SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTSSocial psychology experiments can explain how thoughts, feelings and behaviors are influenced by the presence of others.Typically social psychology studies investigate how someone's behavior influences a groups behavior or internal states, such as attitude or self-concept. OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITYThe aftermath of World War 2, lead to interest in what to made people "following orders" even though the orders were horrible. The Stanley Milgram Experiment showed that also non-nazi populations would follow orders to harm other persons. It was not a German phenomenon as many thought.OBEDIENCE TO A ROLE - DEHUMANIZATIONThe Abu Ghraib prison-episode was yet another example on the power of predefined roles. The Stanford Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo, demonstrated the powerful effect our perception of expectations in roles have.CONFORMITYSolomon Asch wanted to test how much people are influenced by others opinions in the Asch Conformity Experiment.OBSERVATIONAL ROLE LEARNINGBehaviorists ruled psychology for a long time. They focused on how individuals learn by trying and failing. Albert Bandura thought that humans are much more than "learning machines". He thought that we learn from role models, initiating the (bandura) social cognitive theory. It all started with the Bobo Doll Experiment.HELPING BEHAVIOR - GOOD SAMARITANKnowing the story of the Good Samaritan makes you wonder what made the Samaritan help the stranger, and why did he not get help from the priest or the Levite? The Good Samaritan Experiment explores causes of not showing helping behavior or altruism.COGNITIVE DISSONANCE EXPERIMENTThe Cognitive Dissonance Experiment by Leon Festinger assumes that people hold many different cognitions about their world and tests what happens when the cognitions do not fit.BYSTANDER EFFECTThe Bystander Apathy Experiment was inspirated and motivation to conduct this experiment from the highly publicised murder of Kitty Genovese in the same year.GROUPS AND INFLUENCE ON OPINIONSherif’s classic social psychology experiment named Robbers Cave Experiment dealt with in-group relations, out-group relations and intergroup relations.The Social Judgment Experiment was designed to explore the internal processes of an individual’s judgment, how little it takes for people to form into groups, and the degree to which people within a group tend to favour the in-group and discriminate the out-group.
Experiment Resources (2008). Social Psychology Experiments. Retrieved [Date of Retrieval] from Experiment Resources: http://www.experiment-resources.com/social-psychology-experiments.html |
