Is Social Psychology Contagious?

“Social psychology focuses on three broad topics: how people think about, influence, and relate to one another.” (Social Psychology) When it comes to behavior and how people will act, many experiments were conducted to prove or disprove that “behavior is contagious”. (Social Psychology) Experiments such as Soloman Asch’s Conformity Experiment, Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiment and Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment all impacted modern psychology. These experiments proved that behavior is infectious and what some do impacts what others will do. In this paper, I will show that it is true, “behavior is contagious.” (Social Psychology)
Solomon Asch Conformity experiment was conducted to see the extent that people would conform. The experiment
He set out to prove that individuals would obey with the request of authority figures. McLeod in his summary states, “Milgram was interested in researching how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Stanley Milgram was interested in how easily ordinary people could be influenced into committing atrocities for example, Germans in WWII.” (McLeod, The Milgram Experiment, 2007) The experiment was carried out by asking participants/teachers to deliver a series of electrical shocks to another person when a question was answered incorrectly. Also, if a mistake was made, the teacher could deliver an increased voltage level to the student. The general findings were that individuals who were going to disobey were those who responded not to the learner’s cries of pain but to the learners request to be set free. People are more likely to obey if there is an authority figure there to take the blame. “The power of legitimate, close-at-hand authorities is dramatically apparent in stories of those who complied with orders to carry out the atrocities of the Holocaust, and those who didn’t.” (Social Psychology) Milgram’s experiment further proves that obedience plays a major part in behavior and people are going to do what is necessary to fit
In this experiment a simulated prison was created where college students were recruited for a two week study and paid $15 a day to either be a prison guard or an inmate. “After a day or two in which the volunteers self-consciously “played” their roles, the simulation became real-too real.” (Social Psychology) The guards took their roles too seriously and “devised cruel and degrading routines.” (Social Psychology) After only six days, the experiment got out of hand and was forced to be shut down. The experiment showed that situational factors powerfully affected human behaviors. This was shown by the many inmates that broke down and had emotional breakdowns and left the experiment because the prison guards took it too far when given a position of authority. The individuals in the experiment were deindividualized and no longer had any self-awareness of what they were doing within the group. Zimbardo’s Experiment clearly showed that “people will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are so strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards.” (McLeod, Zimabardo - Stanford Prison Experiment,