THE THIRD WAVE (or how easy it is to become a NAZI) | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 207832 Australia 03/13/2007 08:50 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | That is an absolute load of Jewish Communist bullshit. German National Socialists (Only Jews called them "Nazis) were united by their will to kick out the Jews that had financially decimated their country. They had become slaves almost overnight in the nation of their ancestors. Of course they were united and disciplined! |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 164485 United States 03/13/2007 08:57 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Ah, the old discipline=bad, conformity=bad, we-all-did-it ploy. Interesting experiment, but the experimenter can't see the forest for the trees. The students responded because he demanded way more of them than other teachers. Something similar happened in another time and place. The incoming new teacher was told that her students were the gifted ones. She taught accordingly. At the end of the year, sure enough, they scored the highest (in aggregate) of all the classes in the school. The only problem was that these students started off as the worst students in school. I don't believe the experiment was ever repeated. For obvious reasons. |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 208338 Spain 03/13/2007 09:10 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Remembering the 3rd Wave by Leslie Weinfield Peninsula, September 1991 Although the specter of fascist resurgence seems largely forgotten in the euphoria of German reunification, it may not be far beneath the peaceful veneer of that nation, or any other, for that matter. Even the most ostensibly free and open societies are not immune to fascism's lure - including places like Palo Alto. What came to be known as the "Third Wave" began at Cubberly High School in Palo Alto as a game without any direct reference to Nazi Germany, says Ron Jones, who had just begun his first teaching job in the 1966-67 academic year. When a social studies student asked about the German public's responsibility for the rise of the Third Reich, Jones decided to try and simulate what happened in Germany by having his students "basically follow instructions" for a day. But one day turned into five, and what happened by the end of the school week spawned several documentaries, studies and related social experiments illuminating a dark side of human nature - and a major weakness in public education. Before students arrived for class on Monday, Jones vigorously cleaned his classroom and arranged the desks in unusually straight rows. He dimmed the lights and played Wagnerian music as students drifted in for class. Then Jones, a popular instructor who normally avoided even such regimentation as taking roll, told his students that he could give them the keys to power and success - "Strength Through Discipline." "It was thoroughly out of character for Ron Jones to say "Let's help the class out with a little more discipline," recalls a former student Philip Neel, now a television producer in Los Angeles. But because Jones was an interesting teacher, the class went along. Classmate Mark Hancock remembers Jones adding a political cast and a set of incentives soon thereafter. "It was something like, if you're a good party member and play the game well, you can get an A. If you have a revolution and fail, you get an F. For a successful revolution, you get an A," recounts Hancock, currently a regional development director for a Los Angeles property company. Jones next commanded the class to assume a new seating posture to strengthen student concentration and will: feet flat on the floor, hands across the small of the back, spines straight. And he added speed drills, after which the entire group could move from loitering outside the room to silent, seated attention in less than 30 seconds. "Even when we started with Strength Through Discipline, it was easy for me to see the benefits of the posture," remarks Steve Coniglio, who now helps run a Truckee retail store. "Even on that very first day, I could notice that I was breathing better. I was more attentive in class." Jones closed the first day's session with a few rules. Students had to be sitting at attention before the second bell, had to stand up to ask or answer questions and had to do it in three words or less, and were required to preface each remark with "Mr. Jones." "At the end of that day, I was grandly happy. I mean, it seemed to work and everyone seemed to get into it," Jones still marvels. Grades were based on participation, and no one accepted the study hall alternative that Jones offered prior to commencing the exercise that day. But neither did anyone make a connection to the German history lessons they'd just completed. "Most of us were headed toward college," says Hancock. "It wasn't Nazi German life that mattered, it was Palo Alto grades." Jones says he assumed the class would return to its usual format the next day. "But when I came in, the class was all sitting..." His voice trails off as his body snaps to military attention. Jones considered calling a halt, but then went to the blackboard and wrote "Strength Through Community" below the previous day's slogan, "Strength Through Discipline." "I began to lecture on community - something bigger than oneself, something enjoyable. They really bought that argument," Jones recalls. A powerful sense of belonging had sprung up among lowly sophomores at the bottom of the rung of the three-year school, and Jones admits he soon became a part of the exercise as well as its leader. "It was really a mistake, a terrible thing to do. My curiosity pulled me in at first, and then I liked it. They learned fast, didn't ask questions. It was easier as a teacher." As his Strength Through Community lecture ended, he created a class salute by bringing his right hand toward his right shoulder in an outwardly curled position, resembling a wave. Jones named it the Third Wave, and - despite its similarity to Third Reich - claims he borrowed the term from beach folklore, which holds that the last wave in every series of three is the largest. Students acknowledging each other this way in the halls attracted the attention of upper classmen, who clamored to know the salute's significance, Coniglio says. Cubberley students began skipping their regular classes, asking to be part of the Third Wave. In three days Jones' class had expanded to 60 students. After telling the enlarged class that "strength is fine, now you must act," Jones assigned everyone a task to be completed that day. Some were to memorize the names and addresses of everyone in the group; others were to make Third Wave banners, armbands and membership cards. And since that day's theme was "Strength Through Action," everyone was to proselytize. By day's end Coniglio says banners were all over the school, including a 20 footer in the library. Members brought in some 200 converts from other classes to be "sworn in." "It just swept through the school," recalls Jones, who is still teaching, now at the San Francisco Recreation Center for the Handicapped. "It was like walking on slippery rock...by the third or fourth day, there was an obvious explosion of emotion that I couldn't control." Several boys were assigned to "protect" Jones as he walked the school's corridors, wearing Third Wave armbands to signify their responsibility. "It was a black band. When I went home, it got my parents worried," says Steve Benson, now a Palo Alto mechanic. "They thought it was the equivalent of the SS." Although his mother called Jones to express her concern, the teacher reassured her it was merely a class exercise. Everyone involved in the Third Wave received a membership card, three of which Jones randomly marked with an X. Those holding the marked cards were told to note who transgressed class rules, which now dictated such matters as what campus paths members could walk and with whom they could associate. "There were three or four stoolies," Jones explains bluntly. "I wanted to see how this was being taken outside of class." By the end of four days, approximately half the class had approached Jones with detailed information about the transgressions of others, ranging from improper salutes to coup plots against him. "It was phenomenal. There was a whole underground of activity. People were assigning themselves as guards," Jones says. "I knew exactly what was going on in class because of this strange snitching that was going on." There was betrayal among teens who had been close friends since childhood. A group of buddies could be sharing a cigarette in the bathroom, discussing a plan to "kidnap" Jones the next day and fulfill the exercise's requirement for a top grade, but "it wouldn't happen," say Coniglio. "Somebody - one of those two or three - would inform Ron Jones of the plot." This is exactly what happened to Hancock, who told several friends he had bought a cap pistol to school to earn an A with mock assassination. Jones gave him a stern look in class while reminding the group of the penalties for disloyalty; Hancock dropped the ideas and to this day cannot identify his betrayer. "Jones was able to stop a lot of lines of communication between people. That's how he made his power. He was keeping us under his thumb very effectively," say Hancock. Jones also selected an official but anonymous "secret police" group to help enforce Third Wave rules in and out of school. These students enjoyed the assistance of a tough, leather-jacketed campus car club known as The Executors, who had been attracted to the Third Wave. Both groups - along with regular Third Wave members - denounced their classmates for a raft of real and imagined transgressions. "The paranoia was really strange," Coniglio says. "People were finking, and you had to make your own choice that way - whether you would tell." In addition to the names supplied by student enforcers, Jones would also pull "indictments" from his shirt pocket - slips of paper from which he would then read names and alleged offenses, Hancock says. No matter who fingered them, the accused stood immediately. A few were let off, but many were convicted by a class shouting, "Guilty!" and sent into library exile. Mistrust blossomed even there. Hancock recalls an acquaintance later telling him she thought he'd turned her in because she was "caught" a day after they had a brief, innocuous conversation. Hancock subsequently asked Jones about the indictments, only to learn the accusations were usually fabricated. "Not only did he cause us to convict our peers, he'd just pick a name and get 'em convicted," say Hancock. "As long as that level of fear was there, the system was working." Adding to the ferment was the dawn of antiwar activism. Third Wave meeting announcements and instructions on daily activity were read over the P.A. system, regularly followed by calls for revolution or radical social change. The polar extremes only added to the confusion of the teens, from many of whom a Vietnam draft call was looming. "You were either radical or you weren't. You couldn't be in the middle. Perhaps we were ready to be molded," Coniglio shrugs. "We were caught between extremes that were getting all the attention." Something of an underground existed within the Third Wave, but Hancock says it had as much effect as protesting against the Nazi regime in Germany. One of the underground's main problems was that Jones kept changing the rules established early in the experiment, and simply ignored several attempts at the revolution whose perpetrators had been promised an A. Hancock says some desperate conspirators even considered a mass "hit" with Mattel machine guns concealed in lunch bags, but Jones got wind of it and rescheduled the student assembly at which the assassination was to have taken place. By the fifth day, the sheer volume of student migration to Jones' class was disrupting normal school routines and raised his concern that matters had gotten out of control. Besides reports about students who failed to salute properly, Jones received word that three of the exercise's biggest skeptics were about to get beaten up. All three had told their parents about the Third Wave; one family's rabbi even called Jones at home with questions, but accepted Jones' vague answers without delving too deeply. "I was hoping he would come in with a tremendous amount of rage," say Jones. "I kept hoping someone would walk in and ask what was going on, so I could point to them and say, 'That's right, look what you're doing, you've become just like fascists' and end it. But it didn't happen." Some parents did warn their children not to attend the class, which only reinforced student desires to participate, says Coniglio. For his part, Jones easily disposed of the few polite parent inquiries by describing the Third Wave as a class exercise. Even teachers at the school did not question it while it was going on, he notes. Jones decided he had to end the experiment immediately, but without losing the point of the lesson. He had the three skeptics escorted to the library for their own safety, and then told those remaining that the Third Wave was more than an exercise, that it was more than just a game. In fact, Jones said, they were a local cell of a select youth movement recruiting students nationwide. More than 1,000 such groups would rise up during a special noon rally that day to support a national presidential candidate, one who would announce a Third Wave Youth Program to bring the country "a new sense of order, community, pride and action." By noon, students were crammed into the lecture hall, backs ramrod straight, eyes riveted to a television set in the front of the room. With the car club toughs guarding the door, Jones led the group in chants and salutes for the benefit of several friends he had posing as reporters and photographers. Then Jones dimmed the lights, snapped the television set on and left the room. Students waited with rapt attention for a vision of the future, but the screen stayed blank. "Everybody's eyes began to go like this," Hancock says, darting his eyes frantically from side to side. After looking around a few minutes, Hancock says he realized in a daze that "there weren't any bodyguards, there wasn't any Jones. We were all just sitting at discipline." For Coniglio, the gray faces staring at the gray screen triggered his most potent image of World War II - the gas chambers. "I thought, 'My God, we're all dead." He yelled, "I'm getting out of here," and ran for the back doors, which he thought would be locked like in the concentration camp ovens. But the doors opened, and Coniglio was surprised to encounter a normal spring day at lunch hour. "Music was coming from the quad, flowers were blooming and a warm breeze was blowing." Back inside, Jones returned to shut off the television and take a position at a microphone on stage, while a movie montage of World War II scenes flashed onto a large screen behind him. "There is no Third Wave movement, no leader," he told the stunned audience. "You and I are no better or worse than the citizens of the Third Reich. We would have worked in the defense plants. We will watch our neighbors be taken away, and do nothing," Jones said, referring to the three skeptics exiled to the library for the crime of disbelief. "We're just like those Germans. We would give our freedom up for the chance of being special." Neel remembers that "everybody just sat there a long time. Then everyone went their own way. No one wanted to talk about it. I think I remember a couple of people sitting there, not moving." "Nazi is always a dirty word when you're growing up, but when you get hit with it, that you've become one, it's a very shocking statement." Several students were crying. Barbara Miller Moore, a Third Wave member who did not attend the rally, recalls seeing several people walking away in shock. "Steve was pale," she remembers of Coniglio. "I was worried about him. He as always exceptionally sensitive. I didn't know what would happen to him." The salutes ended with the rally; membership cards turned to litter and attention to Vietnam. But memories of the one-week experiment remain strong 25 years later. "It hurts so much when I realized I'd been so fooled, but then, that was the lesson," remarks Coniglio. Upon subsequent reflection, he says he realized "it was one of the most valuable lessons I've ever had in my life. How often are you - as a 16 year old- not only able to learn about history, but to participate in it?" Although Neel remembers feeling frightened before the rally a the thought of linking up with a national movement, he says peer pressure overcame his doubts, along with his regard for Jones and the climate of the times. "A big reason I went along with it was my trust for Jones," Neel says. Moveover, he "was just beginning to feel bitter about Vietnam, and part of the experiment seemed like we could change the government responsible for hurting us. There was a feeling something really remarkable was going to happen, going on throughout the country - that the movement was going to change politics, change the structure of school. The combination of everything made it happen, and boy, did it happen." For student Alyssa Hess Reit, the conclusion of the Third Wave experiment led to some heartfelt compassion and empathy for the Germans. "It seemed very clear that if a bunch of high school students from Palo Alto who had everything - nothing to lose - could be so easily pulled in, knowing it was just a game, it was clear what it must've been like for real people losing jobs and families," she says. "That's not to say there weren't ways to resist or that they couldn't, but we didn't even know how to go about it." Reit says she knows of no one who was damaged by the Third Wave. Jones "helped wake us up, and I've always been grateful," she comments. "Good experiences aren't necessarily pleasant. I've often thought about it, and I'm glad I had it. I would want my kids to have it." Many parents also supported Jones and the exercise, regardless of whether they had children involved. They went to bat for him two years later, when he was denied tenure for reasons ostensibly unrelated to the Third Wave. "Jones was an outstanding and creative teacher whose principal effort was to teach children to think for themselves," says Joseph Pickering, an interested parent. "Jones had excellent character and the highest motives." The experiment generated a great deal of debate among Jones' fellow teachers, however, with several arguing it was not his place to expose students to such emotional wrenching. "To a certain extent, they were right," Jones agrees, although he considers any negative impacts to have been temporary and the risks worthwhile. Bernard Oliver, president of the school board that denied Jones tenure, objected to Jones' teaching style for different reasons. "We were upset with his performance largely because the subject matter was not being taught. If you weren't concerned about basic values, his teaching was OK. It's easy to load up classes with excitement, things kids like. While this impresses many parents, it can also be one-sided and far removed from traditional values," Oliver adds. Jones' Third Wave also caught the attention of Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo, whose famous prison experiment several years later resulted in college students lapsing into sadism and eventual emotional breakdown after being assigned the role of guard in prison. "Situations exert much more influence over human behavior than people acknowledge," explains Zimbardo, who has invited Jones to speak to classes many times. Although the tendency runs counter to Western ideas of individual responsibility, Zimbardo points to two real-life incidents to prove his point - the U.S. massacre of civilians at My Lai, and postwar tests conducted on concentration camp guards that revealed no subsequent propensity for violence. "It's an unpleasant message people don't like to hear. But unless you're aware of the vulnerability, you don't recognize how easy it is for simulation to become reality, for the uniform to dominate the person." Third Wave veterans agree. "When he started rewarding people, I could see how that goes a long way toward influencing them," Neel says. "I could see how people would be susceptible to that kind of behavior and would go along with it. You want to please your teachers, your peers and you don't want to fail." Although Jones says he would never repeat the Third Wave, he insists it could easily happen today, anywhere in the United States, for a variety of reasons. "Fascism is always a possibility because it's so simple and people are frustrated. They lose their jobs, their dignity, their sense of worth, and someone comes along and says, "I've got the answer." School systems prepare the ground, Jones says by using only standardized tests for success and failing to recognize alternative paths of learning, as well as a wider variety of individual achievements. Educational institutions weed out troublemakers and those who are difficult to teach, he contends, rewarding placid students who want to succeed at any cost and will accept authority. "That's the sad thing. Teachers can trigger it by telling students they're special, they're part of a community, that they can do special things. All they have to give is their loyalty," Jones concludes. "It happens every day in school, only the paraphernalia isn't there. Kids aren't learning to ask questions. You create a population where freedom's just a spelling word." |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 208368 Spain 03/13/2007 09:47 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 208377 India 03/13/2007 10:07 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 208368 Spain 03/13/2007 10:15 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University Welcome to the Stanford Prison Experiment web site, which features an extensive slide show and information about this classic psychology experiment, including parallels with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University. How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please join me on a slide tour describing this experiment and uncovering what it tells us about the nature of Human Nature. --Philip G. Zimbardo |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 208368 Spain 03/13/2007 10:17 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The Milgram Experiment A lesson in depravity, peer pressure, and the power of authority The aftermath of the Holocaust and the events leading up to World War II, the world was stunned with the happenings in Nazi German and their acquired surrounding territories that came out during the Eichmann Trials. Eichmann, a high ranking official of the Nazi Party, was on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The questions is, "Could it be that Eichmann, and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?" Stanley Milgram answered the call to this problem by performing a series of studies on the Obedience to Authority. Milgram's work began at Harvard where he was working towards his Ph.D. The experiments on which his initial research was based were done at Yale from 1961-1962. In response to a newspaper ad offering $4.50 for one hour's work, an individual turns up to take part in a Psychology experiment investigating memory and learning. He is introduced to a stern looking experimenter in a white coat and a rather pleasant and friendly co-subject. The experimenter explains that the experiment will look into the role of punishment in learning, and that one will be the "teacher" and one will be the "learner." Lots are drawn to determine roles, and it is decided that the individual who answered the ad will become the "teacher." Your co-subject is taken to a room where he is strapped in a chair to prevent movement and an electrode is placed on his arm. Next, the "teacher" is taken to an adjoining room which contains a generator. The "teacher" is instructed to read a list of two word pairs and ask the "learner" to read them back. If the "learner" gets the answer correct, then they move on to the next word. If the answer is incorrect, the "teacher" is supposed to shock the "learner" starting at 15 volts. The generator has 30 switches in 15 volt increments, each is labeled with a voltage ranging from 15 up to 450 volts. Each switch also has a rating, ranging from "slight shock" to "danger: severe shock". The final two switches are labeled "XXX". The "teacher" automatically is supposed to increase the shock each time the "learner" misses a word in the list. Although the "teacher" thought that he/she was administering shocks to the "learner", the "learner" is actually a student or an actor who is never actually harmed. (The drawing of lots was rigged, so that the actor would always end up as the "learner.") At times, the worried "teachers" questioned the experimenter, asking who was responsible for any harmful effects resulting from shocking the learner at such a high level. Upon receiving the answer that the experimenter assumed full responsibility, teachers seemed to accept the response and continue shocking, even though some were obviously extremely uncomfortable in doing so. milgram1.gif (6056 bytes)Today the field of psychology would deem this study highly unethical but, it revealed some extremely important findings. The theory that only the most severe monsters on the sadistic fringe of society would submit to such cruelty is disclaimed. Findings show that, "two-thirds of this studies participants fall into the category of ‘obedient' subjects, and that they represent ordinary people drawn from the working, managerial, and professional classes (Obedience to Authority)." Ultimately 65% of all of the "teachers" punished the "learners" to the maximum 450 volts. No subject stopped before reaching 300 volts! Milgram also conducted several follow-up experiments to determine what might change the likelihood of maximum shock delivery. In one condition, the touch-proximity condition, the teacher was required to hold the hand of the learner on a "shock plate" in order to give him shocks above 150 volts. The most amazing thing to note from this follow-up experiment is that 32% of the subjects in the proximity-touch condition held the hand of the learner on the shock plate while administering shocks in excess of 400 volts! Further experiments showed that teachers were less obedient when the experimenter communicated with them via the telephone versus in person, and males were just as likely to be obedient as females, although females tended to be more nervous. Milgram's obedience experiment was replicated by other researchers. The experiments spanned a 25-year period from 1961 to 1985 and have been repeated in Australia, South Africa and in several European countries. In one study conducted in Germany, over 85% of the subjects administered a lethal electric shock to the learner. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 208368 Spain 03/13/2007 10:18 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | That is an absolute load of Jewish Communist bullshit. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 207832German National Socialists (Only Jews called them "Nazis) were united by their will to kick out the Jews that had financially decimated their country. They had become slaves almost overnight in the nation of their ancestors. Of course they were united and disciplined! Of course all the experiments here are fake no? |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 208368 Spain 03/13/2007 10:30 AM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | The Experiment The group were divided into guards and prisoners One of the most controversial and shocking psychological experiments ever carried out has been recreated for a BBC One programme, The Experiment, which goes out on Tuesday. The Stanford project of 1971 saw a group of men volunteer for an unknown experiment which was to see them turned into either prisoners or prison guards. But the experiment did not go to plan and Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo, who was in charge of the project, called it off after evidence emerged that the guards were becoming violent towards the ever more submissive prisoners. The conclusion that was borne out was that stripped of their individual identities the prisoners would become passive while the guards would exercise their power to the extreme. The way people reacted was quite surprising and may change the academic arguments surrounding this type of experiment Alex Holme Because of the potentially dangerous outcome the direction the Stanford Experiment was going in it was terminated just six days into the two-week run. So naturally there were raised eyebrows when the BBC said they would be recreating their own version for a TV show called The Experiment to test social dynamics, power and rebellion. Professor Zombardo himself has recently said that the research he carried out in the 70s would now be considered unethical. The more extreme violence of the Stanford experiment, described as "degrading and pornographic", took place while the guards thought they were not being filmed. Ian Burnett Ian Burnett replied to a newspaper advert asking for volunteers To ensure this could not happen in the new regime a vast army of cameras was installed in the prison environment, which was mocked up in a studio in Elstree. Creative director of the programme, Alex Holmes, said there were significant differences between the test carried out in 1971 and the modern one. He said the most significant difference was that Professor Zombardo and his team were more interventionist in their approach, getting involved in the scenario and ultimately getting too caught up. Uncomfortable "We wanted to see if those with the power would turn towards tyranny, as in the original experiment, but we found it to be the opposite," said Mr Holmes. "The guards did not want to adopt their roles. They felt uncomfortable and this made them ineffective, whereas the prisoners were a more unified group." In fact, the prisoners became such a tight team they staged a break out and wanted to form a commune. But having found their freedom they had no leader and fell into a "power vacuum" which Mr Holmes said the participants found difficult and ultimately some wanted to set up a tyrannical "society" to restore order back. "The way people reacted was quite surprising and may change the academic arguments surrounding this type of experiment," said Mr Holmes. With the advent of reality TV it is easy to be cynical about the motive behind the BBC staging the experiment. Battery of tests But the creative team is adamant it was more about the scientific approach and result of the experiment than the need for entertainment. Participants who replied to a newspaper advert were put through a battery of tests to weed out those with violent or unstable tendencies. But like the Stanford Experiment, the BBC project also had to be halted early. Learning from the previous experience, the show's collaborators put a stop to the research to prevent a situation getting out of hand. |