A Conversation for Obey, conform, bow to social pressure
Zimbardo's prisoner study
L Jackson Started conversation Apr 28, 2003
You beat me to it! The work of Milgram deserves to be better known. You've done a good summary of his work.
Milgram's work on conformity sheds light on Zimbardo's "Prisoner" study for the US Navy, that inspired a reality TV show recently. Like Milgram's conformity work, this study also showed how a situation could impose itself upon the attitudes of the people in it, causing ordinary people to show surprising cruelty. Volunteer participants were taken from their homes by police car and assigned at random to be either prisoners or warders. After about a week the warder's behaviour became so cruel and arbitrary that the study had to be stopped.
Another classic of social psychology that should be more widely known about?
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Zimbardo's prisoner study
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