Numerous cases in history show that identification with a particular group can lead to dreadful outcomes. Together, with historical evidence, classic psychological studies tell a very powerful story. Decent people can take on oppressive roles and succumb to oppressive leaders. However, people often resist tyranny, and their resistance tends to be most effective when it is collective. Sherif argued that intergroup conflict occurs when two groups are in competition for limited resources. This theory is supported by evidence from a famous study investigating group conflict: The Robbers Cave (Sherif, 1954, 1958, 1961). Sherif (1954) conducted an experiment with young boys in a summer camp. The participants were 24 schoolboys, came from the similar, …show more content…
In-group relationships were built through activities that will promote group identification. Stereotypes were assumed, such as believing that in-group members are brave and friendly (described in favourable terms) and members of the other group – sneaky (unfavourable terms). Hostility developed rapidly, followed by bitter conflict. The experiment focused heavily on the concept of a 'group ' and what a perception of belonging to a group can actually do to the relationships of members within it and their relationships with people outside their group. Sherif remarked that anyone who came in at this point would have concluded that these youngsters were wicked and vicious. However, it was group processes rather than the personality that had produced the conflict. However, in one of Sherif’s studies, which, unfortunately, was never published, they refused to be divided and, together, they resisted attempts by the experimenters to set them against each other. …show more content…
15 men participated in The BBC Prison Study. At the beginning of the experiment there was a possibility for the prisoners to be promoted to guards, therefore, prisoners did not identify with their group. After 3 days, prisoners started to work together, they noticed that guards could not agree on decisions and prisoners overthrown guards. Guard groups had a deviant – the over-disciplined guard. Then everyone came up with an idea of equality, but that did not work either and the experiment was stopped. This experiment’s conclusions differ from Stanford’s Experiment and therefore it opened up a discussion once
In several cases, folks will set aside their personal beliefs or adopt the opinion of the rest of the group. Group-think influences police officer’s rationalizations for some behaviors by preventing members of the group from reconsidering their beliefs while causing them to ignore warning signs. Group-think tends to occur more in situations where group members are very similar to one another and is more likely to take place when a powerful and charismatic leader commands the group. Situations in which the group is placed under extreme stress or where moral dilemmas exist also increase the occurrence of groupthink (Haberfeld et al.2014,
“Our young research participants were not the proverbial “Bad Apples” in an otherwise good barrel. Rather, out experimental design ensured that they were initially good apples and were corrupted by the insidious power of the bad barrel, this prison (229).” Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect, created an experiment of twenty-four college age men. He randomly assigned these ordinary, educated, young men with a role as either Guard or Prisoner. He questions whether or not good people will do bad things if they are given the opportunity. After the experiment is complete, he begins to compare the situations that occurred in the Stanford Prison Experiment with real life situations in Abu Giraib and Guantanamo Bay Prison. He points out many similarities that parallel the Stanford Prison Experiment. In every situation depicted, there is a good person in a seemingly “bad barrel” – or a bad situation that brings bad actions out of a good person.
The social psychology theory that I will be analyzing is based on the Stanley Milgram experiment done in 1965 following the start of the Nazi war. He was curios on all the violence taking place during this time. As a Jew himself, he wanted to find out whether or not the Adolf Eichmann accomplice had the same intent and hate towards the Jewish people during the holocaust. Based on Solomon Asch’s past experiments on conformity, Milgram’s experiment was done to determine whether or not the power of the situation could cause average people to conform to obedience. The results of Milgram’s experiment were astounding. The research of Milgram’s experiment had such a major impact on social psychology that we still use his findings to analyze human behavior today.
Turman, P. (October 25, 2000f). Group Cohesiveness and Conflict: Group Communication [Lecture] Cedar Falls, IA. University of Northern Iowa, Communication Studies Department.
The study was based in a mock prison, and the main purpose of the study was to see if the participants would conform to their assigned roles (Haslam, 2014). As the experiment went on the participants reacted to their roles in predict, and unpredicted ways. The “prison guards” began to believe they were indeed in that role, and would become physical with the “prisoners”. The mental being of the prisoner participant’s began to diminish, and the experiment was then forced to finish before completion. This experiment shows how quickly the behaviors conformed to their roles, and caused the experiment to become unethical due to the fact the participants were than facing physical and mental harm as a result. Again we see here, the Stanford students conforming to an authoritarian role, and not following their own personal morals almost as if they were brainwashed into their new
Muzafer Sherif helped clarify the conditions that produce intergroup conflict and harmony. He conducted an experiment called the Robbers Cave Experiment and studied a group of eleven-year-old boys in an unlikely setting: a summer camp located at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. Sherif pretended to be camp counselors as well as staff and the researchers began their research. First, they assigned the boys into two different groups than the two groups arrived on separate buses and were in different areas of the camp. One group of the boys called themselves the Eagles and the other group assigned their name as the Rattlers. After a week of the two boys being separated and being assigned to different areas of the summer campsite, Sherif started to conduct his research and told the two group of boys to meet one another and compete in a series of competitive games.
Power and control are two factors in peoples lives that can change how they treat others and what actions they will take to keep the control. The experiment is a prison experiment designed to test how far humans would treat others based on how much control and power they are given. The experiment will take two weeks to determine how individual’s behavior changes with power. Power changes peoples behavior a great amount and many times it is negative. In the experiment, guards are given the power to control prisoners and they take advantage of their power by using force, cruelty and receiving pleasure.
Imagine a group of friends or children were responsible for a man's life who desperately sought for help, but the children mocked or even ignored him instead. This example was the same concept used to develop the plot for the story "The Man in the Well" by Ira Sher. An interesting theme of this story is that groups of people tend to act based on their groups impulse and not their own. Though the negative effect of peer pressure might be the cause of why groups, cliques, and gangs do what they do, their behavior alone tends to be much different than when they are alone. It's as if each character themselves goes through a sudden and temporary transformation. However, it's through important concepts of personality, action, and decisions that help
In this article two experiments were mentioned; the Milgram's Experiment and the Stanford Experiment supporting that “people conform passively and unthinkingly to both the instructions and the roles that authorities provide, however malevolent these may be”. However, recently, the consensus of the two experiments had been challenged by the work of social identity theorizing. The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by Zimbardo. This experiment included a group of students who were “randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners”. It was conducted in a mock prison at the Stanford Psychology Department. Prisoners were abused, humiliated, and undergone psychological torture. In the experiment the guards played a very authoritarian
When put into an authoritative position over others, is it possible to claim that with this new power individual(s) would be fair and ethical or could it be said that ones true colors would show? A group of researchers, headed by Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing either as prisoners or guards to test the power of the social situation to determine psychological effects and behavior (1971). The experiment simulated a real life scenario of William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies” showing a decay and failure of traditional rules and morals; distracting exactly how people should behave toward one another. This research, known more commonly now as the Stanford prison experiment, has become a classic demonstration of situational power to influence individualistic perspectives, ethics, and behavior. Later it is discovered that the results presented from the research became so extreme, instantaneous and unanticipated were the transformations of character in many of the subjects that this study, planned originally to last two-weeks, had to be discontinued by the sixth day. The results of this experiment were far more cataclysmic and startling than anyone involved could have imagined. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the discoveries from Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and of Burrhus Frederic “B.F.” Skinner’s study regarding the importance of environment.
Realistic Conflict Theory As one of the oldest social psychology theories, the Realistic Conflict Theory deals with the conflict and hostility that is projected to arise between individuals or groups competing over the same limited resources. Therefore, as a resource, opportunity, or even goal, becomes harder to obtain, the amount of aggression is projected to increase as well. This theory is not only visible in many everyday situations, but it also establishes a basis for which discrimination and prejudice can be partly explained. The initial study of this theory was conducted in a three-step experiment.
Research has shown that ingroup favoritism (the guards) is often linked to outgroup (prisoners) hate and hostility (Gaunt, R., Jacques-Philippe, L., & Denis, S., 2004). In Zimbardo 's Stanford Prison experiment, we can see this more clearly. The Stanford Prison Experiment consisted of students who were assigned to the roles of either prisoners or guards for a period of six days (Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G., 1973). This study alone, demonstrates the power of authority, conformity, moral justification, and various other phenomenons seen in Abu Ghraib. In the Stanford Prison Experiments, both prisoners and guards, conformed to their roles and as such guards began to dehumanize the prisoners, a theory attributed to the dehumanization is the sunglasses the guards wore; the sunglasses were believed to have protected the identity of the guards, resulting in abuse towards prisoners. Another factor that attributed the dehumanization and abuse towards the outgroup, is guards called prisoners by their numbers versus their names, assisting in the outgroup and dehumanization process (Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G.,
The robbers cave experiment shows that conflict can transition into cooperation when subjects are faced with a set of activities. The researchers held different stages, the first stage was the children separating into two groups and making connections with the boys within those groups. In the second stage, or conflict stage, the two groups were pitted against each other to fight for limited resources. Some boys became aggressive, causing the rest of their groups to follow suit. This occurrence proved the researchers’ hypothesis to be correct, that intergroup conflict occurs when two groups are competing over limited resources. Regardless of the results, this study was also biased due to only using young white males instead of including different ethnicities and the opposite sex to supply the researchers with more evidence on intergroup conflict and
America had been troubled by its prison dynamic long before the experiment took place. The general sadistic personalities found on prison guards were confusing and overwhelming. Since people tend to attribute changes in behaviors or any behavior at all to internal factors, this prison phenomenon was poorly understood. However, the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment clearly demonstrate that people are clearly subject to their surrounding environment. Even if it contradicts to our day-to-day characteristics, we can still easily pick up the social roles they are expected to play, especially when it comes to roles that are strongly stereotypical like prison characters. Our individuality can be defined by the social environment and since these expectations all come from the external environments, the experiment shows how big an effect the environment has on our individual behaviors, even able to of negate our steady moral and behavioral guidelines. Because of this study, the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was explained. People started to understand that the situation wasn’t caused by a shared genetic defect among these guards but rather by the hostile prison environment. This realization is crucial to America’s judicial system. In the bloody revolts took place in San Quentin and Attica shortly after the Stanford Prison Experiment, the results from this study greatly
Also, Allport took a methodological approach by discussing actual research and emphasizing that social psychology field is a scientific field which studies human behavior and impact of our actions on others ( ). Allport’s book highlights social topics that is still evident today including conformity, emotion, and the effects of an audience on others ( ). Further, early experiments among some of the most prominent social psychologists include the analysis by Triplett (1898) to investigate the performance of cyclists and how the presence of others influences overall performance ( ). Also, Lwwin et al. (1939) conducted an experiment on leadership and group process, looking at efficient work ethics under different leadership styles ( ). However, later critical research in social psychology developed following the world war II, when individuals became interested in the behavior of other people when grouped together in a social situation ( ). Some studies focused on how attitudes are formed or changed by the social context. Among some of the most famous work in social psychology is the experiment by Milgram in ( ) on obedience which looked at the role that authority figure plays in shaping behavior. Similarly, the prison simulation experiment by Zimbardo demonstrated conformity ascribed roles in the social world (). Hence, wider topics such as social perception, prosocial behavior, aggression, attribution, racism and discrimination have emerged over the