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A Few Good Men And Zimbardo's Experiments

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Human nature; everyone working to out due one another in order to reach the satisfaction of being so called, “superior.” No one dreams of being a fast food worker for the rest of their live. It is human nature to set our expectations high and try to achieve them at the highest level. The problem is, not everyone can be the president; no matter how big or small, each individual plays a crucial role in functioning everyday life. Stanley Milgram’s, “The Perlis of Obedience” and Philip Zimbardo’s, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” both show when humans are given a specific role; they will compete to meet the expectations given to them by their authoritative figure. In the movie, A Few Good Men, both Milgram and Zimbardo’s experiments simplified the actions shown by the soldiers. The movie A Few Good Men relates to the experiments by exemplifying that the expectations of one’s role, leads to obedience of authority. In “The Perlis of Obedience,” Milgram was interested to see how far …show more content…
Zimbardo creates a mock prison in a psychology building basement. He puts an advertisement in the paper looking for participants in the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned the role of a “guard” or a “prisoner.” Zimbardo was unaware of how far the participants would go to fulfill ones role. “The guards would compete against one another to gain more authority” (109). “The prisoners would take their roles to the extremes by obeying orders and receiving abuse from the guards” (110). Before the experiment began each participant was told that they could leave at any time, but due to the expectations of one’s role, nobody ever left. The experiment was originally supposed to last two weeks but Zimbardo had to end it after six days due to violence and the emotional state of the

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