Psychology- The Good
For the first time all semester psychology has enlightened me! I already knew of Ivan Pavlov, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Wundt, Carl Jung and Edward Thorndike. I had asked my questions about them back in high school. However, I didn't know much about Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo.
Today was right up my alley. Stanley Milgram found that the Nazi's used the common excuse of, "they told me to." It seems like a silly argument, but was it really? He found that people will go to great lengths if an authority tells them to. This is not only true for Germany, but the United States?
Why is this? Well in Milgram's experiment the conductor said that they would take full responsibility and they did not have face to face contact with the person that they believed they were harming. People listen to authority. It was found that if the teacher saw the person they believed they were hurting they were less likely to continue the experiment. It would be hard to hurt a human especially if you saw their pain.
Using that logic, the Nazi's excuse doesn't make sense. I came to find out that it does (This is where Zimbardo comes in). During times of war we see dehumanization. You see the people of a certain country to be different from you. The more different they are, the easier it is to kill them. Also if there are a lot of people to blame, it's hard to identify you and your peers are doing it you are more likely to inflict harm.
Deindividuation occurs. I've seen it with people who I never thought would be stereotypical around the time of 9/11. I still think world peace is impossible, but if it were to work we would need to go against human instinct and look deeper into our thoughts.
Today was right up my alley. Stanley Milgram found that the Nazi's used the common excuse of, "they told me to." It seems like a silly argument, but was it really? He found that people will go to great lengths if an authority tells them to. This is not only true for Germany, but the United States?
Why is this? Well in Milgram's experiment the conductor said that they would take full responsibility and they did not have face to face contact with the person that they believed they were harming. People listen to authority. It was found that if the teacher saw the person they believed they were hurting they were less likely to continue the experiment. It would be hard to hurt a human especially if you saw their pain.
Using that logic, the Nazi's excuse doesn't make sense. I came to find out that it does (This is where Zimbardo comes in). During times of war we see dehumanization. You see the people of a certain country to be different from you. The more different they are, the easier it is to kill them. Also if there are a lot of people to blame, it's hard to identify you and your peers are doing it you are more likely to inflict harm.
Deindividuation occurs. I've seen it with people who I never thought would be stereotypical around the time of 9/11. I still think world peace is impossible, but if it were to work we would need to go against human instinct and look deeper into our thoughts.