jascination

Another really great question. For those unaware, modern-day psychological studies (or anything even remotely involving testing humans) have to go through fairly rigorous scrutiny from ethics committees to ensure that no harm lasting damage is done. Up until relatively recent times these committees weren't necessary and researchers had much more freedom - often at the expense of their subjects.

I remember seeing a video of one of John Watson's experiments, on operant conditioning, where he would purposely scare a baby every time it showed interest in animals. Eventually the baby was conditioned to fear the animals. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=9hBfnXACsOI#t=165s

In short: You learn a lot without ethics, but you often harm the people involved.

Well fuck.

This is a great question. I've always read the Stanford Prison Experiment (as well as one of my favourite papers, On Being Sane in Insane Places) indicating that humans are a product of our surroundings. Under the right circumstances, and when expected to act in a certain way, we have a tendency to completely change our behaviours and succumb to these expectations.

This opens up much broader questions as to why this happens. Perhaps Prof. Zimbardo can shed some light, I always thought it played well off of Erving Goffman's "stage" social interaction theories (which says we have different personalities based on the audience to whom we are presenting ourselves) and Zygmunt Bauman's theories of modernity, which have a firm basis in the "self" vs the "other".

In simple terms: the Stanford Prison Experiment, as well as all those mentioned above, shows that we have a tendency to behave in a way that conforms to our perceived expectations that others have for us.

Holy hell that Brandis video was rage-inducing.

This is by far my favourite one. The rouge on their cheeks is fantastic.