Tag: Experiments

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Social Scientist Philip Zimbardo: Factors Other Than Character Determine Behavior [TED Talk]

As a child growing up in a tough neighborhood in the South Bronx (an inner city ghetto of New York), social psychologist Philip Zimbardo learned at an early age that

the line between good and evil (which privileged people like to think is fixed and impermeable – with them on the good side and others on the bad side); I knew that line was movable and permeable.”

In this TED video [23 minutes] Zimbardo presents three factors which can determine the likelihood of evil acts from healthy, normal well-intentioned people:

Bad Apples, A Bad Barrel Or Bad Barrel-Makers?

The 3 factors influencing the transformation of human character towards evil can be summarized as:

• Dispositional: Inside the person. This is the factor most often considered by culture, religions and government as the cause of behavior.

• Situational: Outside the person. This is the factor pointing to the influence of a person’s immediate surroundings, typically one in which a person’s normal, habitual behavior is not possible.

• Systemic: The power structure that creates and sustains the situation.

Since the inquisition we’ve been dealing with problems at the level of the individual and it doesn’t work.”

He recommends a paradigm shift of focus

away from the medical model which focuses only on the individual, towards a public health model that recognizes situational and systemic vectors of disease.”

 

Promoting Heroism As The Antidote To Evil

Zimbardo suggests the following:

• Promote the heroic imagination of kids in our educational system.

We want kids to think, ‘I’m a hero in waiting,’ waiting for the right situation to come along to act heroically.”

• Motivate people to overcome the natural tendency towards passive inaction in social situations [as demonstrated in the Bystander Experiment].

• Teach children to think and act socio-centricly, rather than ego-centricly.

• Unlike childhood heroes such as Superman and Wonder Woman who have special powers, children need to be told that heroes can come from everyday people.

Source: Zimbardo quotes, cartoon and video from YouTube/Philip Zimbardo: Why Ordinary People… 

Source: Popeye word cloud courtesy Terry McCombs

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Stanford Prison Experiment Shows How The Abuses At Abu Ghraib Could Be Perpetrated By Otherwise Good People

Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Stanford University, and who once conducted the now famous Stanford Prison Experiment, recently related the results of that 1971 experiment to the abuse discovered at Abu Ghraib. He said,

When the images of the abuse and torture in Abu Ghraib were revealed, immediately the military went on the defensive saying it’s a few bad apples. When we see people do bad things we assume they are bad people to begin with. But what we know in our study is: there are a set of social psychological variables that can make ordinary people do things they could never have imagined doing.”

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted over a six day period in a mock prison environment in the basement of one of the buildings at Stanford University. It demonstrated how ordinary people can perpetrate extraordinary abuses when placed in a cruel environment without clear rules, as shown in this short documenatry [13 min].

What Happens When You Put Good People In Evil Places?

Dr. Craig Haney, a social psychologist participating in the Stanford experiment said of it, 

We frankly didn’t anticipate what was going to happen. We tried to really test the power of the environment to change and transform otherwise normal people. Much as Milgram had changed or transformed otherwise normal people in an obedient situation, we wanted to do it in a prison-like situation.”

Experiment Participant Relates To The Guards At Abu Ghraib

Dave Eshelman, who played the role of a prison guard in the Stanford University mock prison experiment, said of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos, 

What I first saw those photos, immediately a sense of familiarity struck me because I knew I had been there before. I’d been in this type of situation. I knew what was going on – in my mind.”

Source of images, video and quotes:  Youtube/The Stanford Prison Experiment

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The Asch Experiment: Can Social Influence Distort Your Perception?

We will conform to the group. We’re very social creatures. We’re very much aware of what people around us think. We want to be liked. We don’t want to be seen to rock the boat so we will go along with the group even if we don’t believe what people are saying, we still go along.” *

This is a conclusion from what is known as “The Asch Experiment,” an experiment originally conceived in the 1950’s by Social Psychologist Solomon Asch, demonstrated in the video below [2 min.]:

The 3 Levels of Distortion

As indicated in Martin Shepard’s video about conformity  [10 min.], “Asch proposed conformity could be explained by distortions occurring at any of three levels: perception, judgment and action.”

  • At the action level: subjects believe the majority are wrong, but go along with them anyway.
  • At the level of judgment: subjects perceive there is a conflict but reject their own judgment, concluding the majority are right.
  • At the level of perception: subjects’ perceptions are genuinely distorted by the majority’s answers”.
  • “If it’s true that the subjects’ perceptions are genuinely distorted, that means that group opinion has the potential to affect an individual’s information processing on a very profound level.” **

* Source: YouTube/The Asch Experiment

** Source: YouTube/Conformity 

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The Bystander Effect: Old Experiments Still Relative To Today’s Social Influences

And there you have a group of (effectively) strangers who were exerting the pressure not to intervene, not to help; and it’s very difficult to rebel!”

This Bystander Effect is demonstrated in the following video [3 min.]:

Using Other People’s Behavior As Clues To Reality

There are, in fact, many reasons why bystanders in groups fail to act in emergency situations, but social psychologists have focused most of their attention on two major factors. According to a basic principle of social influence, bystanders monitor the reactions of other people in an emergency situation to see if others think that it is necessary to intervene. Each person uses others’ behavior as clues to reality. Since everyone is doing exactly the same thing (nothing), they all conclude from the inaction of others that help is not needed. This is an example of pluralistic ignorance or social proof.

The other major obstacle to intervention is known as diffusion of responsibility. This occurs when observers all assume that someone else is going to intervene and so each individual feels less responsible and refrains from doing anything.”

Bystander Effect Extends To Cyberspace

The bystander effect also extends beyond reality and into cyberspace. Specifically, in a study performed by Markey (2000), the experiment focused on the amount of time it took a bystander to provide assistance. The researchers examined the effects of the gender of an individual seeking help by measuring participant response time (dependent variable). The perceived gender was manipulated by the usage of a male or female screen name in an Internet chat room (independent variable). The treatment conditions examined the number of people present in the chat (two to nineteen), and then asked the stimulus question: ‘Can anyone tell me how to look at someone’s profile?’

The findings reflect a correlation between the number of people present in a computer-mediated chat group and the amount of time it took for an individual to receive help. The higher the number of participants, the longer it took for someone to help. This research reveals that bystander interventions in Internet chat groups reflect the same patterns as interaction in non-computer based environments.”

The Bystander Effect was first demonstrated in the laboratory by John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. These researchers launched a series of experiments that resulted in one of the strongest and most replicable effects in social psychology.” 

1st quote source: YouTube Video: Bystander Effect
2nd & last quote source: Wikipedia/Bystander Effect
Other quote sources: http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Bystander_Effect