Experiment Locations- Reply to James Neill

Albert Bandura was born in Canada but moved to the United States, where in 1953 he started working at the Stanford University in California and later conducted his Bobo doll experiment in 1961.

Kenneth Clark was born in the Panama Cancal Zone and migrated to the United States to live in New York City. He conducted the doll test with his wife in 1940, at this time he had just received a Ph.D in psychology from Columbia University.

Stanley Milgram was born in New York in 1933, where he was a student and worked at several universities including; Harvard University, Yale University and the Graduate Center of the City University. He conducted his ‘lost letter’ experiment in 1977, and was still living in New York.

Muzafer Sherif was born in Turkey in 1906. He obtained his Master’s Degree in 1928 at Istanbul University and continued studying at the Harvard University in 1929. Sherif conducted his famous ‘Robbers Cave’ experiment in 1961 at the Boy Scots of America Camp held on the Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma.

Classic Experiments Table

Table 1
Key Elements of Four Classic Social Psychology Experiments

Kiri Davis ‘A girl like me’

This is a modern experiment based on Clark & Clark's 1940s 'Doll test,' created by 17-year-old Kiri Davis. 'It's about how European features - especially light skin and straight hair - are still perceived as more attractive than African features and the effect on black girls. The movie contains an extraordinary sequence in which African-American children are asked to choose between black and white dolls. '

Unethical Psychological Experiments

I was just searching the web for some of the classic studies for topic 3 , and came across the 'Russian Baby Experiment.' This is a section from the website...

'The theory argued that human infants are not only dependent on it's mother for food and protection but equally important is their touch and presence. Absent of the latter two, it was theorized that human babies would not be able to survive. To test this theory, scientist took babies and completely cut them off from any form of human contact. They made sure that the babies were fed and kept warm. They wanted everything that a baby needed to be taken care of without any human contact. The results were suprising. One by one, the babies passed away.'

The author is not 100% sure if this experiment was acutally conducted, however if it was it obviously unethical but also very cruel. Has anyone else heard of any other experiments like this?

Check it out at-
http://www.betterlucktomorrow.com/character_sites/steve/Psychology%20Experiments.htm

Psych experiments and their link to Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany demonstrated many aspects of human behaviour, for example we often follow authority and conform to fit in, and secondly that depending on the situation our behaviour and identity can change.

Milgram's Obedience experiment demonstrates that we will often follow authority rather than to listen to our conscience. This element was demonstrated in Nazi Germany, when many of the soldiers turned on their Jewish friends, and assisted in the rounding up and slaughter of around 6 million Jews. Many of us would not be able to comprehend us ever in a situation in which we would perform an act against our conscience of that magnitude. However, in Milgram's experiment it is evident that given a specific situation, and a certain level of authority, we may act against our beliefs and values.

Secondly, the Stanford Prison Experiment presents us with a situation where people who have stepped into specific roles (prison guard and prisoner) act in a way contradictory to thier personality. The participants in this experiment stepped into these roles and reflected how they thought a person in that situation would act. Therefore, could we put the actions of the German soldiers down to the fact that they were acting as soldiers?

Another experiment i feel demonstrates the behaviour of those in Germany during the rule of the Nazi Party, is the Solomon Asch conformity experiment. This experiment shows that in a group situation people will often conform, rather than to go against the group. Therefore it could be seen that the soldiers in Nazi Germany were conforming to the beliefs of those around them (mainly the leaders) rather than to step outside the mob mentality and risk their lives.

Based on these experiments of ordinary people (not in a war situation), do you think that any person given a specific situation could disregard their beliefs and values and turn against their friends?

Nazi Germany Experiments

In our first tutorial we were asked what we would like to learn from social psychology. Among our list was to find out how people can suddenly confrom and perform acts in which they would not normally do. For example an array of acts in Nazi Germany. Back in year 11 i studied Nazi Germany at school and read about many experiments that were performed. Nazi Germany is a powerful example of many bad aspects within society; such as unethical experiments, discrimination and mass murder. Some of the experiments performed by the Nazi's such as the High Altitude Experiment, Malaria experiments and freezing experiments are described at the following link...

http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/twoa.htm

The Nazi's also experimented on twins, descriptions of the those experiments can be found at; http://www.remember.org/educate/medexp.html

Does anyone else have examples of human cruelty or any opinions on the Nazi experiments?

Tester

Testing to see if my blog is successful.