PROPOSAL: Giving

Painting the graffiti bridge.

Skill sharing workshop (get together and share one skill we each have).

PROPOSAL: Playing

Hot seat (one person is in the ‘hot seat’ and we ask them any question we want…they don’t necessarily have to answer…this could be played in the car!)

Campfire + songs

Name game (everyone puts a fake name [can be famous or just a random name] into a bowl and there is a process by which we attempt to guess who wrote what name)

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

Proposal: Giving/Recieving/Exchanging – A Secret

Exchange with the person next to you something that you’ve never told anyone else.

Proposal: Giving/Recieving/Exchanging – Joseph Cornell

Joseph Cornell’s boxes (assemblages) were conceived as gifts, often for people he admired from afar – a 19th century ballerina for instance – or Lauren Bacall, a Medici. I don’t have a specific proposal, but I like the idea of surreal gifting.

Proposal: Playing and Walking and Partying

Excepting those with personal convictions against inebriation, I think we should pre-game somewhere off-campus, and then walk around campus in an altered state. Games will inevitably arise from this combination of ambulation and inebriation, I promise.

Presentation: Phrenology vs. NAGPRA — Membership done differently

Phrenology

Proposal: Playing – Streets of Southpoint

Those fountains with the fake children are just begging to be played in.

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.