"The Wave", Stanford Prison Experiment, etc.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Before anyone freaks out, this is not a political thread.  🤐

We are just wrapping up WWI and the Russian Revolution.  We just finished Breaking Stalin's Nose and Between Shades of Gray (Soviet's hidden genocide in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.... incredible book, btw) in addition to corresponding SOTW4 chapters and books from Collier's American history series.  Oldest also read Animal Farm and then we listened to a reading of Orwell's "What is Fascism" essay on youtube that we found.

Next up is the rise of fascism, and we'll be reading The Wave as a discussion book.  This brought to mind other socio/psych experiments that show everyday people doing horrific things for an authority, like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the one where they got students to shock other students (actually actors, no real shocking) well past the point of begging for help.  

My question:  Is there a single resource or book that reunites these studies?  

[lewelma]

The Wave film is very good. It is in German, and subtitled.

[Clemsondana]

A few years ago i planned to reference the Stanford Prison Study in a class that talked about the subconscious, bias, etc.  When I looked for a quick summary reference, I found articles like these https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-45337-001 and https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201310/why-zimbardo-s-prison-experiment-isn-t-in-my-textbook .  There are a couple of long popular press articles about it, too.  I didn't have time to dig too deeply into the topic at the time and was able to use another example, but I wanted to share.  

Edited January 11, 2021 by Clemsondana

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

1 hour ago, Clemsondana said:

A few years ago i planned to reference the Stanford Prison Study in a class that talked about the subconscious, bias, etc.  When I looked for a quick summary reference, I found articles like these https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-45337-001 and https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201310/why-zimbardo-s-prison-experiment-isn-t-in-my-textbook .  There are a couple of long popular press articles about it, too.  I didn't have time to dig too deeply into the topic at the time and was able to use another example, but I wanted to share.  

Thank you for the references.  I will look further into it.  

I'm also thinking of a book study comparing Lord of the Flies with the more recent book Humankind: A Hopeful History which includes the real-life story about Tongan boys who are shipwrecked on an island.  

[Sneezyone]

20 hours ago, Monica_in_Switzerland said:

Before anyone freaks out, this is not a political thread.  🤐

We are just wrapping up WWI and the Russian Revolution.  We just finished Breaking Stalin's Nose and Between Shades of Gray (Soviet's hidden genocide in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.... incredible book, btw) in addition to corresponding SOTW4 chapters and books from Collier's American history series.  Oldest also read Animal Farm and then we listened to a reading of Orwell's "What is Fascism" essay on youtube that we found.

Next up is the rise of fascism, and we'll be reading The Wave as a discussion book.  This brought to mind other socio/psych experiments that show everyday people doing horrific things for an authority, like the Stanford Prison Experiment and the one where they got students to shock other students (actually actors, no real shocking) well past the point of begging for help.  

My question:  Is there a single resource or book that reunites these studies?  

I don’t know of a single book but we used excerpts from commonlit.org that were very good and you could follow their footnotes for more in depth study. They also have some quick discussion/comprehension questions for each passage. We used these resources for DDs 8th grade year with Animal Farm.

Edited January 11, 2021 by Sneezyone

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Commenting in my own thread to say I've just checked the table of contents for Humankind: A Hopeful History and it actually goes over the Stanford Prison Study and its flaws as well.  It's sounding more and more interesting as a book.  I'll be pre-reading and then possibly assigning.  It would be good to find a hopeful way to end modern history!