Mahesh - Week 9: Mental Readiness
Mahesh - Week 9: Mental Readiness
Power is a concept often attributed to the ignorance of the mind and the vacancies that may exist in the perception of considering obedience to authority and the process of conformity to a greater power of authority in general. This process is best exemplified by the Solomon Asch experiment in which members of American society were subjected to an examination of whether they would conform to the expectations of the majority. Language plays a big part in the evaluation that each individual projects upon the whole of the test group. By influencing one another to pick the most popular choice in a “vision test,” the organizers of the experiment were able to prove that others’ influence through a persuasive and vivid attitude can supersede the logical reasoning that may prove to be obvious. There are concrete statistics espousing the validity of this experiment in evaluating the extent to which individuals may conform to the greater majority; the social norms and pressures that result from daily interactions and language can cause an apparent 37% of subjects to choose the decision chosen by the majority rather than choosing the obvious and correct answer.
Language can additionally inspire many intrinsic psychological effects, as tested in the Stanford Prison Experiment. Students were assigned either the role of a prisoner or a guard based on pure chance; the power imbalance that existed between the abilities of a guard and a prisoner caused a shifting dynamic. The guards immediately began demonstrating cruelty and mistreatment of the prisoners, indicating how power can change normal individuals to become sadistic versions of themselves. The demoralizing language that the guards subjected the prisoners to caused mental suffering and the degradation of their quality of life. The Stanford Prison Experiment is an exemplification of how shifts in tone and attitude can specify differences in influence and power.
Here is an interesting read on the Stanford Prison Experiment and how it designates the role of power and the iron grip of a influence that language possesses in this process: www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-real-lesson-of-the-stanford-prison-experiment
Source:
Konnikova, Maria. newyorker.com, 12 June 2015,
www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-real-lesson-of-the-stanford-prison-experiment/.
Accessed 21 December 2023.
Hi Mahesh. I think you bring a unique perspective on how power dynamics come into play. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a little extreme, but the attached article helped me understand the ambiguity of such power dynamics and what influences them. I also enjoyed how your blog was structured, as it had more facts to describe those two experiments. Looking at the statistics and the article, it seems that power imbalances often arise from feelings of assumed authority, which, as you said, stem from intellectual ignorance. I agree with this last statement since assuming authority over a group of people doesn’t necessarily mean that this authority is deserved or, in some cases, valid. Many people, once given a taste of power, get consumed by it and think they should hold all of it, and the two experiments show how such influence can have detrimental effects. I really appreciate your article, as it provides an insightful look into actual data that speaks to how power imbalances affect all kinds of people.
ReplyDeleteHi Mahesh, your topic is really interesting and I really like that you included specific experiments that correlate with your ideas. I thought that the Stanford Prison Experiment that you mentioned is very fascinating as it shows how people can change based on their position in society or in a certain situation. I started doing research on experiments that correlate to your topic and found out about the Milgram experiment. In this experiment, a group of people were brought in to be “teachers” and another group was “learners” (that knew what the experiment was and pretended not to). The learners were strapped onto electrical chairs and taught something. Whenever the learner got something wrong, the teacher was told to shock them, and increase the voltage each time. More than 65% of the teachers willingly shocked the learner and this goes to show that with any sort of power, people are likely to abuse it, which is similar to the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Maybe it is human nature to want power, so when one gets it, they feel the need to use it to its full potential and exploit the position they are in.
ReplyDeleteHi Mahesh, your topic was very interesting to read. The Stanford Prison experiment is a good example on how power roles can change how a person acts dramatically. The authority given to a person is really up to the individual. They could have been given the title of police/guard and not done anything and acted normal. However the feeling of having power takes over people in a sense. While the power is given to those at random, what they did with that power was unreasonable yet interesting to study from a psychological perspective. Something as little as a title was able to change people drastically. While this may be the most extreme example it still shows how much someone can change within an instant when given more or less power. The dynamics of the entire experiment affected everyone greatly while only lasting a few days compared to the week they were supposed to run it. For many it is hard to resist the urge of using power given to them.
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