Exploring Social Influence and the Experiments that Attempt to Explain Social Influence

Stanford Prison Experiment: In this experiment it took a group of people and made half of them guards and half of them prisoners. The guards were given sunglasses to make them feel more powerful and have a mask to hide behind and the prisoners had chains put on their legs so they can feel a loss of freedom. In the experiment they were not given any rules to how there supposed to treat the prisoners, because these were fake prisoners they challenged the fake guards power. Since the guard’s were not given

In social psychology, social influence is a process where someone’s beliefs, thoughts and behaviour change by being exposed to beliefs, thoughts and opinions of others. It manifests in several forms, such as obedience, compliance and conformity. All these types of social influence have been studied by numerous researchers who investigated the reasons why people conform to social norms and obey to authorities, such as Milgram’s classic studies on obedience. His experiments support the popular idea of ‘banality of evil’ –Hannah Arendt (1963)’s famous phrase referring to the capability to accomplish dreadful things out of banal reasons–, revealing that people conform submissively and thoughtlessly to the orders that authorities deliver, no

Did you know that for forty years the United States Public Health Services did an experiment that was conducted on hundreds of African American men that suffered from the late stages of syphilis? Well they did. This experiment is called the ‘Tuskegee Experiment’. The men they researched were mostly illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama. The U.S. Public Health Services never told the men what disease they suffered from, or its seriousness.

In the footage of the study, Zimbardo can be seen talking to the guards: "You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree, you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me, and they'll have no privacy... We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none.The researchers provided the guards with wooden batons in order to establish their status, clothing similar to that of an actual prison guard (khaki shirt and pants from a local military surplus store), and mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact. Prisoners wore uncomfortable ill-fitting smocks and stocking caps, as well as a chain around one ankle. Guards were instructed to call prisoners by their assigned numbers, sewn on their uniforms, instead of by name.The prisoners were arrested at their homes and charged with armed robbery. The local Palo Alto police department assisted Zimbardo with the arrests and conducted full booking procedures on the prisoners, which included fingerprinting and taking mug shots. They were transported to the mock

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a physiological study made to understand what affected the police brutality in prison environments. Zimbardo conducted this experiment in 1973. The goal was “To investigate how readily people would confirm to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that stimulated prison life. 24 male college students were tested for their psychological normality. The chosen ones were paid $15 a day to take part in the experiment.

Young men were divided into the roles of Prisoner and Guard and put in a prison-like environment in the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University. The study was meant to last two weeks. But the brutality of the guards and the suffering of the prisoners was so intense that it had to be terminated after only six days (Shake Creative, 2008).

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted to see how people would react to a cruel environment without clear rules in social roles. The study focused on the relationship between prisoners and guards. College students were paid $15 per day for 1-2 weeks, the experiment ended after only 6 days. Dr. Zimbardo’s girlfriend, Dr. Christina Maslach, told him she felt the power had changed him too. She thought everyone that was involved got caught up in the experiment (Zimbardo, 2011).

The Stanford Prison Experiment was one of the most criticized human nature experiments in history. In the experiment Dr. Zimbardo wanted to see if people would think for themselves, or fall into predefined roles that they were given. Before the experiment took place, Dr. Zimbardo picked 24 male subjects he thought were mentally and emotionally stable. He also built a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University. During this process all the subjects were divided in half making 12 guards and the other 12 prisoners. To help define the roles even further he dressed the guards in police type uniforms with wooden clubs. The individuals that were used as the prisoners were stripped searched and given smocks as their uniforms. Once the experiment started everyone seemed to fall right into the roles they were given. Even Dr. Zimbardo fell into his role as the prison

The Stanford Prison Experiment was performed to observe the behavioral and psychological consequences of being a prisoner or guard. More specifically the experiment was performed to see whether people would conform to the roles of being a prison guard and a prisoner. This experiment was to help understand how positions of power and the expected norm would affect the subjects in a prison environment. The psychologist also wanted to know whether violence by guards is due to their personalities or if the guard and the prisoners actions were more related to the environment and situation that they were placed in.

Zimbardo’s (1971) Stanford’s prison experiment concluded that people will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards. However, the study has received many ethical criticisms including the lack of informed consent from participants, as even Zimbardo did not know what was going to happen within the experiment. The participants playing the role of prisoners were not protected from psychological harm, experiencing incidents of humiliation and distress. As an example, a prisoner had to be released after 36 hours due to uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying and anger.

The Stanford Prison experiment is probably one of the most known experiment in social psychology. The psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted this study by assigning the participants to roles. Those who were the guards were given the tools to play their role and the prisoners as well. The results from this experiment were shocking because those who played the guards began mistreating their peers and the prisoners were being psychologically abuse by being humiliated and experiencing traumatic events that led some to become blindly obedient to the guards. This experiment reveal some truth about the criminal justice system and the conditions of prisons.

The assigned “prisoners” took on their roll and became submissive to the guards and did whatever was asked of them while forgetting whom they really were and that they didn’t commit a crime. This experiment has been looked back on and criticized for the last 44 years. However, it has brought a lot of good in the psychology field. It led to more research on how powerful a title can make us feel and how much a person who looks official can influence our actions. It is an experiment that must be looked at and used in the classroom for many years to come but also never repeated.

Firstly, conformity can be found in several forms throughout different societies. McLeod (2016) notes four types of ways that people tend to conform. His initial variation of conformity is compliance. This is when a person outwardly agrees with the group he or she is engaged with, even though the person doesn’t inwardly believe what the group is saying. The classic example of this is the line experiment conducted by Solomon Asch in the mid twentieth century. He led an experiment where he tested how often people would conform to the majority of the

Social influence is notably referred to as the conformity of agreeing with a visible majority in a group setting or organization. Also, two forms of compliance experienced by Teresa in the Laureate media include informational and normative social influence. Both forms of conformity involve a change in behavior, attitudes, and beliefs based on a real or imagined influence on others that is driven by

Social influence occurs when one's emotions, opinions, or behaviors are affected by others.[1] Social influence takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. In 1958, Harvard psychologist, Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence.[2]