Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) demonstrates the power of a situation with clear social roles (those of prisoner and prison guard) in influencing the behaviour of randomly assigned participants. Her people are conforming to each other, but also to their expectations about the role.
We had a good discussion about whether the fact that they knew they were in an experiment was a problem when it comes to the validity of the study - 'demand characteristics' which allow participants to guess the aims of the study and act accordingly and the fact that people feel less responsible for their actions in an experiment than they do in real life are issues we'll come back to over the next few lessons.
Here is a short presentation with some questions to make sure your notes address.
Here is Zimbardo's full 50 minute documentary about the experiment:
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