Question

Module 10: Social Psychology Choose one of the following social psychology experiments: · The Stanford Prison Study · Sherif’s Cooperation Study · Asch’s Line Study · Milgram’s Electric Shock Study Using your chosen study, discuss why you believe the study participants behaved as they did under the various social pressures. Include in your discussion, how the various applicable principles of Social Psychology learned in this Module apply to your chosen study and discussion. In this discussion, you should be able to demonstrate familiarity with the principles from social psychology, primarily from the assigned readings and powerpoints. You should not simply give your opinion regarding the participants. Instead, apply the principles to your discussion of the participants.

Answer 1

Stanford prison study includes the analysis of the life of the prison with the behavior of the prisoners and guards. They explained the behavior based on the sadistic thinking of the prisoners and the hostile environment in which they were made to live inside the prison. This experiment was performed by Zimbardo in 1973 in which he used one room in the basement of Stanford University and mocked the conditions of the prison. He asked for a group of volunteers who were made to face the similar conditions as faced by the prisoners in prison. There were a set of people who volunteered themselves as prisoners and another set who volunteered themselves as guards. They were stripped naked without clothes and were given Khaki clothes. There fingerprints were taken with retinal scanning and forensic scanning and the behavior of guards and prisoners were recorded and analyzed. The experiment setting was planned that included the ringing of bells early in the morning to wake the prisoners up and discuss the plan for the day along with the allotment of work. The second day the group of people escaped and closed the doors of their small chambers from inside prevented the entry from outside. The guards broke open the door and entered inside to check the prisoners. There was mutual abuse and humiliation with exchange of words between the guards and the prisoners regarding the environment in which they were living. The prisoners were given id numbers and were called by those numbers only. They enacted the tough conditions of the jail which inturn led to depresssion ,anxiety and stress in the prisoners with mood swings. A catholic priest said that the only way out to call a lawyer to emancipate these volunteering students from the clutches of the experimenters in the university. There were ethical,social and cultural issues related to the behavior of the people in the mock rooms.