The Milgram Obedience Study and the Stanford Prison Experiment

    If we look at the Milgram Obedience Study and the Stanford Prison Experiment, we can see some similarities, both in the results and their purpose. Both experiments originally were designed to test how people behaved as inferiors, with the Milgram experiment testing how they reacted to being urged on by a superior, and the Stanford Prison Experiment was originally designed to test how people reacted to being powerless. Further, both tests showed that, when gently urged by a higher authority, be it Milgram or the Stanford professors, people took the authority's instruction very seriously, even to the point of dangerous overkill. In the Milgram experiment, the subjects were willing to subject victims to high levels of voltage, much in the same way the Stanford Prison Experiment's subjects made life miserable for the "detainees". If we look at these combined factors of obedience to authority and a willingness to conform to a role, we can see the roots of what happened in Abu Ghraib. According to the documentary, the supervisors gave vague instructions to "soften the prisoners up", which the soldiers accepted as an order due to the obedience shown in Milgram's test, and became violent torturers due because of their conformity to their new role, as shown in the Stanford experiment. If we look at the world's events through the lens of these two events, we can see the root of many of the world's events.

Laramie

Laramie, Wyoming is located in Southern Wyoming, about 2 hours from Denver and an hour from the state capital of Cheyenne.  Laramie is also the location of University of Wyoming, home of 14,000 students. Visiting from California was defiantly a culture shock.  I am looking at attending college at the university and really enjoyed the university.  It was a small town feel, built around University of Wyoming.  It is amazing what an university can do for a community, bringing in people and revenue.  The small town feel had lots of shops and dining to check out, and a country feel.  If you are looking for a big city with lots of people and clubs and big concerts this is not the place.  The campus was beautiful with lots of renovations and new constructions.  Wyoming is the only 4 year public university in the entire state, thus they get all the state funds for the university.  The university is also a division 1 sports school, who competes in the Mountain West Conference vs schools like San Diego State, Boise State and University of Nevada Reno.  All in all this was a lovely place that I think would be a cool place to attend college.  

Behind Situational Bias

Behind Situational Bias

Let's get right into it. 

Situational Bias. What is it? It the tendency to attribute a behavior, seen often in an external event, and less to a person's inter characteristics. All over the world, this concept has been studied to determine how it influences a person's actions in a given situation. Through several articles and reports, I have found that situational bias is highly seen with a group of people. This study has shown various examples in the change of human behavior. For instance, if your teacher asks you or one of your classmates to answer a question, and no one raises their hand, very few will feel obligated to raise their hand. Due to the fact that no one raises their hand, a group demonstrating the same reaction to a situation highly influences the behavior of others. Does this have to do with a person's incapability of specific character traits, or the environment one is in that influences their decisions?

Stanley Milgram's experiment and my personal example

        Stanley Milgram, a well known psychologist, conducted a very thought provoking experiment in 1962 at Yale University. He brought in well educated men in to their lab and they were asked, by the "authority," to shock "learners" when they got questions wrong. These men being tested were called the "teachers." They were told that they were part of an experiment studying learning, but really their behavior was the thing being tested. They were supervised by the "authority" dressed in a white lab coat, who would tell them to proceed shocking the "learners." The learners were only actors, but they were instructed to scream, try to get the "teacher" to stop shocking them, and also stop responding as if unconscious when the "voltage" got really high. Every time a "learner" would get a question wrong, the "teacher" would go up in voltage. The voltages went up to 450 volts, 66% of them actually continued until they reached the most dangerous voltage. Some wanted to stop, but the "authority" would tell them to proceed and most did.
         I have heard about this experiment before, but today in class we watched a more in depth documentary on this experiment. Although, a disturbing experiment it reflects the tendency of humans to comply with the so called "authority." This experiment tests just how far obedience will go. The man who conducted this experiment, Stanley Milgram, explained this experiment's connection from what was seen in the Holocaust. Most of the people who aided in the perpetration of the Holocaust were seemingly normal people. But, Milgram wondered, how could normal people commit such acts that they knew were wrong?
         I think that this tendency to do what the "authority" says is okay to do, is seen in many cases. If an "authority" tells them it is okay to do something, they automatically assume they can do it because the "authority" has taken responsibility. In that way I think this experiment shows diffusion of responsibility. They do not feel like they are in charge, so they continue to do it. I see this in a lot more innocent ways in my life. An example, one time I was at a party with my family. I was having fun talking to some of my mom's friends. She had briefly left to have a conversation in the kitchen, but she left her phone on the table. Her friends wanted me to take a picture of them and post it on my mom's instagram, without her permission. I was skeptical because I knew my mom would not want me to do this, but because they kept telling me that they would take responsibility if she was mad I did it. It all worked out in the end, but I would have never done that to my mom if I did not feel like I could point my finger at them and say, "They made me do it!" Do you guys have any personal examples of when you have seen this same human tendency in your life? Do you think diffusion of responsibility is the key problem here?

Intervention: Gina

Gina's heroin abuse was largely due to the negative treatment she received from her mother. This was a good example of psychological projection where her mother projected her negative feelings about her hard life onto her daughter through beatings. Gina used heroin as an escape from reality so she no longer had to feel the pain. It was interesting to see that after such a short, yet emotional conversation in which her mother admitted her wrongs and apologized, Gina was willing to accept treatment for her problems. It seems like her mother never did actively try to go out and get Gina the help that she needed. Rather, she just kept blaming Gina over and over again through negative reinforcement. This only furthered the problem and worsened their relationship. So, when she realized that her mother really did wish the best for her, she accepted without hesitation. Overall, this intervention highlighted the impact that "showing love" and "positive reinforcement" can have on an a troubled person rather than playing the blame game.

60 Days In

There is a new TV show on A&E called 60 Days In.  It is about 7 innocent everyday people like us who volunteer to go spend 60 days in the local county jail.  Everyone has their own reason of why they signed up for this.  The guards and the prisoners both are unaware these normal people are planted in the jail.  They are each given a fake name and a cover story so the inmates and guards don't get curious.  They are also brought in at different times as well, making it as believable as possible.  A lot of the volunteers for this show want to see reform in the prison system, and feel it is not an effective system.  One former marine describes the food as better than the military.  This man is saying we feed our prisoners better than our military. Another woman comments how she has never been so lazy in her life, just laying around in jail.  Why do we just let these people sit in a room and have free time and get somewhat decent meals.  There is a strong feeling among these people that instead of letting people just sit in jail and waste time, lets make them of value in the world.  Lets have them do something productive with their time and try to make them better as people to learn and grow.  Very interesting and hits hard, especially because some of us are 18, and others will be in a few years.  Once you're 18, you could end up in jail with some of these men and women.  It was a major eye opener to me and to be smart.

Intervention: Gina

Today in class we began to watch another intervention episode about Gina, who is a heroin addict. I found Gina's case to be particularly interesting because of the four year old boy that she has. Although she got addicted to heroin because of the pain caused by her radical mother and the traumatic incident she faced when she was raped by her mother's friend, it seems peculiar that she does not even try to stop when she has this four year old boy that she loves so dearly. Her four year old boy begs the questions of if she really understands how her addiction will affect her son when he is old enough to comprehend what she is doing. Also, I wonder if Gina's son can tell that she is doing bad things such as Heroin and being a prostitute, and whether these events will affect him later on in life. I was honestly very surprised when I discovered that Gina had a son, because to me it seemed like this little boy that she loves so much could have released her from the pain of her childhood and given her hope. This addiction is obviously extremely powerful since she has not even tried to quit for the sake of her son.
On another note, I noticed that Gina's mother does not really seem to care about her all that much. She still has not accepted that Gina was actually raped, and does not regret beating Gina even though she can see how it affected Gina's life. For that reason, I wonder whether or not Gina will ever be truly able to stop using Heroin, because she does not have a good support system what so ever. Also, I am very curious about which friend or family member of Gina's actually came up with the idea to give her an intervention, since none of them seem to be that close to her and are calling her "stupid" or a "whore" more than they are actually talking about how to help her.

Intervention: The Cat

I found it interesting what the cat represented. I believe that in Laney's mind her cat was her only friend and she was always there for her. Laney's immense dependence towards this cat shows up when Laney finally seeks treatment. It is clear that it is very hard for Laney to let go of the cat. I believe this is because in some way the cat reminds her of her past. However, not of the negative moments of her past but rather the positive moments she has experienced. It is almost as if she let go of her cat she would let go of those moments. The cat brought comfort to Laney but at the same time, the cat was hurting her. I couldn't think of an exact way Laney's cat was harming her, so what do you guys think?

One more thing that caught my attention was Laney's ability to turn sober even though she only had two days of treatment. It was no coincidence that once her family left her she was able to sober up. I think Laney just needed to isolate herself from all her so called "family" even though I believe they never actually tried to help her. As I said before her memories have something to do with her problem. In this case, I think all her family members reminded her of the rape, the relation with her step-dad, and other problems. Once they left it was almost like Laney could start all over.

Interventions: Learned Helplessness?

In class, we have watched two different episodes of "Intervention", each featuring an alcoholic who had suffered emotional and/or physical trauma in the past. As part of their own traumatic experiences, both addicts had been in situations in which they were helpless and were defenseless against the abuse that they faced. In both cases, the addict seemed to know what she was doing was detrimental to herself and often those around her, but still kept on drinking and continuing a self-destructive cycle. In addition, both Jill and Laney initially drank to escape their unresolved problems, but ultimately ended up as addicts.

In both cases, the addicts did not seem to want help from their family and/or professionals, and grew hostile towards those who were trying to help them, especially in Laney's case. I was wondering about what caused them to act this way towards improving their lives, and I initially came up with ideas about learned helpless and cognitive dissonance causing them to resist help. However, I also started to think that there were some other factors present make these people act so defensively, even though they knew they were doing the wrong thing for themselves. Does anyone have any thoughts about what could be a possible cause of this pattern of behavior?

Intervention: Laney

Yesterday and today in class we watched another episode of Intervention, this time about an alcoholic woman named Laney. She suffered traumatic experiences when she was younger, like having an abusive step father and her ex boyfriend coming into her house forcibly and then raping her. She refused to deal with the emotions that came with these traumatic events, and only buried them to try and get rid of them. Unfortunately, they didn't go away and became apart of her subconscious actions which manifested themselves in many parts of her life.

These actions included being hostile and paranoid about her husband who according to her family was great to her and she loved. She would push him away and yell at him even if he hadn't done anything, and always interpreted his behavior as controlling. They also included becoming an alcoholic, because not only was she trying to prove her husband wrong but she wanted to escape reality.

Therefore, I think the two most relevant concepts that apply to Laney are learned helplessness and psychological projection. Learned helplessness explains why Laney continues drinking and puts herself in pain because it is what is familiar to her and she has only known that, even though she knows she is dying. Psychological projection explains the subconscious feelings that she is taking out on her husband and other family members, which comes from her refusing to deal with her problems from her step father and ex boyfriend.

What do others think are the most relevant concept(s)? Thoughts?

Laney's Issues So Far -Repetition Compulsion

Today, in class we started watching another intervention documentary about a 36 year old (I think) woman who is a major alcoholic. She has some psychological damage from her father abandoning her when she was a baby, and also from having 3 different step fathers. Her third step father was verbally abusive toward her, only after marrying her mom. On top of that, she was raped by a drunk ex-boyfriend in her own home. She made the decision not to scream because she did not want to scare her dear little half sister. She also decided not to press charges. At a young age she learned not to trust men, and she did not have any positive examples of how healthy relationships work. This caused problems for her marriage.

She met her husband at 24 years old and then married him at 27. They became rich and travelled a lot, to everyone else they seemed like they were very happy. But, Laney pushed her husband away. She wanted to let him in and be vulnerable to him, but she couldn't. I believe that this is an example of repetition compulsion. She had been traumatically hurt by men on three different occasions, and had not really dealt or worked through any of it yet. She subconsciously let these traumatic experiences ruin her marriage. She was trying to recreate the same bad relationships in an attempt to process it, and it ended up in her getting a divorce. This is just one of the psychological term that I felt applied, and I am sure there are many more. Do you guys think that repeating these traumatic events ultimately did help her process things? Or did it make it worse?

Disagreement Between Textbook and Stanford Article?

In the textbook, when it talks about stress in Monday's reading, it says that the large events in our lives (the ones that we can infer lead to chronic stress from clues in the reading) is not the kind of stress that is detrimental to human health.  It further explains that, it is the many small reasons to be stressed out that cause health issues and should be worried about.  It's on page 481, if you would like the check it out.  Meanwhile, the article argues the complete opposite: The small items of stress shouldn't be worried about, while the larger more chronic issues should.  I personally agree with the website because chronic stress is something that doesn't go away quickly or easily, whereas small amounts of stress about differing items only lasts a few hours or days.  Any reasoning behind why you think the articles disagree?  Your personal opinion between the two sources? Anyone who wants to correct me if I am wrong?

Causes of Sexting

I think one of the biggest causes of sexting is something brought up in class-- personal insecurities.  If you aren't comfortable with your personality, or you haven't figured out who you are or who you want to be, you put your identity on your skin.  You rely on your body for confidence and a self esteem booster.  Also, a lot of insecure people really want to be popular and have people like them because they're not sure they like themselves.  They need validation from others to confirm that they're beautiful or worthy or whatever it is they don't feel they are.

Also, I think cognitive dissonance and thinking only of the present plays a role.  A teenager, while in the heat of the moment, is not likely to think about the consequences of their actions 10, 20 years down the road.  They may know their actions are wrong, especially after the amount of time spent into convincing us that the internet is dangerous and our digital footprints are forever, but they still go through with sending the picture.  This may be related to some form of rebellion, or just sending the picture is something they want to do-- for whatever reason, conscious or unconscious.

Observations During Psychology Test

For Thursday's psychology test, I started studying on Monday, but as Kyle said in a previous post I found that a lot of this studying was relearning concepts or teaching them to myself for the first time.  Long story short, I didn't get a lot of cognitive reinforcing to help me remember concepts in the process.  But I ended up doing a lot better than I expected on the test, but that is beside the point.  During the test, I went all the way through it the first time making sure that, even if I was unsure, I put an answer regardless.  The second time, I went through checking my answers ruling out the ones that I knew I had the correct answer.  But something curious happened: on some of the questions that I couldn't be more sure about the first time around, I suddenly started to doubt myself.  The same thing happened the third time around, but with several other answers.  I believe this even caused me to change some of my answers from the correct answer to a wrong answer.  In class, we had talked about test taking anxiety and how it affects long term memory (or short term too I believe) regarding facts and concepts stored in the brain.  I think this could have been in play, but there might have been other factors as well.  Is this just me being overly critical, a case of cramming for a test gone wrong, or test taking anxiety taking the answers from me?  Thoughts?

Does Color of Ink Affect Anger or Negative Response?

Last week I got an undesired grade on a Chemistry test.  When it triggered me to be angry, I immediately thought of this idea (as in the concept established in the TED talk saying that anger only lasts 90 seconds) and decided to test it out.  I put a stopwatch on and went on to doing my homework to distract myself from the stimulus that started this anger.  Within 2 minutes, I found myself to be completely calmed down and had even forgot why I was mad momentarily.  Just like it said in the TED talk video my anger didn't last all that long by itself. It wasn’t until I looked down at terrible score in red lettering on the test again was it that I triggered the anger reaction again. Once again the video's point was proven that I was the one who had to actively retrigger my anger response to the stimulus. I understand this concept, but as I was thinking about this situation, I realized another thought that I had learned about before. The pen that recorded the score on the test had red ink. Before I even saw the numbers in the score, the negative response was triggered within me. Do you think it was just me predicting that I got a bad grade because I felt bad about the test after taking it or could it be the color of the ink? Another thought popped into my head at this time. The last two tests before this one had not been as bad as this one, but I had not gotten the grade I wanted. Do you think it could also be me just associating bad test scores with this class, the color of the ink, or my gut instinct as in the previous question? Thoughts? If anyone finds any articles or would like to respond, please feel free to do so.

Study=Review...Not Learn

I found after the psychology test we just took, it is important to really pick up as much information as you can in class.  I studied for the test the week before by looking over worksheets done in class and reviewing the practice test.  I found myself however having to relearn or learn for the first time, and not so much reviewing.  It made studying difficult and frustrating.  It was a good slap on the wrist to really pick up as much as you can in class so you don't end up in a panic the week before learning a whole two months of classwork in a week.  It is important to stay on top of work in high school, but especially when we become adults with a 8-5 job.

College Vists...Small Towns

I am a high school senior, which means the college decision time is coming up.  I have started my touring process and have seen 2 schools I applied to and received admission too.  I went to see Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona as well as Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon.  Both are small towns, which gave me a different outlook on our hometown of Los Altos.  Here we are in an averaged sized town, but we are surrounded by big cities right next door, like Palo Alto, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and then big cities like San Jose and San Fran.  It was interesting seeing these towns because the next closest town was usually about 15 minutes away.  I really enjoy the small town culture and feel a sense of a tight community that sometimes you don't get in big cities.  Although the small town lacks some of the big events, I think there is a lot to offer with a tighter community.

Bad examples of Emotional Intelligence

I would like to share with you guys two bad examples of using your EQ. Yesterday, I had just arrived at my soccer practice, when I saw one of my teammates sitting on a corner of the parking lot crying. I sat down next to her and tried to calm her down. She was crying because of personal stuff, she was not having a good week. During practice, you could tell that something was happening to her. She was missing a lot of passes, shots and was also very distracted. Our coach is very strict, and he always wants us to do everything perfect. He yelled at her a couple times because she wasn’t doing things like she normally did. That obviously didn’t make things better. On the next exercise, she continued missing some balls and the coach yelled at her again. This time, my friend responded by yelling at him, you could tell she was frustrated. They both started yelling at each other until my friend refused to continue practicing. All of my teammates noticed during practice that something was wrong with her. But my coach was so focused on training that he didn’t notice or he just didn’t want people to get distracted from practice. I think both of them didn’t use their EQ in a right way. From my friend’s perspective, she should have talked to my coach before practice and inform him that she was having a bad day. On the other hand, my coach should have noticed that she was having a bad day (since she’s always focused on practice) and also should have been more patient with her.

"Heinz dilemma"

In Monday's homework, there was an interesting idea when explaining moral development in childhood. The "Heinz dilemma" was introduced, which is:

"In Europe, a woman was near death from cancer. One drug might save her, a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The druggist was charging $2,000, ten times what the drug cost him to make. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No." The husband got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife" (Kohlberg, 1969, p. 379).

Should the husband have done that? Why?

Some children, at the pre conventional level of moral reasoning, interpret the behavior in terms of its concrete consequences, and considering social virtues. Others, at the conventional level, define the right behavior as the one that is the most helpful and is approved. Then, the post conventional level is when children think of principles like justice, liberty, and equality. Depending how someone answered, they could be assumed to be in one of these stages.

However, I don't think that someone's answer to this question could determine how much they have morally developed, because people have different morals and this is a very controversial dilemma. Personally, I think what he did was justified. So, I am wondering what do other people think?

Freud and Personality

Today in class, we researched various theories of personality of different psychologists. Two that stood out to me were Freud's theories of personality. While one theory seemed logical (id, superego, and ego), the other (psychosexual theory) did not seem realistic. Although certain parts of the latter theory made some sense, his third stage simply seemed amoral and wrong (according to the source I read, a child would develop feelings for a parent of the opposite gender between the ages of 3 and 5). Based upon what I have seen of children of that age, that theory appears illogical and incorrect.

In addition, the sources that I read stated that Freud's theories have mostly been unable to prove, and have thus been believed to be incorrect. Upon reading this, I was wondering how Freud came up with such theories, as he did not have experimental evidence for many of them. Did he just assume things from seeing children and then made hypotheses that he did not prove? Or did he just draw false conclusion from minimal evidence?