SVSU Sociology Essay

This week’s assignment will focus on conformity and group behavior. There are two main areas that I want everyone to gain more familiarity with after doing this assignment. First, we will be looking at Stanly Milgram’s famous social experiment that seeks to understand group conformity and conforming to group behavior and expectations. This was done in a classic study called Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram in which he was interested in studying the impact of authority figures on every day people and getting them to conform to some pretty dangerous behaviors. Second, we will take a look at the bystander effect, what it looks like, and new research that questions this whole phenomenon.

*Milgram Study:

[1.] Briefly, summarize the purpose and goals of the Milgram experiment?

[2.] What did Milgram expect to find?

[3.] What was his prediction about the study? What were the actual results? How far were people willing to go to conform to expected behaviors?

[4.] What does this study suggest about conformity to authority? What does this mean for groups and conforming to expected behaviors?

Bystander Effect in Real Life:

Smoke Filled Room:

TEDX Lecture on Bystander Effect:

[5.] What were the examples of the bystander effect from the videos?

[6.] What does the results from the smoke filled room study suggest about conformity under pressure from other people and groups?

[7.] What does Ken Johnson say about the bystander effect?

[8.] How does he suggests that the bystander effect can be disrupted?

[9.] Does this mean that the bystander effect will disappear? Why or Why not?

[10.] Could you make an argument challenging his statement about being active and proactive as disrupting the bystander effect? (Think about this, many of you are often huddle over your technological devices and not paying attention.)