. • Stanford prison experiment.
Unit 1 Written Assignment Literature Review of article on Standard Prison Experiment Introduction This article concerns the Stanford Prison experiment carried out in 1971 at Stanford University. The experiment commenced on August 14, and was stopped after only six days. It is one of the most noted psychological experiments on authority versus subordinates. The studies which emerged from this have been of interest to those in prison and military fields due to its focus on the psychology associated with authority.
Normal People Behaving Evil The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment to see if normal people would change their behavior in a role-play as a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was conducted by Dr.Philip Zimbardo in 1973 at Stanford University that caused numerous amount of trauma to prisoners by prison guards in their role-playing position which forced Dr. Zimbardo to officially terminate the experiment six days after it was introduced. Due to the cruel aggressive behaviors from the guards, the experiment led to a question, "Do "normal" people have the capability of behaving badly?" The answer to that question is that most likely an individual who behave normally will have the capability of expressing evil behavior due to the environment that they are surrounded.
Because the German-Jew relationship during the Holocaust had interested him, psychologist Stanley Milgram (1963) had conducted an experiment on “destructive obedience”, to determine the conditions where the subject will obey authority and the conditions where they will disobey. In the experiment, the subject is told by the experimenter to give shocks from a scale of low to dangerously high to the person on the electric chair (who was an actor) when they give a wrong answer. The shocks were not real, but prior to the experiment, the subjects were given a small shock to influence them that the shocks in the experiment were true. Surprisingly, Milgram’s experiment resulted with many of the subjects obeying the experimenter, continually increasing the shock level to the “dangerous zone”. There was a noticeable arousal of conflict shown on the subject’s face when the person receiving the shocks displayed discomfort (Milgram S., 1973, p. 63).