3 True psychology experiments and what they tell us about human behaviour.
I’ve always had an interest in psychology and why people act the way they do and if nature or nurture plays the biggest part in making us who we are. Some of my favorite topics when studying psychology was biological, behavioral, and forensic psychology. In this post, I want to talk about 3 psychological experiments, who’s procedures were shocking, yet the outcomes caused us to have a deeper understanding of why we act the way we do.
Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
We can’t talk about psychological experiments without discussing Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. In August 1971 Professor Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University wanted to test the theory that personality traits are the main causes of conflict and mistreatment between prisoners and guards. There were 2 groups, knows as ‘roles’ that 24 volunteers were places into. One was ‘prisoner’ and the other ‘guard’, and they were dressed accordingly to those roles. Zimbardo gave himself the role of ‘superintendent’. The idea was for the guards to create a sense of powerlessness among the prisoners. Four out of 12 of the guards became sadistic, stripping prisoners and humiliating them. The conditions of the ‘prison’ were left unsanitary and the prisoners were left sleeping on concrete floors. There was a string of mental breakdowns, outbreaks of sadism, and hunger strikes. Zimbardo became so immersed in the experiment he did not realize how out of control the experiment had become. The experiment was supposed to last a total of two weeks, however, ended abruptly after only 6 days.
So what does this tell us about human nature? Zimbardo’s experiment tells us that certain institutions and environments can form certain behaviors. The situations you are put in can influence how you behave. The guards were put in a position of power and they played into their roles of being the guard, causing them to act in a way that may be in a way that completely opposite to how they react in their everyday lives. It shows us that seemingly good people can turn into perpetrators. Along with this, it more likely does not support the idea that a person's individuals traits may not be the cause of their behavior, but rather the situation they find themselves in.
Side note: there is an excellent film about this experiment!
The Third Wave (1967)
This experiment was designed in a California high school by Ron Jones. Jones was struggling to explain to his students how the German population could accept what the Nazi’s were doing during World War II as his students were finding it difficult to understand. Over the course of the experiment, Jones implemented an authoritarian atmosphere in his class, emphasizing discipline, and community with the intention of it mirroring the characteristics of the Nazi movement. By the third day, the student had complied with his command, even creating a salute involving a cupped hand similar to that of the Hitler Salute. The experiment began to take on a life of its own and began to spread across the school. They were given the task of creating a banner to stop nonmember entering and to initiate new members. The original 30 students had now become over 200 students, most of which did not even take the original class. Some of the students even began reporting other members to Jones, who had established himself as the leader. By the fourth day, Jones decided to end the experiment as his concerns grew that it was slipping out of his control. Jones ordered the student to attended an announcement at noon on Friday. On the day of the announcement, the student was presented with a white screen where Jones had Tod the student that they had willingly created a similar sense of supremacy to that of the German people during the Nazi regime.
This experiment illustrates the horrifying idea that those within the SS were not sadistic but rather very normal. What I mean by this is, experiments like this have taken place to try and show how anyone can fell into being complicit when it comes to having an authority figure. Take Milgrams experiment for example, where participants were made to inflict pain through a (fake) electric shock, and being encouraged to carry on despite the person being shocked claiming they were in a lot of pain. As humans, we fall into this trap of following those who we believe to be of authority.
The Bystander Effect
The Bystander Effect was popularised by social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley after the infamous 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964. Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old who’s murder became a catalyst for what we now know as the Bystander Effect. Kitty was stabbed to death outside her apartment and dozens of neighbors stood by and failed to step in or to call the police. Latané and Darley attributed the effect to two factors:
Diffusion of responsibility: the more witnesses/onlookers there is the less responsibility those around the situation feel.
Social influence: people look to those around them on how to react to a situation.
It is normal for people to freeze in times of shock or witnessing an attack, this can be a response to fear. People can feel they are too weak to intervene, or that the inactivity of those around them can make people feel like they are not needed in a situation. Often times when there is a crisis people may not understand what is going on, and during processing the events around them, they will look to other people to determine what is an appropriate response. When those around them are not reacting, it can send a signal that there many not need to be any action needed.
Sources
https://www.online-psychology-degrees.org/10-bizarre-psychology-experiments/
https://www.boredpanda.com/psychology-behaviour-experiments/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/bystander-effect