 This is part two of lecture nine so in the first part we saw that others impact our performance and Sometimes we feel invisible. We feel like nobody's really watching us and that can also lead to impaired performance So this feeling that no one is watching us can also have different Consequences and that's what we're going to talk about right now so if others are present and especially when we become part of a very big group like you see over here a Huge gigantic group we can feel completely invisible and we can also lose our sense of individual Awareness and the moment we feel like we are basically hiding in the crowd Our most a social and ugly part of our personality usually comes out and there's plenty plenty of examples of this Here you see one example. This happened on January 6 2021 Supporters of president former president Trump infiltrated the US Capitol in Washington And this was a protest against Trump's defeat in the 2020 elections against Joe Biden and Trump basically Rooted for his supporters to take action and they took this very seriously a gathering together and was this huge riot Very extreme it led to the evacuation and also the lockdown of the Capitol and five people died in this basically quite Terrorist attack of Trump supporters in Washington Very extreme group behavior So around the same time in the Netherlands things were heating up as well Here you see what happened After a curfew was imposed at the end of January 2021 people after 9 p.m They could not you know go on the street anymore. This was an additional measure against the pandemic This was announced in the news riots broke out in several cities including Amsterdam, Rotterdam and also in Tilburg And this was also very extreme violent behavior against Against the police and there was so millions of dollars of basically damage in Stores and Bicycles that were destroyed cars that were being burned down very extreme behavior and These are two examples of what happens when we lose our sense of individual awareness This is what we call the individuation and this is what happens What what can happen if we are in the presence of a very big group we start losing our individual awareness And this has several consequences It leads to an increase in obedience. So that's basically also what we saw By the storming of the Capitol like people this group of Trump supporters There were of course very bummed out down by the fact that their president lost the election They started to be increasingly Obedience towards their leader, which was former president Trump So increased obedience also increased conformity basically some the two big problematic Human behaviors that we discussed in the previous lecture and also decreases in accountability So that means that we no longer feel personally accountable for what we are doing and this typically leads to very impulsive emotional irrational and Social behavior and this has been studied in many ways also by studying like societal Happenings like the ones that I just discussed with you But also in studies actually one quite cute study on during Halloween So Halloween is actually very interesting time to study the individuation because people come together in big groups And they also wear masks and what happens when you wear a mask or you cover your face You become more anonymous and this also you know leads to an increased sense of the individuation people cannot see you anymore Right, so Halloween is an interesting time and during Halloween. This study was conducted on kids So it was quite a no sweet study. I think Study in the invadiation but not with this very extreme behaviors. I just showed you so in this study Children were invited to come by with their Halloween costumes and they could enter a room This room was empty and there was a bowl of candy standing there and the instructions were very clear You can enter the room and take one piece of candy and then there were several conditions So the first condition was sometimes the group the kids were in a small group with other kids and sometimes they were alone So this is also a condition of the individuation, right? If you're alone, you are an individual if you're with the group. You're more a part of that group So more the individuation and then the second condition which is also an interesting one I think Sometimes the kids were asked their name before they entered the room and in other conditions. They were not and Also saying your name out loud is also an act of individuation You remind yourself that you're an individual you also, you know notify the Authorities basically the experimenter that you have a name that you were a person So these are basically two conditions in which individuation is The individuation is being in like impacted So let's take a look at the results and you see a graph in which on the y-axis You see the percentage of children transgressing so basically taking more than one piece of candy and here You see the impact of the different conditions So you see that first you see the groups of kids Alone that entered the room alone if they also stated their name Then almost everyone followed the rules and only seven and a half percent of the kids took more than one piece of candy If they were anonymous so they did not say their name and enter the room alone already 20% of the kids took more than one piece of candy But then we turn to what happens when they are part of a group then if they're Individuated Then 20% of the kids took more than one piece of candy. So saying their name really definitely sort of Impacted their behavior if they were anonymous so they did not say their name and they're in a group Then the majority of the kids transgressed and showed you know behavior that was not in line with the rules So here you see actually a cute little study on this quite severe effect of the individuation So the individuation also definitely played a role in I think social psychologist's most infamous study and I I bet you know it and maybe you've been waiting for it But here it comes it's a stand for prison experiment and this experiment is conducted at Stanford University in 1971 by Philip Simbardo a social psychologist and this is was a study on obedience the topic that we of course discussed in lecture 8 and Basically what Philips and Bardo wanted to test was the power of the situation and he recruited male participants to take part in what would turn out to be Definitely the worst experiment of all time if you ask me So what he did was in Bardo's group? They build a mock prison a fake prison in the basement of the psychology lab of Stanford University and he paid studies he paid the participants to play the role of either a guard or a prisoner and Which role the participants would take was determined by a flip of a coin so it was really random nothing was rigged about this So just to be clear for actual participants no actors here and in this study And they were either a guard or a prisoner. So I will now Show you a video clip with the actual footage of the Stanford prison experiment I do want to say beforehand that there are some some trigger warnings here because you will see violence You see you will also see abuse and if you start feeling uncomfortable or if you just if you maybe you already know the study And you don't want to see it again. I can completely understand you can just fast forward this video until you see my face again Because the details that are in the study. They are not so important So it's just for you important to know the big picture Which is also described in the book So if you read the book then you also know enough But I know that some of you are also interested to see what actually happened there So for those of you that you know have a strong stomach and you want to keep on watching then here you see Some footage of the Stanford prison experiment The Stanford prison experiment is possibly the most famous psychological experiment of all time an insane role-playing game gone horribly wrong Thanks to nylon stockings fire extinguishers and a sadist nicknamed John Wayne So what really happened behind those prison walls? Here's a look at the untold truth of the Stanford prison experiment The experiment begins with funding from the u.s. Office of Naval Research Dr. Philip Zimbardo began the Stanford prison experiment in August 1971 to study the effects of prison life and examine the power Dynamic between inmates and guards as he later wrote in his book the Lucifer effect Zimbardo wanted to know if you put good people in a bad place Do the people triumph or does the place corrupt them? He began by putting an ad in the paper for volunteers who would be paid $15 a day to participate about 93 bucks in today's cash after inflation after selecting 24 guinea pigs Zimbardo and his assistants converted the basement of Stanford psychology department building into a makeshift prison Then flipped a coin to decide which test subjects would be guards and which would be prisoners It would turn out to be a fateful decision Welcome to prison the experiment began when real-life cops pretended to arrest the students playing prisoners They were hauled to the actual Palo Alto police department booked fingerprinted and then blindfolded and tossed in a holding cell Once they were transferred to the fake prison things got a lot worse The prisoners were ordered to strip naked douse with a spray forced to wear dressed like garments without underwear and nylon Stockings as hats and fit with a chain locked around one ankle the students playing guards were also encouraged to make up their Own rules leading to 17 strict guidelines the prisoners were forced to live by Prisoners were only allowed to refer to themselves by number and guards would randomly wake them up in the middle of the night with screeching whistles and force them to exercise Zimbardo even got into the act himself playing the prison superintendent where he always sided with the guards and Encouraged them to create a sense of fear among the inmates, but the prisoners soon began fighting back The prisoners rebel on the second day The prisoners went on strike removing their hats and the numbers from their uniform and blocking the cell doors with Their cots to keep the guards from entering that's when things got even darker the guards on duty called for Reinforcements and used a fire extinguisher to force the inmates away from the door after forcing their way in they removed the cots Forcing inmates to sleep on the floor and refused to let the prisoners eat or brush their teeth They also threw the ring leaders of the insurrection into solitary confinement and force others to clean toilets with their bare hands While spreading rumors that some inmates were informing on the others in the hopes of getting preferential treatment Finally the guard stopped letting the prisoners use the toilets at all Forcing them to do their business in buckets, which they weren't allowed to empty turning the whole fake prison into a giant open sewer prisoner number 8612 loses his mind less than 36 hours into the experiment Douglas Corpi aka prisoner number 8612 Apparently lost his mind from the stress one of the ring leaders during the rebellion Corpi had been thrown into solitary Confinement and was a target of harassment from the guards according to Zimbardo Corpi began screaming and crying Although the doctor and his staff initially thought he was just faking it in an attempt to escape Eventually they let him out fearing for his mental health Corpi later claimed he faked it all telling SF gate The breakdown I had was a manipulation to get out of that damn experiment But in a documentary made by Zimbardo Corpi told a different story. It was an experience of being out of control Both of the situation and of my feelings Meet John Wayne One guard in particular was noted for his sadistic tendencies His real name was Dave Eshelman, but the prisoners called him John Wayne Though in fact he consciously modeled himself after the villainous prison warden from the Paul Newman movie Coolhand Luke Going so far as to use a southern accent when speaking to the prisoners Eshelman orchestrated all sorts of terrible hazing forcing the prisoners to play leapfrogs So their gowns would write up and expose their privates He once ordered two prisoners to act as Frankenstein and the bride of Frankenstein Forcing them to embrace while saying I love you as his final infamous act Eshelman forced several of the prisoners to simulate intercourse telling Lee the other guards didn't stop his actions I started to get so profane that And still people didn't say anything According to Eshelman though He's not really sadistic at all But actually a good guy was simply trying to expose the evils inherent in a prison type environment He told Stanford magazine I set out with a definite plan in mind to try to force the action force something to happen So that the researchers would have something to work with from Eshelman's perspective any blame lies with Zimbardo Nobody was telling me I shouldn't be doing this. The professor is the authority here. You know, he's the prison warden He's not stopping me Things fall apart Over the course of less than one week five students playing prisoners had to be released due to severe Psychological issues caused by the abuse of their guards Perhaps the worst was the case of prisoner number eight one nine who broke down weeping when Zimbardo allowed him to rest in a nearby room However, the prison guards lined up all the other inmates outside the door and forced them to chant prisoner number eight one nine Did a bad thing over and over again until the poor guy was reduced to a blubbering wreck Prisoner eight one nine did a bad thing He was eventually replaced by a new guinea pig prisoner number four one six who was so horrified by what he saw in the prison He immediately staged a hunger strike in protest guards responded by tossing him into solitary confinement The experiment had gone off the rails and the only man who could stop it had lost all perspective as Zimbardo put it himself I'd become the superintendent of the Stanford County Jail. That was who I was. I'm not the researcher at all Luckily, someone with perspective showed up on day five Zimbardo's then-girlfriend Christina Mazlec was an assistant professor at Berkeley After showing up to help with the experiment She was appalled to see the prisoners chained together with paper bags over their heads. She confronted him that night We had a long argument at the end of it. He then decided this is it. I've got to shut down the prison and so then the next day Everything stopped the experiment was supposed to run for two weeks and it only lasted six days aftermath Shortly after the experiment ended the horrific uprising in Attica prison took place Thrusting Zimbardo and his research into the spotlight researchers are still arguing about what it all means Zimbardo himself has said it goes to show how normal people can be turned evil by circumstance Telling the bbc the study is the classic demonstration of the power of situations and systems to overwhelm good intentions of Participants and transform ordinary normal young men into sadistic guards Others aren't so sure as some critics think Zimbardo unintentionally skewed his results with his methods Which may have attracted participants who are much more aggressive and less empathetic than the general populace Plus Zimbardo wasn't just a scientific observer He actively participated and even encouraged violence and brutality corrupting his data in the process Tellingly when psychologists conducted a similar experiment in 2001 They remained observers and the guards never got anywhere near as aggressive as john wane and his cohorts did at Stanford the significance of the stanford prison experiment came into question again in 2004 when a group of american soldiers Tortured and humiliated iraqi prisoners in abu grave prison zimbardo was called to testify as an expert on behalf of one of the defendants Who claimed the system encouraged the guards to act violently zimbardo agreed saying abu grave was a stanford prison study on steroids The defendant still received eight years behind bars, however Which some might consider an ironically fitting epilogue to the saga of a stanford prison experiment Okay, so Now you've seen it or you skip through it And uh, you know that this was a a very extreme experiment And I think this study is maybe as famous for basically the shocking footage But also for the criticism on it because this study has been criticized over and over again Especially recently actually the past 10 years more criticism appeared Um because so many things went wrong so many things went wrong actually everything went wrong So let me start with the obvious ethics, you know, you think this is an ethical study to conduct of course not it's completely unethical Uh, it also took way too long. It was way too intense participants felt like they couldn't couldn't quit. They were harmed Uh, actually actually harmed physically emotionally It was just a terrible study. It was such an unethical study to be conducted So again today this would never be impossible But more things went wrong and that has to do with the design of the study. So first of all Phillips and bardo recruited participants and in the text of the flyer basically in which he recruited the participants He said this is a study about life in prison And we now know that these words this is a study about life in prison Was actually sort of a self selection of male participants that were above average in aggression So this afterwards this has been studied and if you use these words Then you attract participants that are already above average in aggression. So it's selection bias, right? So recruitment that was something that went wrong scenery, you know, he built a mock prison It was not really objective setting anymore very clear and that also everything constituted or you know build up to Demand characteristics and demand characteristics is basically when participants can guess What is expected of them? So what is the hypothesis of this researcher? How am I supposed to act? Especially in an ambiguous situation as we've talked about before people look for cues on how to behave And they see a prison. They are, you know recruited on a prison experiment They are a guard. So how am I supposed to behave? Let's see. It's pretty obvious, right? So demand characteristics definitely played a role and sometimes in a certain moment during the experiment Philip Zimbardo the experimenter that was supposed to stay objective He gave instructions clear cut instructions to the guards on how to behave to make it a little bit more intense to You know lead to make make bigger consequences. So he instructed them on how to behave It's not nothing it has nothing to do with studying natural human behavior Which is following orders basically of the of the experimenter And then finally exaggeration because Even though Phillips Zimbardo worked so hard to create this this this very intense study Only one out of three guards showed this very extreme behavior. Actually two out of three guards Didn't go along with it And one one out of three guards actually openly said no, we cannot do this. We cannot treat And the prisoners in this way But Phillips Zimbardo sold the story focusing on the one third So one out of three guards that did show the most extreme behavior And that's basically because this this story just sold better And that's that's not really ethical also when when you're talking about how to do good research He sold a story about how how horrible human beings are at the very core But he rigged it. It's just just a false study So that might be reassuring for you to know that you know This actually was not as bad as Phillips Zimbardo made it look like for a long long time At the same time though, I do want to end by saying that the but de-individuation is certainly a problem And we saw this for example with the storming of the capital and the the riots With the the curfew that was imposed in the Netherlands So we we do have to do something about that and when people feel invisible in a group Really horrible things can happen. So what is the solution? It's individuation It's also something that we already saw with the halloween study, right? You have to remind people that they are still individuals You have to remind them that they can also be watched And that they can be held accountable for what what happens and this is actually something that Society is already doing or the government is doing that using nudges for example placing cameras in Areas of public transportation like with metros stations or train stations There's cameras And oftentimes these cameras don't even work But just the fact that there are cameras and people feel like I might be watched and I might be held accountable for What I'm doing right now? Helps to decrease de-individuation and also mirrors help So if there's mirrors in public spaces then people see themselves and just seeing yourself doing something Can sort of wake you up and make you feel like wow, okay I'm now awake from my de-individuation coma and I am actually an individual and I do not want to be So a social and I want to be like A person that is You know a good human being and and decent and follow the rules of society So this is something that you can do to decrease de-individuation