In The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo tries to explain how seemingly ordinary, average people can become involved in, or passively fail to oppose, evil acts. Zimbardo is the researcher who designed the (in)famous 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which students were randomly assigned as “prisoners” or “guards” for an experiment on how prison affects human behavior. The experiment, meant to last two weeks, had to be called off after 6 days because of the extreme negative effects on, and brutality emerging among, the participants. Zimbardo’s study, as well as others such as Milgram’s obedience experiment, highlighted the role of conformity to social norms and obedience to apparent authority figures in leading people to engage in actions that would seem to be so ethically unacceptable that any decent person would refuse.
Dolores R. sent in a Candid Camera clip from 1962 that illustrates the power of conformity:
As Zimbardo says on his website,
We laugh that these people are manipulated like puppets on invisible strings, but this scenario makes us aware of the number of situations in which we mindlessly follow the dictates of group norms and situational forces.
From Open Culture, via Boing Boing.
Comments 18
BIPA — October 21, 2011
If I were in that situation, I'd start to wonder if it wasn't one of those elevators that opens from both sides or something and feel stupid for looking the wrong way. Plus staring at the other people's faces? Awkward enough to spin me right around.
Joshua Howe — October 21, 2011
There's a great book called "Opening Skinner's box" by Lauren Slater which revisits participants of classic studies, including Milgram. Some participants were very hurt knowing they could do that to someone, and others took that knowledge and said "Never again".
"Opening Skinner's box" by Lauren Slater http://www.amazon.com/Opening-Skinners-Box-Psychological-Experiments/dp/0393326551/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319226277&sr=1-1#
Josh
www.joshuahowe.com
Rinob — October 21, 2011
"We laugh that these people are manipulated like puppets on invisible
strings, but this scenario makes us aware of the number of situations in
which we mindlessly follow the dictates of group norms and situational
forces."
I don't laugh. As butch woman, a person of colour, as a lesbian, as an overweight individual, I've known from a very early age what sort of ridicule and violence we face when we do not follow the dictates of group norms.
Gilbert Pinfold. — October 21, 2011
Hillary Rodham Clinton (cackles): 'we came, we saw, he died.'. Pure evil.
Even the endlessly nice folks at NPR are OK to brush over the lynching.
Collective situational diabolical madness?
ElectraDaddy — October 21, 2011
I've seen studies where people will sacrifice their own safety in order to conform. In the experiment, smoke started trickling in under the doorway. If there were several people in the room & the confederates ignored the smoke, then often the test subject would, too. If there was nobody else in the room, the test subject would usually react to the smoke. Putting yourself in danger just to conform???
The trouble with individuality | Critical Sass — October 22, 2011
[...] an experiment conducted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. This cool clip, found at Sociological Images, illustrates in a humorous way just how strong the urge to conform is. This entry was posted [...]
PinkWithIndignation — October 22, 2011
You lost me at "Zimbardo is the researcher who designed the (in)famous 1971 Stanford prison experiment." Experiment fail in so many ways. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4102
Holly — October 22, 2011
A blogging acquaintance of mine pointed out how odd it is that all of the participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment were men -- the only woman involved was the one who blew the whistle -- yet it's always generalized for what it reveals about "humanity."
Occupy wall street cult and the Power of Conformity | Environmental, Health and Safety News — October 26, 2011
[...] View original at thesocietypages Want more EHS News? Try our beta aggregate site at: [...]
Legal Firm’s Halloween Party Mocks Foreclosures | Environmental, Health and Safety News — November 1, 2011
[...] I posted about Philip Zimbardo’s research on conformity and the ways that seemingly normal people become involved in horrible acts, and I think his [...]