SOCPSY 1Z03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Philip Zimbardo, Stanford Prison Experiment, Fundamental Attribution Error
22 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Social psychology - mar 10 and mar 15 - milgram experiment and stanford prison study. Scientists see science as a legitimate authority. They see themselves as doing something for the greater good. Diffusion of responsibility: the participants defer to expert authority, reducing the perceived personal responsibility. In the original experiment, the majority (60-65%) complied. In the bbc replication, 9/12 participants (75%) complied. Participants all appeared to be very stressed and uncomfortable. The situation overrides personality factors -personality is trumped by situation. Fundamental attribution error- we want to think that we wouldn"t go all the way, because of our personality; we put too much emphasis on personality instead of situation. Milgram tested it with many different variables to see how it affected the results. Compliance rates refer to those who went all the way to 440v, but almost everyone obeyed orders to shock at lower levels. No one asked for the entire experiment to be discontinued.
