Stanford Prison Experiment By Zimbardo

False confessions is when a suspect admits to doing a crime which he really did not commit. Innocent people will confess falsely for various reasons that include coercion, to gain attention, because they were promised a lenient sentence, or to even cover up for somebody else. When a jury learns that the suspect falsely confessed and he tries to take what he said back, it’s hard for the jury to believe them. That is why a lot of the time, innocent people are the ones stuck in jail while the real criminal is free in the world. Saul Kassin and Katherine Kiechel conducted an experiment to test if people would confess to doing something when they actually didn’t do it. 40 males and 39 females were told they were going to be involved in a typing

The individual has a loss of self-awareness and the norms of the group becomes the individual’s norms. In other words, if the individual was alone he wouldn’t be doing the things he would be doing in a group such as yelling or robbing a store. Social psychologist study the conditions that make people behave the way they do when other people are around. A famous example in psychology that shows a clear example of deindividuation is the Stanford Prison Experiment by Zimbardo. He wanted to find out if the brutality that often takes place with prison guards is due to their personalities or due to the prison environment. In a prison environment, he assigned the participants into two groups, guards and prisoners. The prisoners were humiliated and stripped of their individuality just like in a regular prison. On the other hand, the guards were instructed to do whatever they though was necessary to maintain law in the prison, expect for physical violence. Within hours of beginning the experiment, the guards started to harass the prisoners. The prisoners also started acting like real prisoners, talking about the issues of prison and also started taking the prison rules seriously. They had to stop the experiment by the sixth day because the guards started to abuse the prisoners and some of the prisoners were showing signs of emotional

Reactance occurs when a person feels that someone or something is taking away his or her choices or limiting the range of alternatives. Reactance can cause a person to adopt or strengthen a view that is the opposite of what was intended. When you are told that you can’t have something you want it more, you rebel by reasserting freedom, and you fell angry at the person restricting your freedom. Brehm (1966) declared that people have a need for freedom. The need for freedom is activated whenever people feel a restriction put upon their actions or opinions. Brehm and Sensenig conducted a simple experiment that demonstrated psychological reactance. In a game that required cooperation, a person passed one of two notes to the person. One note suggested a possible course of action by listing alternatives and stating a preference. The other note directly requested a particular course of action, saying the partner "should" do something. Nearly 70% of the subjects went along with the suggestion in the first condition and less than 40% went along with the request in the second. We see psychological reactance in our everyday lives among adults and children. When you tell a child not to play with a specific toy, all the sudden that toy becomes more attractive to them and they want to play with it simply because it is forbidden to them.