PRESENTATION: Black/White Doll

PRESENTATION: Obedience and Milgram

Stanley Milgram’s (Yale University psychologist) experiment with obedience can be described as follows: There are three individuals involved–the teacher, the learner, and the experimenter. The teacher is teaching the learner a set of words and, if the learner gets something wrong, the teacher has been instructed (and encouraged) by the experimenter to give the learner a shock. The shock treatment increases with every answer the learner gets wrong. The teacher was the only one who did not know what was going on in this experiment. The learner and experimenter were actors and the shocks were simulated.

Though some teachers stopped after a certain shock level or after the learner was shocked to the point of being unconscious, many of the teachers actually went on. Milgram wanted to experiment with people’s willingness to obey an authority figure.

I think these experiments are extremely interesting and disturbing. We all believe that we, ourselves, would never take part in such horrible actions but Milgram’s experiments show that human nature is a lot more universal than we thought.

http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2003/stanley_milgram.htm

Presentation: Phrenology vs. NAGPRA — Membership done differently

Phrenology

Presentation: Milgram Experiments

The Milgram experiments were designed by Stanley Milgram and began in 1961. They intended to answer the question as to whether it was possible that Nazi subordinates who killed and tortured were simply following orders. Thus, the experiment examines the effects of an authority figure giving instructions that conflict with individual consciences. The experiment was designed so that there was a teacher, learner and experimenter. The learner and experiment were separated by a wall and unable to see each other. The teacher was to attempt to teach word-pairs to the learner. He would read a list of word-pairs, then state the first word of a pair and give the learner four options. If the learner guessed wrong, the teacher was instructed to electrocute the learner with a shock, which he had sampled earlier. The teacher would hear screams from the learner, who supposedly had a heart condition. In reality, there were no shocks, the screams were pre-recorded, and the learner was always the same person. The voltage level would gradually increase, and the learner would bang on the wall and complain about his heart condition. Eventually, all responses form the learner stopped.

If the teacher ever wanted to stop the experiment, the experimenter would give four verbal prods:
1. Please continue.
2. The experiment requires that you continue.
3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.
4. You have no other choice, you must go on.

If he continued to try to quit after the fourth prompt, he would be allowed to go. Otherwise, the experiment would only end after three maximum-voltage (450 volts) shocks had been administered. 65% of the teachers reached this point. Locations were varied, but the rate of completion remained from 61-66%. Completion was maximized when the experimenter was there in person but not touching the teacher. This experiment raised considerable concerns about experimental ethics, given the undue stress placed on the teachers, but also revealed the ability of a human to inflict pain without consideration, given only an order.
Several theories used to explain the results are:
• The theory of conformism, based on Solomon Asch’s work, describing the fundamental relationship between the group of reference and the individual person. A subject who has neither ability nor expertise to make decisions, especially in a crisis, will leave decision making to the group and its hierarchy. The group is the person’s behavioral model.
• The agentic state theory, wherein, per Milgram, the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes, and he therefore no longer sees himself as responsible for his actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the person, all of the essential features of obedience follow.

Presentation: Stanford prison experiment

The Stanford prison experiment was a small-scale simulation of a prison environment, where 24 college males were selected to play either the role of a prison guard or an inmate. Philip Zimbardo organized the experiment with the hope of proving that sadistic tendencies in prison could be traced back to personality traits. After a relatively tame first day, a riot broke out on the second day, after which the actors of either role began to deeply absorb their new identities. Prisoners, when given the opportunity to leave, would remain in the mock jail. Guards became increasingly sadistic and worked together to humiliate the prisoners. For example, the guards simulated homosexual sex with some of the prisoners, forced some to sleep on the concrete floor, forced others to give up their mattresses to free an inmate in solitary confinement, and removed the waste buckets from some of the cells, causing conditions to rapidly deteriorate. After a visiting graduate student called attention to the poor conditions of the experiment, it was shut down after only 6 days instead of the original intended 14.

The experiment has been criticized on a number of grounds, particularly the deterministic nature of the roles. Individuals tended to conform to roles based on hat was expected of them; for example, one of the guards imitated the warden from Cool Hand Luke. Also, language used to describe the experiment may have primed the behavior of the participants, as the setting of the prison likely did as well. Criticisms published in several leading psychology journals challenged the experiment’s conclusions that people slip mindlessly into roles and points out the importance of a leader, in this case, Zimbardo, in the development of tyranny, thus suggesting that Zimbardo’s briefing of the guards also primed them for sadistic action.

Presentation: Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B. F. Skinner

Beyond Freedom and Dignity is a book written by American psychologist B. F. Skinner and first published in 1971. The book argues that entrenched belief in free will and the moral autonomy of the individual (which Skinner referred to as “dignity”) hinders the prospect of using scientific methods to modify behavior for the purpose of building a happier and better organized society.

Beyond Freedom and Dignity may be summarized as an attempt to promote Skinner’s philosophy of science, the technology of human behavior, his conception of determinism, and what Skinner calls ‘cultural engineering’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Freedom_and_Dignity#A_Technology_of_Behavior

Presentation: Walden Two by B. F. Skinner

“Walden Two (1948) is a utopian novel by behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner, describing a small, thousand-person, rural planned community of happy, productive, and creative people. Planners and Managers govern a community requiring only four daily hours of work from each person, and that promotes the arts and applied scientific research. The community subscribe to a code of conduct based upon, and supported by, a behaviourism resembling that of author Skinner. 

Walden Two challenges contemporary U.S. social conventions such as the value of modern education, the effectiveness of university professors, excessive work volume, and posits a planned economy, critical of inefficient capitalism. The community’s government is not democratic; children are reared communally, outside the nuclear family, and loyalty to community, instead of parents, is encouraged. Childbearing is encouraged as soon as possible, in pursuit of a great growth policy, and eugenics are considered in possibly creating a Golden Age.

Walden Two is controversial for its rejection of democracy as effective government, viable socialist economy, an atheist society, the narrow range of available emotional expression, its appeal to dictators and to emulators of T.E. Frazier, the emotionally unstable protagonist. ”

The plot

“Six visitors arrive at a thousand-person community then ten years old. A decade earlier, T.E. Frazier wrote an article asking people join him in founding a community based on philosopher H. D. Thoreau’s ideas. Two soldiers, returned from the war, seek Frazier, and enlist Professor Burris’s help; he finds and communicates with Frazier, then joins the visit to the community. Prof. Burris invites Prof. Augustine Castle, and, with the two soldiers, Rogers and Steve Jamnick, and their girlfriends, Mary Grove and Barbara Macklin, they visit Walden Two.

The story concerns the arguments among founder Frazier and Prof. Castle and Prof. Burris, which exposit the reasons for the community’s structure, its past and its future.At story’s end, one couple stay in the community, while the other visitors leave, however, in a sudden change of heart, Prof. Burris quits his university post and returns to the rural community.”

Creating  a “Walden Two in real life are detailed in Hilke Kuhlmann’s Living Walden Two^[10] and in Daniel W. Bjork’s B.F.Skinner.”

“Some of them include:

• 1955 In New Haven, Connecticut a group led by Arthur Gladstone tries to start a community.
• 1966 Waldenwoods conference is held in Hartland, Michigan, comprising 83 adults and 4 children, coordinated through the Breiland list (a list of interested people who wrote to Skinner and were referred to Jim Breiland).
• 1966 Matthew Israel forms the Association for Social Design(ASD), to promote a Walden Two, which soon finds chapters in Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and Washington, D.C..
• 1967 Israel’s ASD forms the Morningside House in Arlington, Massachusetts.
• 1967 Twin Oaks Community (web site) is started in Lousia, Virginia.
• 1969 Keith Miller in Lawrence, Kansas founds a ‘Walden house’ student collective that becomes The Sunflower House 11.
• 1971 Roger Ulrich starts Lake Village in Michigan originally conceptualized as a ‘scientific behaviorist experiment’.
• 1971 Los Horcones (web site), is started in Hermosillo, Mexico.
• 1972 Sunflower House 11 is (re)born in Lawrence, Kansas from the previous experiment.
• 1979 East Wind in south central Missouri.^[12]
• 1998 Efforts by Mike Ray of Turlock, California, since 1998 to discuss and plan a community based on Walden Two. See his Walden Two web site.”
• 
  
• Bibliography:
  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden_Two

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/images/9780252029622.jpg

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/bestselling-sci-fi-fantasy-2006/1128-1.jpg

PRESENTATION: 090331/LIST-SCIENTIFIC & QUASI-SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

PRESENTATION: 090331/LIST-SCIENTIFIC & QUASI-SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

Assigned:
AT- Studies on Native Remains
CA-The Nazi Concentration Camp as ‘Scientific’ Experiment
LH- ‘Remote Viewing’ and Star Gate
MB- Stanford Prison Experiment
RS- Obedience and Stanley Milgram
SK- LSD & the Military
VF- B.F.Skinner’s ‘Walden Two’

Self-selected
chose on ‘collective experiment’ where participants are also creators and have specific scientific or knowledge creation intended goals’ (updated 0902xx):
AT
CA
LH
MB
RS
SK
VF

More suggestions for:

AT

CA

LH

MB

RS

SK

VF

PRESENTATION: 090331/LIST-SCIENTIFIC & QUASI-SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

PRESENTATION: 090331/LIST-SCIENTIFIC & QUASI-SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS

Assigned:
AT- Studies on Native Remains
CA-The Nazi Concentration Camp as ‘Scientific’ Experiment
LH- ‘Remote Viewing’ and Star Gate
MB- Stanford Prison Experiment
RS- Obedience and Stanley Milgram
SK- LSD & the Military
VF- B.F.Skinner’s ‘Walden Two’

Self-selected
chose on ‘collective experiment’ where participants are also creators and have specific scientific or knowledge creation intended goals’ (updated 0902xx):
AT
CA
LH
MB
RS
SK
VF

More suggestions for:

AT

CA

LH

MB

RS

SK

VF

PRESENTATION: Jane Elliott and the Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes Exercise

Jane Elliott and the Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes Exercise