Notable social psychology experiments

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram in the 1960s.

The Milgram experiment investigated whether study participants would obey commands to administer increasingly painful “shocks” to other particpants who were actually actors only pretending to be shocked

Questions

1. Why were so many of Milgram’s research subjects willing to inflict severe electric
shocks on their supposed victims, consider German sociologist Max Weber,
who said that power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others (Weber 1922)?
Why did other volunteers refuse to obey orders?

2. Based on the results of the Milgram experiment, do you think that individuals who “compromise their own ethics in order to obey authority” are responsible for the treatment for the treatment of another, if the authority figure was giving instructions to harm the other individual?
3. Why do you think individuals follow the instuctions of authority so closely, even if they are technically able to “disobey”? Why do you think the individuals in the study administered deadly shocks to the “learner” in the experiment, even though they knew that it was wrong?
4. Are there certain qualities that differentiate authority figures? Would certain qualities lead you to follow one instead of another? (Name some qualities)

Zimbardo (1973) conducted an extremely controversial study on conformity to social roles, called the Stanford Prison Experiment.

His aim was to examine whether people would conform to the social roles of a prison guard or prisoner, when placed in a mock prison environment.

Questions

1. Explain how each of the three major theoretical paradigms (structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory) might be used in looking at the issue presented in this clip and share a specific example of each.

George Ritzer, McDonaldization

http://www.mcdonaldization.com/whatisit.shtml

1. According to George Ritzer, what is McDonaldization in your own words?

2. What are the four dimensions of McDonaldization, explain in your own words?

1. Do you think that racial and other types (i.e., religious) of profiling is a serious problem in our criminal justice system, simply a necessary evil, or not a problem at all?
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2. The FBI estimates that while burglary and robbery – so called “street crimes” – costs the nation $3.8 billion a year, hundreds of billions of dollars are stolen from Americans each year as a result of corporate and white-collar fraud – so called “suite crimes.” Moreover, while the FBI estimates that between 16,000 and 19,000 Americans are murdered every year, more than 50,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases such as black lung and asbestosis and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice. Why, then, when people think about the serious issue of crime, do they focus on street rather than suite crime.
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3. Have you ever been guilty of labeling another person in a negative way, only to find out later that the label didn’t accurately apply? Have you ever been labeled incorrectly and, if so, how did that affect your future behavior? Have you ever been labeled in a positive way and, as a result, benefitted from the labeling process? If so, how did you benefit?