PSYCH 414 Lecture Notes - Group Cohesiveness, Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip Zimbardo
Document Summary
Members tend to be similar to each other. Advantages: people know what to expect, smoother interactions. Disadvantages: people adopt roles too much and they get locked into roles. Crappy experiment that was missing a bunch of stuff, also unethical. Guy created a mock prison system and wanted to see what happened. People adopted the roles of prison guards and prisoners and actually acted like them. Bad psychological experiment; prison guards realized they were capable of torturing someone. Making them work out (ex: stress positions) The key is this: once a prison has a veil of secrecy around it which most do, its just open for corruption. Diffusion of responsibility, anonymity, dehumanization, peers who model harmful behavior, bystanders who do not intervene, and a setting of power differentials. In general, groups make better decisions if: Are stimulated by each other"s comments (listen to others ideas) Members of group tend to latch on to information that everyone else already knows.
