1. Discuss the role organization played in The Wave experience.
In The Wave, the role of organization served as the groupwork of their immersion within the experience. It allowed students to play their assigned roles to the point where they truly believed that was what they were supposed to do. The Stanford prison experiment, in which some prisoners were given the roles and power of officers while others remained prisoners, is a famous example of this. Similarly to what happened to Robert, the "officers" gradually began to act more confidently in response to his assigned role, wielding their power as if it were their natural right as a result of the environment they were subjected to; in this case, being that Robert was chosen as the monitor, a great position in
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Furthermore, the rigid rules and expectations placed Mr. Ross in the position of greatest power. This hierarchy, along with the salute and catchphrase, solidified and uniformed the group, allowing students to identify with it. "More and more, he'd begun to recognize the position of importance his students were unconsciously imposing on him - the ultimate leader of The Wave," (Hinton, p. 89-90) for example. Demonstrates how his image was perceived and, as a result, adjusting his behavior in response to that stimulus. Essentially, the organization forced the students to unanimously and unknowingly bow to the position of power in The Wave out of respect and a desire to be a part of this powerful group.
2. How does Mr. Ross manipulate his students into accepting The Wave? Why are they so enthusiastic about it?
Mr. Ross is able to manipulate his students into accepting The Wave because, as the teacher, he has a position of power that makes people less likely to reject his decisions. It exploits their social safety nets and their
In Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment, 20 college aged boys are selected to play different roles in a simulated prison located within Stanford. This experiment was thought of and carried out by Philip Zimbardo, a professor of psychology. The boys, who were also students at Stanford, were randomly selected to be a guard or a prisoner. The prisoners were taken by real police officers to the Stanford jail. When the experiment started, most of the prisoners thought of the situation as it was intended to be, an experiment.
The prisoners are obedient to the guards partly because they no longer feel like they deserve to stand up for themselves. The guards themselves are stripped of their personalities as well when they all have to wear matching uniforms, but in return they are given power. When the prisoners lack confidence and self respect, it is implied that they will more than likely become submissive to the guards who have growing confidence and power. The article implies that when assigned a position, whether it is pleasant or not, many will conform to this position and live it. This is apparent in A Few Good Men, when a character named Markinson knows that what he is doing is wrong, but continued to do it because he is a high rank and is in power.
Even though the boys chose Ralph, Golding makes it clear that Jack was “the most obvious leader” (Golding 22). This shows that social status plays a huge role in leadership, but there are other qualities to consider when selecting a leader. Although Ralph and Jack were
Students began recruiting and getting people to join The Wave and anyone who did not were seen as lesser individuals. Wave members would turn their noses up at the mere sight of a nonmember. It began to get out of hand as students began harassing others to join. Students were getting beat up for not joining the Wave or for speaking out against it. This started to scare the students because they thought if they did not conform they would suffer the same fate as those who had not joined.
The experiment in The Wave by Todd Strasser was successful because it showed what Nazi Germany was like and taught students never to follow a leader blindly. At the end of the book, when Mr. Ross is holding a Wave meeting, the students become unhinged when they realize they are completely obedient and act like a neo-Nazi group. Not only the students but also Ben Ross saw the experiment's impact. For example, “Ben looked down at them, a sea of faces stared back at him anxiously… It was frightening how easily they would let you decide for them”(133).
In “The Standford Prison Experiment”, Philip G. Zimbardo, shows an example of how people who have power uses to abuse others to help show their dominance and power by using the prison experiment that was used at Stanford. Showing how people with power who are the guards are hurting the defenseless prisoners. This is shown in the article by the author when he said “I have singled him out for the special abuse both because he begs for it and because I simply don’t like him”( Philip 75). Showing how when guards were giving their power they demonstrated on the prisoners who in this experiment were seen as the victims or the prey of the violence that was used on them. To then show how they have power and quash the prisoner's moral of rebelling.
Before graduate student, Christina Maslach raised concerns about the environment in the mock prison and the morality of continuing the experiment, Zimbardo, who served as the prison warden, did not take the abusive behavior of the jail guards seriously. In conclusion, in the Stanford prison experiments, a few ethical principles were not adhered to, as prisoners’ human rights were not regarded, putting the participants in possible danger. What should have been different in the Stanford prison experiment?
In the Zimbardo prison experiment, participants are arbitrarily chosen to be either guards or prisoners. However, both the guards and the prisoners internalize their roles immediately. The study is terminated after 6 days because the guards began physically and emotionally abusing the prisoners. This experiment “reveals a message we do not want to accept: that most of us can undergo significant character transformations when we are caught up in the crucible of social forces” (Zimbardo, 2007, p.211). The Stanford Prison Experiment shows how latent violent and aggressive personalities are easily realized when one has dominance over submissive personalities.
In summary, the purpose of the Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to demonstrate that powerful situational forces, much like Abu Ghraib, could over-ride individual dispositions and choices, leading good people to do bad things simply because of the role they found themselves
The guards that did not agree personally to the torturing of prisoners, but obeyed anyway, were participating in the act of Submissive Obedience, because the conscience they obeyed was not their own. The guards actions can also be explained by Philip G. Zimbardo’s “Stanford Prison Experiment”. In Zimbardo’s experiment, many young men were given absolute power as guards over prisoners, much like the soldiers at Abu Ghraib. After given few directives and told to enforce the laws of the prison, the guards at the Stanford Prison took only 3 days to
This experiment was conducted in Stanford University by Dr. Zimbardo. During this two week long session, Dr. Zimbardo had several volunteers agree to act as prisoners and as prison guards. The prisoners were told to wait in their houses while the guards were to set up the mock prison, a tactic used by Dr. Zimbardo to make them fit into their roles more. The official police apprehended the students assigned to the role of prisoner from their homes, took mug shots, fingerprinted them, and gave them dirty prison uniforms. The guards were given clean guard uniforms, sunglasses, and billy clubs borrowed from the police.
Although Jack expresses strong desire to become chief, the boys elect Ralph as a leader, suggesting an air of charisma that made him worthy of his position. He believes a leader has to “think, be wise… grab at a decision”, someone who can look after others and keep the group in
They also concluded that the environment of the prison played a vital role in the way the guards treated the prisoners. It is believed that this experiment changed the way some U.S. prisons are
After the experiment, the students who played the guards were interviewed and found to still be shocked by their behavior within the fake prison environment, unrecognising that side of them or that they were even capable of doing such evil and abusive
All the students gave power to Mr. Ross because he was well liked and that was the same reason Adolf Hitler came into power. This relates to the theme of mass conformity because Adolf Hitler and Ben Ross both created a movement where some people joined because they were well liked and thought it was the right thing to do. The rest who didn’t join were smart enough to realize and understand what was happening. Both The Wave and The Diary of Anne Frank relate to the theme of mass conformity under one power because Ben Ross and Adolf Hitler were given the power to control people. To begin with, Ben Ross was beginning to follow in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler.