Stanford experiment

[Dark11]

Guys, what is your opinion about situationism? I'm doing my final exam on psychology, and this theme bothers me, is we are really monsters who just follow orders in difficult situations? If we look that from a meta-perspective, government as politics are usually social programmed by beliefs of authority as family or friends.

[Sempiternity]

Depends on ones level of development. If someone is low on the Spiral Dynamic and Ego Development models, then they could be more susceptible to being manipulated and blindly follow authority figures. I would imagine someone stage Green and above telling any authority that tells them to hurt someone to go GFY. 

[DocWatts]

It's worth pointing out that the Stanford Prison Experiment has been largely discredited by the scientific community. The article I linked goes in to more detail, but there were deep methodological flaws with the study: both Zimbardo and the college students involved went in knowing the results they wanted (to make a case for prison reform), so they let that influence their behavior to get a desired result.  The resulting wasn't organic as was claimed, but closer to being staged.

This speaks to a larger methodological problem in the field of psychology, where they have trouble replicating the results of these famous studies. If you're interested, i'll drop a podcast link about a psychologist who talks at length about some of these problems.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/62832-stanford-prison-experiment-flawed.html

 

And the podcast (the discussion about the problems with the field of psychology are in the second half of the episode)

https://www.verybadwizards.com/115

Edited September 27, 2020 by DocWatts

[aurum]

7 hours ago, Dark11 said:

are really monsters who just follow orders in difficult situations?

No we are not. What you're observing is unconsciousness. And certainly unconsciousness can happen (genocide, war) but that does not mean it's the truth about who we are.