Experiments Flashcards
What is the Stanford experiment and who conducted the study
Philip Zimbardo conducted the experiment in 1971 at stanford university. He got 24 ‘normal’ and healthy participants in the experiment and had half allocated to either guard or prisoner. this was acheived by a toss of a coin. The prisoners were arrested by the police on the day even tho they were told to stay until contacted.
Guards had considerable freedom except for physical violence. The guards treated the prisoners incredibly poorly who were becoming increasingly traumatised, passive and dehumanised. Four prisoners had to be released in the first four days because of reactions such as rage hysteria and crying. The originally 2 week experiment was terminated after 6 days.
what was the aim of the stanford prison experiment
was to find out the effects of status, power, roles, labels and social expectations of being a prison guard or prisoner
what was milgrams experiment on obedience
a participant and another a confederate under the disguise of another participant draw slips of paper to determine who will be a ‘teacher’ and a ‘learner’, the draw is rigged however and the participant draws teacher. the learner is taken to an adjoining room strapped into a chair who is then connected to a shock machine. the teacher is told that each time they make a mistake to shock them and to increase the intensity of the shock. deliberately the leaner makes errors, by the fifth shock u hear a grunt, then each time the reaction got stronger up to shouts of pain and screaming, if you questioned the experimenter you were told to continue with increasing force.
what was the aim of milgrams experiment
milgram investigated factors that can influence obedience to an authority figure.
what was aschs experiment on conformity
the participant came into a room that contained six other participants and an experimenter and sat at the end of a long table which had purposely been left vacant. each participant had been told they were doing an experiment on visual perception. the experimenter showed two cards one containing a single straight line with one having three vertical lines. the participant was asked to select the one the same length. the participant was not aware everyone else was confederates. the confederates were instructed to answer correctly for the first few trials then to start answering incorrectly. after hearing the confederates answers the participant had to decide on giving the same answer as the confederates or giving the answer they beleived was correct. about 75 % agreed with confederates incorrect answers at least once
why did asch conduct this experiment
investigated group pressure to conform, in different experiments asch studied factors that he believed influenced conformity such as group size and whether or not the group is unanimous
