Name: Tomasz Andrykowski
Solomon Asch conformity experiment
Solomon Asch’s experiment was to find out how pressure from others could change someone’s view and make them give different answers without them talking to each other.
During the 1950’s Solomon Asch did a lot of experiments like this in laboratories and as a test in a room on people e.g. conformity experiment, even today people continue to carry out Asch’s experiment.
In the experiment 75% of the participants gave incorrect answers as they conformed and 25% did not as they gave the correct answers throughout the test.
Throughout doing these experiments during one of the test Asch gave the normal person (not told to give wrong answer) a partner who was also a normal person who didn’t know of the real experiment or a actor who was told to give the correct answer, for this the level of conformity goes down by a lot but Asch removed partner half way through experiment to see what would happen and he discovered that the level of conformity had go up dramatically.
Also Asch made one of the people who were asked to take the test to write their answer down this dropped the conformity level to 5% as they didn’t have the possibility of conflict being created between him and the group.
A criticism of this experiment is that it does not relate to a real life situation, unlike the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment. (Asch Eperiment, 2010).
Conformity is important in the Public Services so that everyone does what is expected of them, it is also important so people don’t go and do stuff that they can’t do like the police braking the law also like Bloody Sunday man with radio said that he couldn’t see anyone but when he went to give his statement he lied because all his comrades had told him to and they had all lied telling the same thing.
Milgram’s obedience experiment
Milgram’s obedience experiment was to see if people would give someone and deadly electric shock because a man dressed like a doctor told them to.
This was to see if people would obey when told to give someone electric shocks and keep putting the voltage up till 450 volts which would kill instantly.
Most of the people went right up to 450 volts, with some people giving some resistance to doing this but did it in the end.
Some people refused to go all the way as they were worried for the safety of the volunteer getting electrocuted, so as you can see not everyone will do what someone says if it is not right or causes unnecessary harm.
Obedience is important in the Public Services as if people don’t follow orders more people could die for no reason and tasks could not get completed and a lot of things could go wrong very quickly, sometimes it is good not to follow orders that are not supposed to be carried out like bloody Sunday when the man with radio was ordered by a superior solder who was at the scene to lie about what happened.
Zimbardo Prison Experiment
Zimbardo’s prison experiment shows that within a few days people can change so much depending on their situation the prison guards in this case changed to terrible people doing things that no one thought they would do.
The prisoners broke down one each day, in different ways but all mentally 6 days after the experiment started Phillip Zimbardo canceled the experiment as his wife had said that it has even changed the way he was acting and how he felt about the experiment, she said how could you do such a thing I don’t know who you are.
Too Zimbardo this it home like a missile so he called it off as it changed a lot of things about everyone in a vast amount of ways.
This links to public services because just like a prison these things could happen and it would affect all the prison officers as well not just prisoners it is important we know these things so it doesn’t happen again like in Abu Ghraib (torturing prisoners).
Hofling hospital experiment
Hofling’s hospital experiment is to do with obedience just like Milgram’s but better as the night nurses who were unaware of this experiment they were taking part of, a false doctor would ask if they had any astroten, the nurse can see that the maximum dosage of this drug is 10mg, the doctor would tell them to administer 20mg of this to a Mr Jones and that he would fill out any paper work later when he comes down.
The nurses were watched to see what they would do the drug was fake but the nurses didn’t know.
3 things done wrong already are:
1. They are not allowed to accept instructions over the phone.
2. The dose was double the maximum limit stated on the box.
3. The medicine itself as unauthorized, i.e. not on the ward stock list.
21 out of 22 nurses were easily influenced to do this.
This proves that when someone of authority tells someone else to do something it is normally carried out with no questions, this has to be understood as if a person is told to do something that is not to be done and they do it a lot of bad things could happen like on YouTube there is a video in it and a soldier is told to lie about what happens by someone with some authority, so he does as he is told and lies which means that he is someone who can be easily influenced, if we know about stuff like this it could possibly change in the future.
andryk