Jane Elliott's Labeling Theory

Jane Elliott, a teacher, divided her class by eye color as an experiment after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. So, students with brown eyes were considered better than those with blue eyes. She gave those students extra time at recess, a second at lunch and a sense of superiority. To tell the groups apart, the blue-eyed students wore collars. The next day, Elliott changed it up by giving the blue-eyed students privileges. Elliott was captivated at her student’s reactions. In the privileged or superior in-group, the students shared a sense of identity that excludes and devalues outsiders while the students in the out-group were viewed and treated negatively as their characteristics were seen different. The superior group embraced

In the video, there was a few incidents that sprung out. One was bullying which came from the blue-eyed children and violence with a punch to the gut from a brown-eyed boy to a blue-eyed boy after being tormented about the color of his eyes. Almost identical reactions came from the adults on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”. The audience was spilt into two different categories or in other words, in-groups and out-groups, based on their eye color being blue or brown. The brown-eyed people were treated with coffee, donuts, and were seated first. So, in turn, the brown-eyed people bought into the idea and thought of themselves as superior according to groupthink. For example, when the female from the audience tried to make a point that her former partner in high school was “stupid” and a “cheater” only because her partner had blue eyes. In comparison, the “Stanford Prison Experiment” had many similarities to Elliot’s experiment. The “Stanford Prison Experiment” was a documentary on the effects of prison on the guards and prisoners. The guards were treated as superior which successfully showed that when an individual is placed in a position of authority or is told they are better than the subordinate, they can change drastically