Post #5: Social Experiments & Theories

I’ve chosen to discuss the Dr. Zimbardo's Prison Experiment. This experiment took place in 1973 and was lead by Zimbardo at the University of Yale. The point of the experiment was to see how people adapt to becoming prisoners and guards in a prison like situation. Zimbardo wanted to see if the aggressive behavior of the guards was sadistic or happened due to the environment of the prison. Students at Yale volunteered their selves to be either guards or prisoners. 21 students were chosen, and were screened psychological normal. Then the guards were assigned and started randomly asserting the prisoners, no violence was permitted but they were treated as every other criminal was. The prisoners were then brought to a jail like setting. The prisoners were only referred to by numbers, not by there names, and they had chains around their ankles. Within hours of the experiment starting some of the guards were harassing the prisoners. The prisoners were basically dehumanized. On the sixth night of the experiment Zimbardo quit the experiment as everyone was getting mentally and physically damaged, some people even started going into depression.

I think that this experiment relates a lot to the Book of Negros. The book its self was not an experiment but the people in the book went through very similar situations. I think that the best compassion would be when their on the slave ship going from Africa to South Carolina. Every one on the ship slowly starts to lose faith and hope, and they all kind of went a little insane. Take Fomba for example being stuck on the ship affected him so much that he lost his ability to talk and communicate with others. I also think that in the experiment how the prisoners are referred to as numbers and not by the name is very similar to the book as on the ship everyone starts yelling their names and where they are from because they started to loose their identity. I also think there a little similarities between the two, like in both cases they had chains around their ankles.

Haney, C., Banks, W.C. & Zimbardo, P.G. (1973) A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Review, 30, 4-17.

Blog #4 "My Story Waits like a Restful Beast"

“My Story Waits like a Restful Beast,” is the first chapter of book of two. In this chapter we see what Aminata's life is like in present time, she is in London, England in 1802. Aminata has been brought to England by the, “Black Loyalist.” A Black Loyalist was someone who was from Africa, who lived in Britain, and when they came to Europe joined British forces during the American Revolution. Lots of the African people were enslaved in Africa. Britain got the Black Loyalist to come over to Europe, because they promised them freedom if they fought for Britain. Many Black Loyalist came over, as many as 30,000 escaped from Africa to come and help defend Britain in the war. They joined Britain to try and get their freedom back. As the British lost the American Revolution the Black Loyalist were then placed back onto a ship headed for Nova Scotia. On the route to Nova Scotia many of them died, but the ones that made it were dropped off in Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia the Black Loyalist were never exactly granted freedom as they had wished, and they were still doing manual labour making a little bit of money.

Lea and Olivia did this seminar in class and I personally liked how they used Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs to show a comparison between Aminata finding her purpose in life (self actualization) and in Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs you have to fulfill all of the other stages in order to get to the highest degree of needs. Aminata found that her purpose in life was to tell others about her story.