In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the guards had sunglasses on when interacting with the prisoners so as not to have eye contact. I think that was a big part of the experiment, but your cartoon did not have sunglasses so I thought I would share.
rossanna xx because humans require eye contact to create bonds and to communicate. When they use sunglasses it dehumanize them. For an example babies need eye contact to bond with their mothers. I don't remember exactly how or why. If you want to learn more, there are videos and documentation regarding it.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Maybe this is an additional reason why bicyclists have trouble with car drivers? (they usually wear glasses and car drivers of course are hidden already.) Here is a series that addresses the topic, but this is not covered...interesting. czcams.com/video/9sZOpgUkZtQ/video.html
Finally! My favorite branch of psychology. The situations that bring people to act in a certain matter have always intrigued me. How positions given make people change and do things that they wouldn't have normally done before.
Yea, I hate psychologists, because I was around them a lot because of some stuff that happened a few years ago with my dad. Then again, I act like a psychologist, I'll just go around watching people's reactions to the world... I'm weird
I wish I could just pay this guy instead of a whole uni sessions and then just pay to take the exam at the end of the year as he's the reason why I'm passing my Bachelor degree so far.
There was one fatal flaw in the Stanford prison experiment: The guy in charge was stage directing the whole thing. Zimbardo didn't step back and watch the events unfold as an observer; he played the part of head guard, even going so far as using these totally scientifically unbiased instructions to his student guards: "In general, what all this should create in them is a sense of powerlessness. We have total power in the situation. They have none.
People think my polite friendliness- to anyone, really- is me flirting. I've had a lot of guys develop crushes on me because they think I'm flirting with them, when I'm really just being genial.
Hank, thank you for talking about and explaining cognitive dissonance. It helped me realize what has been going on in my life, and how I got to where I currently am, and how I can get back. Thank you again
I personally believe that you are one of the best Psychology-related videos that are fun, informative and don't miss out on any broad important bits. As a psychology student, I ask you to please continue making these.
Hey, I am an autistic 12 year old girl trying to learn about psychology. Certain parts of psychology kind of helps me understand people better, even though it is more confusing for me. Even though you did not talk about ASD in this video, I enjoyed it.
Something to note about the prison experiment is that recently they found a lot of stuff that calls I to question the whole experiment. Like how they advertised to college students looking for guards and prisons. It may have been because college students just act like that and 2 that already aggresive people would be looking to be a guard and that the situation didnt make them like that. They also found that a lot of the participants, mostly the prisoners were acting crazy because they thought that's how they were supposed to be reacting. They were acting. Just something to keep in mind for new watchers.
Remember, Central route persuasion is rarely the one that actually persuades people. That's very important to recognize. Peripheral route persuasion rules the world, as "pessimistic" as that view may seem.
Remember the blind spot bias --- it's easier for us to identify biases in other people than in ourselfs. or, less politely expressed: we tend to believe that we are less likely to be biased and manipulated than other people.
This video remind me of that one day, when I asked my sister "why are you so selfish ?" and that she told me: " I'd rather be selfish and happy than selfless and depressed like you." I still don't know if she was right or If I was...
No one is. The brain can only focus on one thing at once. Switching back and forth between comments & video is mentally taxing and difficult to maintain. Just read the comments after the video.
Kylo was meant to start out as childish. Over the next few movies, he should mature more and either return home at some point of go full dark side. It's unfair to judge his character like this when he played out the character perfectly. He's one of the main characters to the center plot of the new trilogy, so they won't kill him off, or at least won't kill him off any time soon. There's still 5 or so more movies to come; two more main ones and about three spin-offs (the first being Rogue One).
Thanks for this video- I am a psychology student at university, and in almost every course, my teachers inevitably at some point will mention Zimbardo's name, but no one ever actually CLEARLY talks about the detailed actions that were in his experiment. All they really say is "Zimbardo did a study on how roles shape a situation. People respond to being casted roles by adhering to them. Zimbardo's study was dangerous and no one's allowed to do it again because it caused emotional harm", and then move on to talk, in detail, about the Milgram experiment instead.
Hi hi, I'm not a psych expert or student. But I had heard that the Stanford Prison Experiment was discredited for its findings because of the unethical practices, disarray of variables, and many other reasons. Can someone explain to me why people still use it as an example or a discussion topic? I too feel like it holds value, but I don't know how to explain that.
Thank you, Crash Course, for existing. It's amazing that you guys are giving people education for free (and covering so many subjects as well!). I love every single episode and I'm absolutely obsessed with the AWESOME animation and Hank's explanations (because he always manages to sound interested and enthusiastic ) and gah I just love you guys so much thank you thank you thank you! ❤❤❤
I notice that it is being implied that anyone who is tempted to do bad things has 2 options: don't do it because it's bad, or do it because of the situation. I think there's another possibility here. Some people, more often in fiction, but also in real life, refuse to be tempted out of sheer contrariness: they don't want to do it BECAUSE the situation demands that they do it.
Then they don't do it because it's BAD. You seem to be thinking that not doing something because it's bad suggests that "bad" would be objective. It is not the case, what matters is what's bad to *you* specifically. See, bad is always subjective. There is no universal standard which people evaluate when they make decisions, there is only personal standard, being constantly influenced by social presure. This presure exerts such an influence that our personalities change to be more conformist, but situations differ and so not all people become more complisant over time. And I know this, because I am such a person you're reffering to. Being contrary for the sake of being contrary is a matter of staying true to yourself, it's a moral dillema in which you treat remaining yourself- not being pressured into action by outside sources, as a moraly GOOD decision. It's a moral choice in the same way that refusing to participate in stoning a person is a moral choice, derived from personal belief in value of nonviolnce, or human life, or the golden rule. Except that in this case the moral quality that is being "held on the line" as it were, is the personal belief of the value of nonconformism.
Pooja Sandhu No. More like you're ordered by your superior or pressured by your peers to do something, and you choose not to do so because either 1) You don't like being ordered/pressured, or 2) You don't like those giving the orders/ doing the pressuring The first example is a dispositional contrariness, the second is situational contrariness. In either case, the person doing "good" here doesn't necessarily ever even bother to consider the moral content of the action they are expected to perform. So if this person had been instead ordered/pressured NOT to do some "bad" thing, they would possibly go ahead and do it just out of spite.
Life saver, my lecture didn't explain this module any where near as concise and sensibly as Hank has done. Exam is tomorrow morning and 2 hours ago I understood nothing. THANK YOOOOU
Can I just thank you for helping me review through finals for my first four semesters of college! 👏🏾 thank you thank you thank you. An hour of class summed up in 15 minutes or less. :)
I wonder if social thinking can be applied to a larger cultural scale? Gender Roles could be a perfect example; something we may initially see as mundane, but allot of the time the way many men and women behave may be a part of social thinking, since our culture has formed a social standard that says boys enjoy X and girls enjoy Y.
I love these videos! It explains and resumes well the concepts we study in psychology class in college. In 10:47, for instance, it resumes about two hours of a psychology class. Kudos! :)
This actually makes me happy because for once ever I knew every term talked about in a crash course video, and could follow along perfectly! This is only because I am taking an AP psychology class, but still!
I'm wary of anyone who cites the Zimbardo Prison experiment in anything. The subjects were non-random and the experimenter was also an active participant.
troty99 Well they don't need to be completely random but it would have been better if they weren't all college students, that I think went to the same college. Just the fact that some of the students want to impress the professor skews the results a ton!
troty99 The experimenter chose the subjects from a pool, rather than choosing randomly. This lets in personal biases and other random variables that partially or completely invalidate their findings. There's a reason sociology is regarded as a 'soft' science, compared to things like physics and mathematics.
It shouldn't be called an experiment. Is should be called an incident, like any other thing non-reproducable that happened in history. We can still learn from it, but we should cite other things that are actually reproducable far more often.
I remember reading that prisoner scenario in Malcolm Gladwell's book _The Tipping Point._ He used the FAE and this prisoner example in making the point that situational differences is a large plausible cause in creating large-scale epidemics, which he personally named the Power of Context. A great author and a great read, I definitely recommend his books to anyone into that sort of thing, or just looking for some worldly insight. (Ah, it's a great feeling to see similarities in your favorite books and favorite educational CZcams channels about one of your favorite subjects! I really am such a nerd. Haha)
".. It would never fly by today's ethical standards.." Well in Denmark it did, it flew right over with the recreation of Zimbardo's experiment in the televised program "Ond, ondere, ondest"
Situations affect our behavior. Depending on the different situations we face in our lives, our response tends to be positive or negative. A situation that is humiliating or makes us think low of ourselves leads us to take actions that could be harmful to somebody else or even ourselves. But such actions do not describe one’s overall behavior or personality and are restricted to specific situations. One should try to resolve the conflict between their thoughts and actions in a positive manner so that it could help them to better comprehend and react to situations in the future.
please do a series on Sociology!!!! I love your videos for my classroom and I am teaching Sociology this semester. I would love some more videos! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
Very informative! I hope very much that I'm one of those who would not change my beliefs in a hard situation. My personality (from Jung's personality tests or myers briggs) is of an idealist, so I don't think I would!
but what if your beliefs aren't necessarily "good"? Then wouldn't you want too? For example, you grew up being told blacks are not human and you believe that. If there was a situation where a black person was being tortured and you felt bad, then you wouldn't want to change your beliefs?
That is one of the characteristics of an Idealist though. They always seek the "good". I change less important beliefs all the time, in order to be more flexible. But there are some beliefs I hold that I will never change, because I know they are tried and true "good" beliefs that, if compromised, would indicate a serious lack of moral fiber on my part. For example, if I had a choice between sacrificing my life to save someone else, or many people, or escaping and letting them die, well that's a hard choice to make. We praise and emulate this in movies, but in real life when it's you on the chopping block? The urge to live is very strong. The reason we idolize this behavior so much is partially because, in reality, it is very rare. For me, if I were to have to make that decision, the only way I would not choose to save their life, is if the whole situation happened so fast, I couldn't save them in time, say like jumping in front of a bullet. But if it was like, choose, should I shoot you? or this stranger? I would choose myself. I honestly can't imagine living after that, if I chose the stranger. You could say I'd do it for honor. My moral integrity to me is more valuable than my life.
RainAngel111 Good and bad can be subjective. There are many situations where there is no good. Would you save yourself and your lover and let someone die or save that 1 person and let you and your lover die? This is an extreme scenario but you get the idea.
Rob Willer's Social Psychology course is available free on youtube and it is THE best thing in the world. Fascinating, insightful, hilarious, and has possibly saved people's lives.
When I was religious, I was nearly torn apart by cognitive dissonance. Atheism makes so much more sense, and I'm a much happier person now that I deconverted.
+FirstRisingSouI - I get what your saying. I wasn't conflicted, however everyone in our 'church' the adults especially were displaying strange behaviour. I was raised in religion, left at age 13. Its like a bunch of zombies, torn with guilt, shame, and generally defensive.
+E.T. it's a defensive technique man.. we all do that on the individual level every fucking day of our lives. it's just the whole fuckin god thing that ruins it
Mario Lolrapeface I have even done the same. The thing is, too many people brush these feelings of theirs under a rug and it festers. My experience in religion was a breeding ground for emotional tormented minds.
A CrashCourse video covering Autism Sepectrum Disorders (ASD), specifically High Functioning Autism (HFA), also known as Aspergers Syndrome (AS) would be amazing!
I'd love to see that, and right after he has talked about ASD, HFA and AS he makes a new video about their cousins: AD(H)D [Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder]. Everyone of these belong in some kind of same spectrum, and is very common disorders and symptoms that needs to be better understood. Having ADD myself with influences of Asperger behaviour would love to see someone like Green to explain and teach more about them all.
This video really help me make sense to my social psychology class and a quick review for my upcoming exam :). Why have I not been watching these videos throughout my college career?!
"Yes, it means I'm freeee-" "No. It means you get your yellow ticket of leave. You are a thief-" "I stole a loaf of bread-" "You robbed a house-" "I broke a window pane."
It is important to remember that the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the related Milgram Obedience Study, are rather contentious within academic circles, for their methods and ambiguity. Philip Zimbardo was involved in the experiment as a guard, and therefore has been accused of putting his finger on the scale, so to speak. Additionally, neither experiment had a strong hypothesis, something that is important in creating and running an experiment.
I've always thought people do all kinds of things because there really isn't good or evil; There are only different points of view. Same points of view combine to create cultures, customs, habits, morals and so on. If you ask, Why do people do what they do? To get an answer you just have to look at the circumstances they grew on and the experiences they got.
thelonelydirector I keep forgetting that Crashcourse is not just Hank, it's plenty of other fantastic people who are dedicated to producing important content. Thank you muchly :)
Question: Why do people do horrible things? Answer: Because people are horrible. Never, EVER underestimate the average person's ability to be an enormous idiot, asshat, etc.
Then how do you explain the Billions in Change foundation, charities and other positive things we do for each other? Do you mean that we have the potential to be an idiot and jerk but aren't initially? I'm confused.
+Manabender Take a look at the Thomas Hobbes point of view. He believed that people are naturally bad, and brings up good points. However, John Locke believed that humans are naturally good, and brings up good points as well. People have the ability to do both. Never, EVER underestimate the average person's ability to be an enormous help, friend, supporter, etc.
Even Zimbardo himself got so invloved in the fake situation that he didn't realise how bad everything was getting and would have probably continued with the experiment.
The Stanford prison experiment is one of a handful - the Milgram experiment being another - that makes me genuinely fearful of myself. I miss my naivety from the days I believed I could never be capable of such atrocities. We do, as you said, lose that innocent by increments.
Observation may be influential, but we still have long to go to explain the human mind. Just like going to space to explore, we have much more to yet explore in our own backyard, (the mind)
How is the Zimbardo experiment still even relevant for this video? By today's standards it's highly unethical, the subjects were not randomly selected and personally I could see how the would take it too far just to impress the professor, not even cause that's how they would naturally act.
I think he's mentioning the Zimbardo experiment because it has become "a classic": a thing that everyone is expected to have heard of. Freud is pretty widely discredited, but an intro to psych class has to mention him in passing because he was influential for so long. Hopefully in 20 years, the same will be true of Zimbardo and we'll talk about the work of Walter Mischel (AKA, the Marshmallow test guy) on the influence of situation on personality traits.
I heard the experiment wasn't exactly to the standards of the scientific method. the guards were (to my understanding) asked to be aggressive, and heavy reports of police brutality influenced behavior. TD;LR no control group
wanderingdude777 So what your saying is..It wasn't done according to the scientific method because the guards were told to be brutal and there were other pollice being brutal? but, isn't that kind of related? Like, how people are influenced based on what authority tells you to do, and what other people are doing around you? Which is basically the situation? Which John Green was talking about influences how people act?
Pooja Sandhu It wasn't performed to the scientific method for a number of reasons. It was terrible science at the time and only became famous because it was shocking. It's basically the 70s equivalent of that one study that showed a link between autism and vaccines (even though the study was awful and has been heavily discredited).
Your videos have been a major source of info for me as I study for my Intro to Psychology CLEP exam!! Thank you so much. Now what am I going to do for Developmental Psychology?
Yes It's insanely easy People will tell you it's not but they're lying because they can't organize themselves Either that or I just got a really good teacher There's never any homework but to study and take notes on vocab
Grace Laurent Go for it. Coming from a junior who only recently started enrolling in AP, I'd firmly say AP Psychology has been one of the most enriching courses I've ever taken, no contest. Make sure you're organized and willing to put in the effort though!
The question isn’t why did exhibit X do bad. The question is why is a thing considered good to us, and why instead is some opposing thing considered bad…and what was their attraction to said thing. There isn’t really a good bad right or wrong in the brain, only attraction and repulsion.
I took a class with one of Zimbardo's TAs who worked on that prison study, and it revealed a lot. Prisoners and families actually forgot that they were in an experiment. So for example, prisoners were pulled aside and asked if they would give up all the money they made in the experiment to get out, and though they all said yes, there were no inquiries as to how to get out of the study. Further, families were given a tour of the prison conditions, and rather than asking Zimbardo that their child/sibling/etc be removed from the study, they asked the guards to try and make conditions a little better. There were riots and protests and it wasn't until Zimbardo invited his girlfriend in to show off the experiment that she pointed out the ethical concerns and convinced him to shut down the experiment -- even though his TA's had been telling him that for a few days.
I can't help but wonder how many of those 'angry guards' were cluster B personalities, that had been chosen based off of their 'ability to remain calm under extreme duress.'
WAT? Anakin becomes evil? And you didn't even include a spoiler warning? What comes next? Palpatine turns out to be a Sith lord or some twisted stuff like that?
Hi from New York, I am a student of psychology, I like the way you gather the material on the subject that you are going to talk about ... BUT ... PLEASE Breathe, relax and try * MODULAR * the rhythm of your voice. Apart from that, good job. You get an A +
the japanese military during ww2 would get teenagers to chant slogan of Japanese superiority while wearing military uniforms. then they would get them to pick and choose a farm tool to kill chickens and hogs with it. later that week, the leaders would have these kids do that to dead bodies to mutilated them. then would have them do that to capture prisoners. then they would have them do that to Chinese civilians woman and children. the process of dehumanization is complete. side note. i think this is a major reason why Chinese /Japanese / Korean women don't talk about spousal abuse. the cultural residue of war. this exercise can also be done by one's sexual lust for abusing animals and people. serial killers like jeffrey dahmer start out by getting a sexual high from killing and mutilating neighborhood pets /animals, the evidence is buried in this family back yard. later he went on to do the same to people. this is the human frailty at it's weakest. you see this all around the world, even today on a smaller less domated scale. the cheap thrill are the bully on the web.
Now something I've thought of before and it would be cool if you were able to talk about it is violence and other behavior in books, movies, and video games. The main argument I've seen is a version of the foot-in-the-door effect and this episode seems to support it.
While I understand you kinda have to mention Zimbardo because this is an intro class and everyone does, does the CC team know of anyones work they could talk about that goes into the effect of situations on behavior but is actually reproducible and ethically sound? I know Walter Mischel, before he did his work on self-control that came to be called "The Marshmallow Test", did a bunch of work on this and argued that personality traits were actually situational rather than consistent across many different situations.
Great episode! I really like Social Psychology studies, it makes wonderful bases for storytelling. :) BTW, you mentioned Stanford Experiment and prof. Zimbardo. After all the terrible repercution that his fake-prison experiment had, he actually invested a lot of effort in other projects, one of the latest is the Heroic Imagination Project, dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday life. Pretty cool, huh?
thelonelydirector Then perhaps at least one of them should've spoken up when this trainwreck of an experiment was brought up as something worth including in the episode. I realize it neatly "proves" a couple psychological theories, but it was also extremely bad science: skeptoid.com/episodes/4102
***** Don't forget they can't help pushing their feminist propaganda bs every video.The comment about women's actions being mistaken for sexual ones was frankly ridiculous. They didn't even bother to mention the male side of things, I wonder if the study they're quoting even did.
why is bruno resting all his weight on his twisted ankle? and how did he get his good leg through his crutch? He's gonna end up in worse shape than if he'd danced all night. who doesn't know how to use crutches?
Great video! I totally thought you were going to mention Milgram's Shock experiment on Authority when you were talking about why certain people defy authority. It's scary, but a lot of the time people follow orders just because they come from an authority figure.
In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the guards had sunglasses on when interacting with the prisoners so as not to have eye contact. I think that was a big part of the experiment, but your cartoon did not have sunglasses so I thought I would share.
rossanna xx because humans require eye contact to create bonds and to communicate. When they use sunglasses it dehumanize them.
For an example babies need eye contact to bond with their mothers.
I don't remember exactly how or why. If you want to learn more, there are videos and documentation regarding it.
Flurry Payne W
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. Maybe this is an additional reason why bicyclists have trouble with car drivers? (they usually wear glasses and car drivers of course are hidden already.) Here is a series that addresses the topic, but this is not covered...interesting. czcams.com/video/9sZOpgUkZtQ/video.html
They were also given them to further define their roles as prison guards. This provided a stark contrast to the prisoners who were in sacks
Plus, the guards have no name badge on their uniform to emphasize the anonimity,
Finally!
My favorite branch of psychology. The situations that bring people to act in a certain matter have always intrigued me. How positions given make people change and do things that they wouldn't have normally done before.
Same
Yea, I hate psychologists, because I was around them a lot because of some stuff that happened a few years ago with my dad. Then again, I act like a psychologist, I'll just go around watching people's reactions to the world... I'm weird
Look into groupthink/group behavior if you want to see something really scary.
Can crash course psychology go on forever..... Please
despite this video being 5 years old, it still remains as a relevant & helpful resource for studying 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
I laughed way too hard at the Klansman setting himself on fire at the start
Kortez ok racist
Thank you Crashcourse! 8 years later and these videos are still helping students around the world❤
I wish I could just pay this guy instead of a whole uni sessions and then just pay to take the exam at the end of the year as he's the reason why I'm passing my Bachelor degree so far.
For some reason I feel like watching all the Crash Course episodes now.
TheFireflyGrave I highly recommend it. The quality is great!
There was one fatal flaw in the Stanford prison experiment: The guy in charge was stage directing the whole thing. Zimbardo didn't step back and watch the events unfold as an observer; he played the part of head guard, even going so far as using these totally scientifically unbiased instructions to his student guards: "In general, what all this should create in them is a sense of powerlessness. We have total power in the situation. They have none.
People think my polite friendliness- to anyone, really- is me flirting. I've had a lot of guys develop crushes on me because they think I'm flirting with them, when I'm really just being genial.
Then stop
Robert Langford No.
Okay, then deal with it
Robert Langford I am dumbass. I never complained about it.
You are dumbass? Commas really do make the sentence in some cases
Hank, thank you for talking about and explaining cognitive dissonance. It helped me realize what has been going on in my life, and how I got to where I currently am, and how I can get back. Thank you again
I personally believe that you are one of the best Psychology-related videos that are fun, informative and don't miss out on any broad important bits.
As a psychology student, I ask you to please continue making these.
Hey, I am an autistic 12 year old girl trying to learn about psychology. Certain parts of psychology kind of helps me understand people better, even though it is more confusing for me. Even though you did not talk about ASD in this video, I enjoyed it.
Something to note about the prison experiment is that recently they found a lot of stuff that calls I to question the whole experiment. Like how they advertised to college students looking for guards and prisons. It may have been because college students just act like that and 2 that already aggresive people would be looking to be a guard and that the situation didnt make them like that. They also found that a lot of the participants, mostly the prisoners were acting crazy because they thought that's how they were supposed to be reacting. They were acting. Just something to keep in mind for new watchers.
Remember, Central route persuasion is rarely the one that actually persuades people. That's very important to recognize. Peripheral route persuasion rules the world, as "pessimistic" as that view may seem.
Remember the blind spot bias --- it's easier for us to identify biases in other people than in ourselfs.
or, less politely expressed: we tend to believe that we are less likely to be biased and manipulated than other people.
heavyweaponsgaming
This video remind me of that one day, when I asked my sister "why are you so selfish ?" and that she told me: " I'd rather be selfish and happy than selfless and depressed like you."
I still don't know if she was right or If I was...
*on wednesdays, we wear pink.*
+spooky! alexandrovna rostova he's almost too gay to function.
Panic ! at the tøp I like your user lol
can someone explain the reference?
im not going to do that, but thanks for the advice xD
Umm and sweatpants on Friday *duh*
its so hard to read comments and listen
i love reading comments and listening to the video but I mostly just end up focusing on the reading :( not much of a multitasker lmao
No one is. The brain can only focus on one thing at once. Switching back and forth between comments & video is mentally taxing and difficult to maintain. Just read the comments after the video.
+ゆき nah I can't do that
severe adhd makes this a breeze
especially when pacing
Aaaaaand now I need to watch Mean Girls again.
That's what I was thinking!
"Do this favor for me, now run this errand, now kill these padawans, now blow up a planet!" Hhahahaha
+deycallmemari And yet for some reason even after he committed all of those atrocities he still couldn't kill his son.
+Keovar this just reminded me exactly why kylo ren is such a hilarious character in contrast
Kylo was meant to start out as childish. Over the next few movies, he should mature more and either return home at some point of go full dark side. It's unfair to judge his character like this when he played out the character perfectly. He's one of the main characters to the center plot of the new trilogy, so they won't kill him off, or at least won't kill him off any time soon. There's still 5 or so more movies to come; two more main ones and about three spin-offs (the first being Rogue One).
Kylo Ren is a better character than he is a villain.
Best part of this video.
Thanks for this video- I am a psychology student at university, and in almost every course, my teachers inevitably at some point will mention Zimbardo's name, but no one ever actually CLEARLY talks about the detailed actions that were in his experiment. All they really say is "Zimbardo did a study on how roles shape a situation. People respond to being casted roles by adhering to them. Zimbardo's study was dangerous and no one's allowed to do it again because it caused emotional harm", and then move on to talk, in detail, about the Milgram experiment instead.
I love you, Hank. This will save me for my psych quiz tomorrow
0:55 will make any Les Miserables fan proud
Hi hi, I'm not a psych expert or student. But I had heard that the Stanford Prison Experiment was discredited for its findings because of the unethical practices, disarray of variables, and many other reasons. Can someone explain to me why people still use it as an example or a discussion topic? I too feel like it holds value, but I don't know how to explain that.
Thank you, Crash Course, for existing. It's amazing that you guys are giving people education for free (and covering so many subjects as well!). I love every single episode and I'm absolutely obsessed with the AWESOME animation and Hank's explanations (because he always manages to sound interested and enthusiastic ) and gah I just love you guys so much thank you thank you thank you! ❤❤❤
Love the overview. The cops & prisoner example I think clearly demonstrates what happens to power when unchecked.
I notice that it is being implied that anyone who is tempted to do bad things has 2 options: don't do it because it's bad, or do it because of the situation. I think there's another possibility here. Some people, more often in fiction, but also in real life, refuse to be tempted out of sheer contrariness: they don't want to do it BECAUSE the situation demands that they do it.
Then they don't do it because it's BAD. You seem to be thinking that not doing something because it's bad suggests that "bad" would be objective. It is not the case, what matters is what's bad to *you* specifically. See, bad is always subjective. There is no universal standard which people evaluate when they make decisions, there is only personal standard, being constantly influenced by social presure. This presure exerts such an influence that our personalities change to be more conformist, but situations differ and so not all people become more complisant over time.
And I know this, because I am such a person you're reffering to. Being contrary for the sake of being contrary is a matter of staying true to yourself, it's a moral dillema in which you treat remaining yourself- not being pressured into action by outside sources, as a moraly GOOD decision.
It's a moral choice in the same way that refusing to participate in stoning a person is a moral choice, derived from personal belief in value of nonviolnce, or human life, or the golden rule. Except that in this case the moral quality that is being "held on the line" as it were, is the personal belief of the value of nonconformism.
so like.. If I was a serial killer and kill people, my friend asks me to kill her but I don't because the situation demands I do it?
Arrakiz666
yes, I agree. Everyone has different moral standards.
Pooja Sandhu
No.
More like you're ordered by your superior or pressured by your peers to do something, and you choose not to do so because either
1) You don't like being ordered/pressured, or
2) You don't like those giving the orders/ doing the pressuring
The first example is a dispositional contrariness, the second is situational contrariness. In either case, the person doing "good" here doesn't necessarily ever even bother to consider the moral content of the action they are expected to perform. So if this person had been instead ordered/pressured NOT to do some "bad" thing, they would possibly go ahead and do it just out of spite.
feralshrew
Ah i see. That doesn't entirely make sense because you might not want to do something cause you don't want to.
Life saver, my lecture didn't explain this module any where near as concise and sensibly as Hank has done. Exam is tomorrow morning and 2 hours ago I understood nothing. THANK YOOOOU
I really enjoy these videos, but everything gets explained so fast and I lose focus :c
+sarah monterroso you can watch them at 0.5 speed, but it gets boring
+chromme and funny :))
Really? How?! chromme
+sarah monterroso Oh, click on settings icon -> speed
Thanks! chromme
Can I just thank you for helping me review through finals for my first four semesters of college! 👏🏾 thank you thank you thank you. An hour of class summed up in 15 minutes or less. :)
I'm currently in an AP Psychology class and these videos are saving my life! Love all the geeky references, thanks so much for these videos!
im glad people love the things i love, but are also motivated enough to make videos for me to watch. thank you.
There's no way to learn from your videos EXCEPT when I watch them AT 0.5X speed
I wonder if social thinking can be applied to a larger cultural scale? Gender Roles could be a perfect example; something we may initially see as mundane, but allot of the time the way many men and women behave may be a part of social thinking, since our culture has formed a social standard that says boys enjoy X and girls enjoy Y.
*****
Good point.
***** Uhhhhh, I think a video about social thinking is probably the perfect place to discuss the media's effect on gender roles.
***** it must be very interesting to have a conversation with you.
***** No random hostility here. Nope. Nu-uh.
To get back to the question, I think this is more in the field of sociology.
I love these videos! It explains and resumes well the concepts we study in psychology class in college. In 10:47, for instance, it resumes about two hours of a psychology class. Kudos! :)
i just wanna say a big THANK YOU for making us smarter everyday! what you're doing is amazing
I have my AP Psych exam tomorrow. These videos are definitely helping. :)
This actually makes me happy because for once ever I knew every term talked about in a crash course video, and could follow along perfectly! This is only because I am taking an AP psychology class, but still!
I'm wary of anyone who cites the Zimbardo Prison experiment in anything. The subjects were non-random and the experimenter was also an active participant.
Well truly random subject are pretty hard to find aren't they ?
THANK YOU! There were no ethical standards at all when they put that experiment together.
troty99 Well they don't need to be completely random but it would have been better if they weren't all college students, that I think went to the same college. Just the fact that some of the students want to impress the professor skews the results a ton!
troty99 The experimenter chose the subjects from a pool, rather than choosing randomly. This lets in personal biases and other random variables that partially or completely invalidate their findings.
There's a reason sociology is regarded as a 'soft' science, compared to things like physics and mathematics.
It shouldn't be called an experiment. Is should be called an incident, like any other thing non-reproducable that happened in history. We can still learn from it, but we should cite other things that are actually reproducable far more often.
I kind of want to major in psychology in college, so I've been watching these videos to prepare for my Pysch Honors class. Very awesome, thanks!
I remember reading that prisoner scenario in Malcolm Gladwell's book _The Tipping Point._ He used the FAE and this prisoner example in making the point that situational differences is a large plausible cause in creating large-scale epidemics, which he personally named the Power of Context. A great author and a great read, I definitely recommend his books to anyone into that sort of thing, or just looking for some worldly insight.
(Ah, it's a great feeling to see similarities in your favorite books and favorite educational CZcams channels about one of your favorite subjects! I really am such a nerd. Haha)
".. It would never fly by today's ethical standards.."
Well in Denmark it did, it flew right over with the recreation of Zimbardo's experiment in the televised program "Ond, ondere, ondest"
PLEASE do a math series!!!!
+noma hhh isn't that what KhanAcademy is for?
Situations affect our behavior. Depending on the different situations we face in our lives, our response tends to be positive or negative. A situation that is humiliating or makes us think low of ourselves leads us to take actions that could be harmful to somebody else or even ourselves. But such actions do not describe one’s overall behavior or personality and are restricted to specific situations. One should try to resolve the conflict between their thoughts and actions in a positive manner so that it could help them to better comprehend and react to situations in the future.
Clicked for the mean girls thumbnail
I love the final conclusions you use to include, it makes it easier to remember all the concepts and see the bigger picture. Good work
You've become my favorite thing on CZcams! This channel is brilliant. Plain and simple
so tue
please do a series on Sociology!!!! I love your videos for my classroom and I am teaching Sociology this semester. I would love some more videos! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
Very informative!
I hope very much that I'm one of those who would not change my beliefs in a hard situation.
My personality (from Jung's personality tests or myers briggs) is of an idealist, so I don't think I would!
but what if your beliefs aren't necessarily "good"? Then wouldn't you want too? For example, you grew up being told blacks are not human and you believe that. If there was a situation where a black person was being tortured and you felt bad, then you wouldn't want to change your beliefs?
That is one of the characteristics of an Idealist though. They always seek the "good".
I change less important beliefs all the time, in order to be more flexible. But there are some beliefs I hold that I will never change, because I know they are tried and true "good" beliefs that, if compromised, would indicate a serious lack of moral fiber on my part.
For example, if I had a choice between sacrificing my life to save someone else, or many people, or escaping and letting them die, well that's a hard choice to make.
We praise and emulate this in movies, but in real life when it's you on the chopping block? The urge to live is very strong. The reason we idolize this behavior so much is partially because, in reality, it is very rare.
For me, if I were to have to make that decision, the only way I would not choose to save their life, is if the whole situation happened so fast, I couldn't save them in time, say like jumping in front of a bullet.
But if it was like, choose, should I shoot you? or this stranger?
I would choose myself. I honestly can't imagine living after that, if I chose the stranger.
You could say I'd do it for honor.
My moral integrity to me is more valuable than my life.
RainAngel111
What if what's "good" to you isn't "good" to someone else? If someone tried to kill you, you wouldn't kill them because it's bad to kill?
RainAngel111 Good and bad can be subjective. There are many situations where there is no good. Would you save yourself and your lover and let someone die or save that 1 person and let you and your lover die? This is an extreme scenario but you get the idea.
Sage Moon "Good and bad is subjective" I can't edit aparentlly
This area fascinated me in first year. I am looking forward to my third year course, on this entire area of Psychology
This is the most interesting episode of CC Psychology for me! Thank you for the valuable information.
Rob Willer's Social Psychology course is available free on youtube and it is THE best thing in the world. Fascinating, insightful, hilarious, and has possibly saved people's lives.
When I was religious, I was nearly torn apart by cognitive dissonance. Atheism makes so much more sense, and I'm a much happier person now that I deconverted.
+FirstRisingSouI - I get what your saying. I wasn't conflicted, however everyone in our 'church' the adults especially were displaying strange behaviour. I was raised in religion, left at age 13.
Its like a bunch of zombies, torn with guilt, shame, and generally defensive.
+E.T. it's a defensive technique man.. we all do that on the individual level every fucking day of our lives.
it's just the whole fuckin god thing that ruins it
Mario Lolrapeface We all do what? guilt and shame ourselves?
E.T. yes. in some way at some time. It's a rather human thing to do :p
Mario Lolrapeface I have even done the same. The thing is, too many people brush these feelings of theirs under a rug and it festers. My experience in religion was a breeding ground for emotional tormented minds.
Thanks Hank and everyone at CrashCourse! I have a psychology test tomorrow and this really helped me out!
I appreciate the burning of the KKK character at the beginning. And I'm a pure Caucasian man as well.
+Mistergamer9892 That was funny.
FluffyCatGirl1 evil ones are
I would have enjoyed it more if he ran into the other guys and burned them too.
Tere! eesti stronk? Eesti love suomi?
E D G E
These videos are great. I really like how they are broke down. It gave me a better understanding then my book. I learn better from seeing and hearing.
A CrashCourse video covering Autism Sepectrum Disorders (ASD), specifically High Functioning Autism (HFA), also known as Aspergers Syndrome (AS) would be amazing!
I'd love to see that, and right after he has talked about ASD, HFA and AS he makes a new video about their cousins: AD(H)D [Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder]. Everyone of these belong in some kind of same spectrum, and is very common disorders and symptoms that needs to be better understood. Having ADD myself with influences of Asperger behaviour would love to see someone like Green to explain and teach more about them all.
Yes please! I need one about Aspergers.
Yeaaah sounds great
Joshua Rudman I have Autism Spectrum Disorder and social anxiety. I agree with your comment, I’d like to understand myself better.
Yes!!
This video really help me make sense to my social psychology class and a quick review for my upcoming exam :). Why have I not been watching these videos throughout my college career?!
"Now bring me prisoner 24601, your time is up and your parole's begun. You know what that means."
"Yes, it means I'm freeee-" "No. It means you get your yellow ticket of leave. You are a thief-" "I stole a loaf of bread-" "You robbed a house-" "I broke a window pane."
"Look down! Look down!"
Hannah T "My sister's child was close to death, and we were starving."
"You will starve again unless you learn the meaning of the law."
"I know the meaning of those nineteen years: a slave of the law."
It is important to remember that the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the related Milgram Obedience Study, are rather contentious within academic circles, for their methods and ambiguity. Philip Zimbardo was involved in the experiment as a guard, and therefore has been accused of putting his finger on the scale, so to speak. Additionally, neither experiment had a strong hypothesis, something that is important in creating and running an experiment.
I've always thought people do all kinds of things because there really isn't good or evil; There are only different points of view.
Same points of view combine to create cultures, customs, habits, morals and so on.
If you ask, Why do people do what they do?
To get an answer you just have to look at the circumstances they grew on and the experiences they got.
the amount of work that goes into 1 of these episodes astounds me...i cant imagine they come close to budget??
Uploaded on my birthday. Thank you, Hank, even though this was a coincidence. A very welcome coincidence.
It is also my birthday, What a coincidence! Happy birthday :D
You're welcome ;)
thelonelydirector I keep forgetting that Crashcourse is not just Hank, it's plenty of other fantastic people who are dedicated to producing important content. Thank you muchly :)
Of course! Glad you enjoy them :)
Happy birthday, hope you have a dandy day sir.
I love this series. I've followed all of the crash course videos but cognitive science is a special love of mine.
Question: Why do people do horrible things?
Answer: Because people are horrible. Never, EVER underestimate the average person's ability to be an enormous idiot, asshat, etc.
But does doing horrible things make you a horrible person?
Then how do you explain the Billions in Change foundation, charities and other positive things we do for each other? Do you mean that we have the potential to be an idiot and jerk but aren't initially? I'm confused.
+Manabender Take a look at the Thomas Hobbes point of view. He believed that people are naturally bad, and brings up good points. However, John Locke believed that humans are naturally good, and brings up good points as well.
People have the ability to do both. Never, EVER underestimate the average person's ability to be an enormous help, friend, supporter, etc.
Lovvvvvve this channel , grateful for the existence of every person who worked on this video
Even Zimbardo himself got so invloved in the fake situation that he didn't realise how bad everything was getting and would have probably continued with the experiment.
Crash course was really ahead of their time
Is this why Veronica went along with J.D. with little thought?
Most likely, yes.
Ehehehehehe heh
The Stanford prison experiment is one of a handful - the Milgram experiment being another - that makes me genuinely fearful of myself. I miss my naivety from the days I believed I could never be capable of such atrocities. We do, as you said, lose that innocent by increments.
Thank you! Great addition to a much-needed series
Observation may be influential, but we still have long to go to explain the human mind. Just like going to space to explore, we have much more to yet explore in our own backyard, (the mind)
Peach is getting down and partying.
Those videos of yours are amazing. You guys motivated me to work on the psychological content.)
How is the Zimbardo experiment still even relevant for this video? By today's standards it's highly unethical, the subjects were not randomly selected and personally I could see how the would take it too far just to impress the professor, not even cause that's how they would naturally act.
I think he's mentioning the Zimbardo experiment because it has become "a classic": a thing that everyone is expected to have heard of. Freud is pretty widely discredited, but an intro to psych class has to mention him in passing because he was influential for so long. Hopefully in 20 years, the same will be true of Zimbardo and we'll talk about the work of Walter Mischel (AKA, the Marshmallow test guy) on the influence of situation on personality traits.
I heard the experiment wasn't exactly to the standards of the scientific method. the guards were (to my understanding) asked to be aggressive, and heavy reports of police brutality influenced behavior.
TD;LR no control group
wanderingdude777
So what your saying is..It wasn't done according to the scientific method because the guards were told to be brutal and there were other pollice being brutal?
but, isn't that kind of related? Like, how people are influenced based on what authority tells you to do, and what other people are doing around you? Which is basically the situation? Which John Green was talking about influences how people act?
Pooja Sandhu It wasn't performed to the scientific method for a number of reasons. It was terrible science at the time and only became famous because it was shocking. It's basically the 70s equivalent of that one study that showed a link between autism and vaccines (even though the study was awful and has been heavily discredited).
Hint Search: Abu Ghraib and Zimbardo experiment
Your videos have been a major source of info for me as I study for my Intro to Psychology CLEP exam!! Thank you so much. Now what am I going to do for Developmental Psychology?
Should I take this AP course? I'm a freshman.
Yes
It's insanely easy
People will tell you it's not but they're lying because they can't organize themselves
Either that or I just got a really good teacher
There's never any homework but to study and take notes on vocab
I'm currently taking it and not only is it easy. Its super interesting
Grace Laurent Go for it. Coming from a junior who only recently started enrolling in AP, I'd firmly say AP Psychology has been one of the most enriching courses I've ever taken, no contest. Make sure you're organized and willing to put in the effort though!
yup, super easy, got a 5 and got o skip it as one of my pre reqs in college. money saved. It's pretty much vocab and people
G L Absolutely! AP Psychology is one of the most easiest AP courses ever!
The question isn’t why did exhibit X do bad. The question is why is a thing considered good to us, and why instead is some opposing thing considered bad…and what was their attraction to said thing.
There isn’t really a good bad right or wrong in the brain, only attraction and repulsion.
one of the best pysch videos so far. keep up the good work guys. :)
agree)
This was a fantastic video Hank, one of the best in this series. Great work.
who else is cramming the day before their AP Psychology test?
lets goooooooo
You should be fine.
Brilliant! I was actually looking for info on Sociology and stumbled upon this!!! Subscribed!!!! Thank you, great refresher notes for me!!! 😉
Who else had to watch this for their Psychology homework assignment?
severath19 I’m watching only because it’s interesting af
I took a class with one of Zimbardo's TAs who worked on that prison study, and it revealed a lot. Prisoners and families actually forgot that they were in an experiment. So for example, prisoners were pulled aside and asked if they would give up all the money they made in the experiment to get out, and though they all said yes, there were no inquiries as to how to get out of the study. Further, families were given a tour of the prison conditions, and rather than asking Zimbardo that their child/sibling/etc be removed from the study, they asked the guards to try and make conditions a little better. There were riots and protests and it wasn't until Zimbardo invited his girlfriend in to show off the experiment that she pointed out the ethical concerns and convinced him to shut down the experiment -- even though his TA's had been telling him that for a few days.
I highly appreciate Orange Is The New Black reference....
I can't help but wonder how many of those 'angry guards' were cluster B personalities, that had been chosen based off of their 'ability to remain calm under extreme duress.'
WAT? Anakin becomes evil? And you didn't even include a spoiler warning? What comes next? Palpatine turns out to be a Sith lord or some twisted stuff like that?
Using the Stanford Prison Experiment for my Criminal Justice class. Thanks for such a nice small segment!
+Ryan Johnson They made a film about the experiment. You should check it out.
Loved the Mean Girls reference at the beginning!
Hi from New York, I am a student of psychology, I like the way you gather the material on the subject that you are going to talk about ... BUT ... PLEASE Breathe, relax and try * MODULAR * the rhythm of your voice. Apart from that, good job. You get an A +
the japanese military during ww2 would get teenagers to chant slogan of Japanese superiority while wearing military uniforms. then they would get them to pick and choose a farm tool to kill chickens and hogs with it. later that week, the leaders would have these kids do that to dead bodies to mutilated them. then would have them do that to capture prisoners. then they would have them do that to Chinese civilians woman and children. the process of dehumanization is complete.
side note. i think this is a major reason why Chinese /Japanese / Korean women don't talk about spousal abuse. the cultural residue of war.
this exercise can also be done by one's sexual lust for abusing animals and people. serial killers like jeffrey dahmer start out by getting a sexual high from killing and mutilating neighborhood pets /animals, the evidence is buried in this family back yard. later he went on to do the same to people.
this is the human frailty at it's weakest. you see this all around the world, even today on a smaller less domated scale. the cheap thrill are the bully on the web.
Now something I've thought of before and it would be cool if you were able to talk about it is violence and other behavior in books, movies, and video games. The main argument I've seen is a version of the foot-in-the-door effect and this episode seems to support it.
While I understand you kinda have to mention Zimbardo because this is an intro class and everyone does, does the CC team know of anyones work they could talk about that goes into the effect of situations on behavior but is actually reproducible and ethically sound? I know Walter Mischel, before he did his work on self-control that came to be called "The Marshmallow Test", did a bunch of work on this and argued that personality traits were actually situational rather than consistent across many different situations.
One of the best episodes of crash course psychology !
Great episode! I really like Social Psychology studies, it makes wonderful bases for storytelling. :)
BTW, you mentioned Stanford Experiment and prof. Zimbardo. After all the terrible repercution that his fake-prison experiment had, he actually invested a lot of effort in other projects, one of the latest is the Heroic Imagination Project, dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday life. Pretty cool, huh?
I freaking love these courses. Even though now I'm questioning every aspect of who u think I am
Wait, I thought the Zimbardo experiment had a whole lot of flaws. Or is that the Milgram experiment?
what flaws does the Zimbardo experiment have?
***** Actually, we have a few "real" Psychologists on our team.
thelonelydirector Then perhaps at least one of them should've spoken up when this trainwreck of an experiment was brought up as something worth including in the episode. I realize it neatly "proves" a couple psychological theories, but it was also extremely bad science: skeptoid.com/episodes/4102
***** Don't forget they can't help pushing their feminist propaganda bs every video.The comment about women's actions being mistaken for sexual ones was frankly ridiculous. They didn't even bother to mention the male side of things, I wonder if the study they're quoting even did.
***** that's really interesting, i studied it at A-Level and never knew that! Thank you for explaining :)
Thank you for this wonderful overview! Entertaining and educational
why is bruno resting all his weight on his twisted ankle? and how did he get his good leg through his crutch? He's gonna end up in worse shape than if he'd danced all night. who doesn't know how to use crutches?
Great video! I totally thought you were going to mention Milgram's Shock experiment on Authority when you were talking about why certain people defy authority. It's scary, but a lot of the time people follow orders just because they come from an authority figure.