What in the World Is He Thinking?

Imagine yourself cruising down the interstate, minding your own business, when out of nowhere this lunatic flies by you so fast that you could barely make out the color of his car. What in the world is he thinking? He has to be insane, right? What about the girl that you offered a warm "hello" to while walking to your car? She said nothing in return, not even an expression on her face, she just kept walking. What a jerk! The Fundamental Attribution Error occurs when we as an observer produce an explanation, or infer another person's behavior to internal factors, and underestimate situational causes. In other words, What if that lunatic's wife was in labor and that jerk that ignored you just found out about her mother's passing? Within this essay, we'll cover three different studies that display the power situational issues have over people's behavior. The first study will be the Milgram experiment. This study reveals how one will follow the direction of an authority figure, even if it's to the extent in harming an innocent by standard. The second study is the Asch study. This study discloses how one will go against what they believe to be correct, and conform to a group. Finally, the third study will be the Zimbardo study, which shows how people react when given certain roles to play.

In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University started to conduct an experiment focusing on obedience to authority verses personal conscious. Milgram selected his participants through an ad in the newspaper advertising to take part in a study of learning. Forty males were selected between the ages of 20-50 ranging from unskilled to professional. They were introduced to a fixed accomplice and drew straws to determine who played the role of the learner, and the teacher. This too was fixed, and all the unsuspecting volunteers played the role of the teacher. The "learner" was strapped to a chair with electrodes, and the teacher was taken into a room along with a professor dressed in a lab coat that contained an electric shock generator. The learner was given a list of word pairs to learn, and was asked to recall its partner from a list of four possible choices given by the teacher. With each incorrect answer given by the learner, the teacher was instructed to administer an increased voltage electric shock from 15 volts to 450. Every participant administered at least a 300 volt shock, two thirds went all the way to 450. Whenever the participants refused to contribute the shocks to the learner, the experimenter would read off a list of demands to ensure that they continued. People tend to obey orders given by an authority figure, even if it's to the extent of seriously injuring an innocent person.

In 1955, Solomon Asch conducted an experiment to observe the degree in which social pressure from a majority group could cause an individual to conform to the group and their ideas, even if they were obviously wrong. Taking place at Swarthmore College, 50 males were emitted a "vision test." One unknowing participant sat in a room with seven decoys. The decoys agreed before the experiment which wrong answer they would choose. The real participant was the last to state which line was the same length as the target line. There were a total of 18 trials and the group was instructed to give wrong answers on 12, these were labeled as the critical trials. One third of the participants placed in this predicament gave into the social pressure and went along with the majority, even though they were clearly incorrect. During the 12 critical trials, at least three fourths of the contestants conformed to giving the wrong answer at least one time. Asch's experiment also had a control condition where