...The Power of the Situation The way we behave due to our enviroment around us, has been proven threw experiments in social psychology. Power can become many different things, it has the ability to achive the control of individals in their actions and/or sayings. Although, power is necessary in achieving a well organized society, other wise their would be no law or order: athority must be established. But, when power is in the hand of the wrong individal and taken to an extreme level it can become dangerous. One of the most common examples of this is Adolph Hitler when he achieved great power in Nazi Gerany. Hitler did not believe rules or control of the athority applied to him, he believed he help absolute power and could not be stopped in...
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...The Corruption of Power In his memoir Night, Elie Wiesel shows the corruption brought on by power. As a young boy, Wiesel is taken to Auschwitz, the most infamous concentration camp of World War II. From there he travels from camp to camp, eventually losing his father to death right before liberation. Several experiments and people prove the corruption of power. In the Stanford prison experiment, the guards become cold and ruthless in their punishment of the prisoners. Hitler convinces an entire nation to follow his twisted version of a future. Many concentration camps are known worldwide for their past cruelty. In all of these cases, people use power to exert control over others. If power is used to control, then in the wrong hands the old axiom is true: absolute power does corrupt absolutely. As an example of the corruption of power, guards exert unjust control over prisoners in the Stanford prison experiment. In fact, one guard says after the experiment, “Once you slip into that costume, you become that person.” The experiment is just a farce, but it becomes so real they have to call it off eight days before the allotted time for the experiment is up. The guards and prisoners are both ordinary students, but they change drastically during the six days of the experiment. The guards have power thrust upon them...
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...Abstract The use of power to influence others within a social group has evolved over centuries. Gaining dominion, wealth and social standing are central motives for gaining power over others within a communal group. Those with power can leverage off humans innate psychological leanings toward normative and informative influences to create the norms which others in society will accede to. Psychological experiments by Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch demonstrate humans predisposition to obedience and compliance, in order to secure their acceptance within society, mean many can are influenced by those in power. It is an astonishing power, to influence another person or a whole society to buy into a reality created by another. To first understand how those in power can influence others, an understanding of ‘power’ is required. Power is a currency, a power currency, that’s desired by others which affords the holder the ability to exert both influence and dominion over people and surroundings. The ‘currency’ can be power of knowledge, love, charisma, wealth, fear, acceptance, social status, strength, or beauty to identify just a few. An individual or group possessing a power currency desired or feared by others ultimately holds a social balance of power and subsequently gains the ability to influence. Those in power use the media to tell others how they should look, who they should like, how they should act and what they should believe. The powerful use media to sell...
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...naturally to most people because of the world we live in, every civilization has some type of authority. However, power brings on great responsibilities, and not all authority figures have the ability to handle that. For years psychologists have studied obedience to authority to learn new things about humans and our interaction with those giving the orders. For me exploring this topic has led me to believe that power has the ability to corrupt, situations are a key factor in decision making, and most people are inclined to obey authority. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is a popular quote from Lord Acton. This statement has been proven true time and time again throughout history. A few good examples come from the Stanford Prison Experiment, where some of the students that played the role of guard abused the power they had been given for the experiment. During the testing two main guards took it upon themselves to become the authority of the prison even though they were not asked to do so. This shows that even a small amount of power can start to affect the way you act. They began taunting the prisoners, calling them demeaning names, and even forced them to do unnecessary exercises at times simply because they had the power to. Not only does power have the ability to corrupt, but it has the ability to do it quickly at times. These guys had no history of anything linking them to abuse or misconduct of any sort, but once they received power it quickly...
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...Running Head: POWER OF SITUATION AND OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY The Power of the Situation in Milgram's Obedience Experiments Ahsan Chishty Ohlone College POWER OF SITUATION AND OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY The Power of the Situation in Milgram's Obedience Experiments Stanley Milgram is a name universally known for the Yale professor who shocked the world with his experiments on obedience. In 1961, Milgram along with many other colleagues devised an experiment after receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct an experiment in response to the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Milgram wanted to know if Germans under the rule of authority figures did exactly what they were instructed to do by those of higher power than them due to the fact that many of the explanations for the Nazi atrocities was simply that Nazi soldiers were following orders. After placing an ad in the New Haven Register for a learning experiment on the study of memory. According to Thomas Blass (2009), offering participants $4.50 and a paid bus fare for an hour of their time seemed to be the biggest factor that attracted people to the ad but several of the participants also agreed to be a part of the study to learn something about themselves, expand their curiosity about psychology, or because they were fascinated by memory and hoped to understand it better through an experiment like Milgram's. The subjects were introduced to a man in a lab coat who...
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...results of the experiment have been argued to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimising ideology and social and institutional support. The experiment has also been used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority. The results of the experiment favour situational attribution of behaviour rather than dispositional attribution. In other words, it seemed that the situation, rather than their individual personalities, caused the participants' behaviour. Under this interpretation, the results is that, ordinary people fulfilled orders to administer what appeared to be agonising and dangerous electric shocks to a confederate of the experiment. Power tactics are ways in which the individuals translate power bases into specific actions. In the experiment, people are using legitimacy, it is relying on your authority position or saying that a request accords with organisational policies or rules. In the experiment, Zimbardo said that people's behaviour changed under the environment of power and authority, the prisoners at first might not perfectly obey to what they were asked to do, however they started to obey what the guards say when the experiment went on, even though all participants know that they are not in a real prison situation. But the environment is too real that people started to think they are in a real prison, no matter it's the prisoners, or the guards. They follow the theory of power and authority...
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...I am exposed to the experiment it will always blow my mind with the direction it took. The man behind the experiment primary wanted to test people’s reactions. He wanted to test whether putting good people in an evil place made a difference. He wanted to know does the environment influence behaviors or is it your moral beliefs and values that determine your behaviors. In the Stanford Prison experiment conducted in 1971 there were two parties: guards, and the inmates. Of course the authority was given to the guards. The experimenter wanted to create a sense of power over others to examine if this influenced people’s behaviors. In reality, inmates have to obey whatever it is that the guards tells them, so he wanted to see if this re-make would do the same as it does in reality. This case proved to do just what it does in real life. Initially the experiment was assumed to be a failure. The experiment had changed direction once the prisoners became rebellious. People of authority do not take kindly to being disrespected by people of no power. Although this was not real, and anyone could have left whenever they wanted to everyone stayed until things had to cease. One prisoner did express that he wanted to leave the experiment, but the other inmates begin to chant, “Prisoner 412 did a bad thing.” That prisoner had begun to cry, and felt compelled to stay there. The problem with this experiment was the use of power. The ordinary people really become who they...
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...aspects and this can be seen explicitly in the experiments zimbardo’s Stanford Prison, and Milgram’s study on obedience. These experements, although unethical, provide a clear glimpse into a human’s obedience toward authority and conforming into social roles. Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison was an experiments by Philip G. Zembardo to see if and how readily people would conform to the roles given to them in a guard and prisoner setting. The experiment was kept as real as possible by going so far as to have the participents arrested, booked, and transported to a mock prison build in the Stanford psychology building’s basement. In aditon to the arrest they were stiped naked, relieved of their possesions, delouced, and given a set of prison cloths with only a number to symbolize them, and had a chain tied around their anckle to remind them of their captivity. Ultimately the participandtss began to conform the...
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...The Lord of the Flies and “Milgram Experiment” The lost boys in The Lord of the Flies have many similarities with the test subjects of the “Milgram Experiment”. The boys will listen to whoever the strongest leader is and obey them no matter what, and the subjects in the “Milgram Experiment” do the same. Obedience is focused on power and respect and many people, fictional or real, will listen to the strongest ruler due to their influence over them.The Lord of the Flies and the Obedience to Authority Experiments have many similarities, especially the idea of obedience to leaders and why some people follow orders without thinking. The boys in the Lord of the Flies were only influenced by the power of their leader. Whether they thought Ralph...
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...there many different tactics you can use to enforce obedience behavior instead of pain like; you could use fear especially someone has an extreme phobic of something or fear something could happen if they don’t do their job. The power of fear conqueror many things especially if someone doesn’t have a strong will power to conqueror there fear or it doesn’t has to do with you could have fear through the power of having love for something the will enforce fear. Since you enforce the fear in the person even if you have subject doing the job you told him to do, one of a few things could happen they will question you about what they’re doing is wrong or even unmoral hearing you tell them to keep doing that may be humiliating them hearing you the authority figure saying to continue will be reassuring since they are getting paid for the job and hearing they will not get in trouble make the person more convincing to keep doing his job and not listen to the other subject when he says he want to stop that’s when you have the other subject use the power of fear on that person to make him comply. Which for this to work on the person, he has to be in a believable environment. Another angle the experiment could happen if the first subject is with a group of people seeing everyone is doing the same job with without anyone refusing they’re more willing to be obedience to comply to the unmoral deeds especially if they make hatred seem more convincing about the other subject. This will come to...
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...Phillip Zimbardo, did an experiments that changed Social Psychology forever. He put an ad in the newspaper in 1971 for participants (students) to study prison life for the amount of 15 dollars a day for two weeks. Back in the early seventies, fifteen dollars was an acceptable amount for the time period for the day. Over the 75 applicants, two dozen were randomly picked by looking at their applicants for normality and healthy lives to begin with. The people were divided into two groups, the ‘prisoners’ and ‘guards’. The ‘guards’ helped set up the prison and picked their outfits to help them ‘get into their role’. The ‘prisoners’ were arrested by real city police to help them get that experience of being arrested. The ‘guards’ blindfolded the ‘prisoners’ to their location, the basement of the police station to start the experiment (Classic, 2007). The guards were to strip search the prisoners, delouse them to get the effect of what real prisons do to their prisoners. The next day, the guards used ‘force with force’ when the prisoners rebelled against obedience. The guards stripped the prisoners and put the prisoners in the hole for rebelling and took everything except air as a privileges such as food, clothes, bed etc. (Classic, 2007). To maintain order and power, the guards made the prisoners clean toilets without gloves and blankets covered with nettles. This is when prisoners started to breakdown emotionally. Instead of a two-week trial, the experiment ended after five days (Classic...
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...Zimbardo’s research shows that good people will continue to commit evil acts when they are put under certain conditions, eventually generating the loss of their identity. These conditions test the moral strength and personal conscience of intrinsically good people. His research provides a lens for the explanation of the meaning and causes of these recurring evil phenomenon. Thomas Paine’s famous quote, “[these] are the times that try men’s souls,” strongly relates to the conflicts between right and wrong that...
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...squash courts the experiment was set up and we just needed to see what would happen. Enrico Fermi created and conducted one of the most important parts of the Manhattan Project. I am clearly the one who most greatly contributed the U.S’s successes in the Manhattan Project because I successfully showed that atomic power could be controlled and gave the U.S a momentum boost because now the kenw the atomic bomb was possible. Even though some might say that the atomic pile wasn’t an important part of the Manhattan...
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...out of him or her, the response is usually similar to that. However, what if that reaction is not learned, but merely a natural response to authority? In the podcast ‘The Bad Show’, they explore that very question with experiments and found that humans do not take to authority unless their mind trusts and respects where the authority comes from. Humans will obey authority only if they can justify the commands given. In the 1960’s, Stanley Milgram was interested in human response to authority. His interest was piqued when war criminal Adolf Eichmann stated on trial that he was simply “following orders” when he ordered the death of millions of Jews. The idea made Milgram wonder if humans were obedient to major authority or if people used authority to justify doing bad things. He conducted an experiment where he collected 40 participants ranging from every end of the social spectrum. He put each individual in a room where they were asked to shock another person whom they called the ‘student’, every time that he or she got an answer wrong. One of the things they found in the experiment was that the participants continuously shocked the students, simply because they were told to do so (Cherry, “The Milgram Obedience Experiment”). The question posed from this experiment is: why do humans respond to authority? To answer this question, we must first establish what obedience is. “Obedience is a form of social influence where an individual acts in response to a direct order from another...
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...Paper: 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment Joseph Roby Carrington College Wednesday, December 4, 2013 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment It’s been over 42 years now since an illustrious experiment was performed by a couple of Stanford Psychologists that would ultimately change the course on how we look at people with the right of authority. In 1971, Psychology Professor Dr. Phillip Zimbardo operated a psychology experiment called the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment to see just how ordinary people would react when given authority over another helpless being. This experiment would take place inside the psychology rooms of the Stanford College, and would durate between the dates of August 14, 1971 to August 20, 1971. Guards would be hired and given legitimate power over mock prisoners to see what levels of domestication they would impose on them. The experiment would start off cool and harmonious, but would eventually take a blinding turn for the worst. After just six days the experiment was brought to an unforeseen end and never reached the two week frame that it was given. In just those six days Dr. Zimbardo, and eventually a wide audience, would forever know the 1971 Stanford prison experiment as an experiment that would change the amount of power someone could and will be given in a title of authority. It was never Dr. Zimbardo’s intention to create something so impactful, or maybe just not in the way it impacted our society. Before his experiment the citizens who were put...
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