In this paper we will be discussing the famous psychology studies completed by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo. Both of these studies had a huge impact on psychology and are still relevant to this day. They gave psychologists an insight into how humans react in social situations when an authority figure is present in a simulated environment. The experiments also showed how people’s norms and values can change when assuming certain social roles. In Zimbardo’s prison study he had selected students after putting out an advertisement for the experiment. He first interviewed everyone to ensure that none of them had any previous medical or psychological conditions, or any history of arrests/ drugs abuse. Then they were given tests to ensure their personalities were a right fight for the study. The students wore uniforms and the prisoners even had to wear a locked chain …show more content…
It likewise disproves the theory of prison guard’s aggression stemming from dispositions. This experiment demonstrations another important finding which is that people will conform to a new social role fairly quickly, particularly one that has a strong label associated with it. The Zimbardo study showed us that people tend to lose their self-awareness in a group of people by becoming so immersed into the norms of the group that they lost touch with themselves. In Stanley Milgram’s famous “shock study” he put out an advertisement in the newspaper looking for men to participate in his experiment at Yale university. He was originally looking for males between the ages of 20 and 50 years old. He had a variety of different types of people participating in this study, he had people working in skilled and unskilled careers. He paired the volunteers up with a confederate and told them a cover story that the confederate they were paired up with was another participant in the