The Zimbardo Prison Experiment

1.) I think stereotypes are something we can never avoid, because society always makes generalizations based off of their own experiences. Often times, being negative, they can affect someone’s self-esteem and how they perceive themselves. They can also influence the way individuals might present themselves, and assert a certain behavior because they believe they are superior. Stereotypes have the power to control people, and what they think they can and cannot achieve in life. The class exercised helped me realize that a lot more people are affected by them than I thought beforehand.

2.) The conga line in Las Vegas was about testing the amount of people that would follow suit in waiting on a line while they had no idea what they were waiting

The experiment was designed to understand why and how people will do anything a person says because of their level of authority or the amount of influence they hold. The test was monitored to see how many times, and how long an individual will intentionally put a stranger in agonizing pain. Surprisingly, many people did, one of the reasons being because they believed they would not be held responsible for any harm done to the other person. Since the proctor wore a lab coat it is important to note that perhaps the volunteers truly believed they could not stop. The Zimbardo Prison Experiment tested influence in a different way in that, participants were given certain “roles” in the prisons. Certain people were prisoners and others were prison guards. During this, the prison guards were allowed to use any form of discipline they wanted. In retaliation, the prisoners lashed out, and it became complete chaos. This experiment test social influence showed us the influence that power can have on people and can alter their behavior. Janis’ notion helps us understand social influence on another level, because as the number of people increase the heavier the influence and peer pressure is. For example, the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. This failure happened as a result of the groups’ “belief in inherent morality,” and “self-appointed mind

This also involves impulsiveness, and unable to foresee negative consequences that can occur due to their own actions. Research was done by Steele and Joseph in 1990. Their findings were that excessive amounts of alcohol directly correlates to an individual being more sensitive to their immediate environment and paid less attention to the outside environment. Social learning theory suggests that we learn by observing others and imitating what we see. Provenzo found that roughly eighty-five percent of popular video games in the U.S. consisted of violent themes. Deindividuation, argued by Gustave Le Bon, said that when individuals are in crowds we are more susceptible to behave worse, for example, riots that occurred during protests in Baltimore in 2015. We become deindividuated, furthermore, begin to feel like we are invincible. Since we assume we cannot be personally held accountable for our actions in a group, we lose our sense of what is right, and what it