In 1971, Dr. Phillip Zimbardo conducted a controversial experiment to test humans’ behavioral responses to captivity, i.e. how humans react when placed in varying authoritative and submissive positions within a controlled environment. This experiment became known as “The Stanford Prison Experiment”—the implications of which have both fascinated and frightened the psychiatric community at large for more than three decades. I’ve included the first part of an excellent documentary for you to watch. After viewing this documentary, I’d be curious to know what you think Zimbardo’s experiment teaches us about the human psyche, if any such lesson can be learned within so-called “controlled environments” like Stanford’s make believe prison. Let us know what you think in the comments section. We’ll talk again soon…
Thanks Ryan, this video was really eye opening and scary at the same time! I watched the rest of the programs. Mr. Rushkoff has a few other programs I plan to watch—all seem interesting.
I shared some of the information with my teenager and we had a nice conversation. The new generation is being raised with a weak set of values making them very vulnerable to the marketing by people who don’t care about their well being. The more aware we are of the tricks being played, the more capable we are of resisting and giving them the tools they need at a young age not to be vulnerable to this kind of marketing.
Thanks again for sharing such thought provoking topics.
The insights of cultural/media theorist Douglas Rushkoff are always contemporary and often prescient. He was deciphering the social codes of the virtual psyche, lifestyle, and marketplace before such concepts were formally identified by the so-called “machine.” TheMerchants Of Cool is a brilliant analysis of the incorporation of youth pop-culture that Ruskhoff created while working as a correspondent for PBS Frontline. This is a very entertaining documentary. You’ll learn a lot too. Let me know what you think in the comments section.
Thanks to dbking for permission to use this Photo.
It was meant to be a special Halloween night episode of the American radio program, Mercury Theatre on the Air. Directed by 23-year old Orson Welles, the program was an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel The War of the Worlds. The screenplay for the show introduced an unprecedented innovation for American radio: use of a fake newscast to provide listeners with the experience of actually living through an alien invasion.
Broadcast from a studio in New York City on October 30, 1938, the program was presented as an ordinary music program that was frequently interrupted by news bulletins. After first describing strange explosions on Mars (Welles played a prominent astronomer), listeners were then told of the landing of a strange “meteorite” in Grover’s Mills, New Jersey. The meteorite turns out to be a Martian capsule which then destroys hundreds of onlookers with “heat rays”. As the episode continued, more Martian ships land and devastation is unleashed across the entire United States.
Despite military resistance, the Martian invaders prove too strong and unleash terrible weapons including “poison gas” sprayed into the air. New York City is invaded by “great machines” wading across the Hudson River. Coverage of the invasion is provided by a “news reporter” who describes “people dropping like flies” until he is killed by the poison gas himself. The broadcast ends with Welles (in his role as the astronomer) telling listeners about the devastation and how the Martians were destroyed by Earth’s bacteria.
Later reports came out about the”panic” the resulted from the broadcast but there is still debate over how widespread it really was. Although disclaimers that the invasion was fictional were inserted at several points in the program, many listeners were still convinced that the invasion was real . Later estimates placed the number of listeners at six million with 1.2 million believing it to be “genuinely true”. Incidents of actual panic remain scarce although reports of people fleeing their homes or hiding in their cellars to avoid the “poison gas” came out afterward. (more…)
Thanks to Boris Anthony for permission to use this Photo.
Marshall McLuhan’s groundbreaking theories on media communications and the psycho-social impact of technological development made him both a very respected and controversial figure beginning in the 1950’s. Seen by many as a prophet of our contemporary media filtered age, McLuhan’s famous “the medium is the message” theory, in which the communications medium itself (microphone, television, computer, letter) is more directly related to the meaning and ultimate impact of a given message than the actual “content” (intellectual/rational meaning) continues to gain depth as the decades pass.
I recently discovered an excellent audio-video archive of McLuhan’s work on the CBC web site. This is a great primer for our psychology students unfamiliar with his work and I strongly encourage you to check this archive out by clicking here. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on McLuhan, a thinker who still truly remains ahead of his time.
Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University Psychology Program
Slavoj Žižek is arguably the most irrerevent, brilliant, and provacative thinker in the history of Slovenian thought. Renowned for wildly “psychoanalyzing” topics ranging from idiotic celebrity scandals to Hitchcockian symbolism to post-marxist economic theory in the span of one sentence, Žižek has himself earned somewhat of a celebrity status and cult following. One of Žižek’s specialties is the reversal, in which he will relentlessly breakdown and analyze a concept with such precision and depth, that the way one had previously thought about that particular concept is completely twisted on the surface to the point of reversal, and one is often left thinking, “Why did I never notice that?”—viewing the world from a new perspective. Žižek is a complex madman, so this video, horrible lighting included, can only at best serve as a glimpse, but can any one of us wish for anything more than that?
Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University
Thanks to Gaetan Lee for permission to use this Photo.
Renowned as one of the most gifted, original, and charismatic thinkers in the world; V.S. Ramachandran is a neurologist with an almost preternatural understanding of the brain’s deepest mechanisms and the nature of consciousness.
Ramachandran’s insights into such facinating enigmas as phantom limb syndrome, synesthesia, and capgras delusion continue to both inspire and puzzle the psycho-scientific community, while his entertaining presentations always promise to dazzle even the most cynical of audiences. Check out the following video from the TED conference. Lose your mind.
Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University
Most famous for his radical theories on language learning and evolutionary psychology, Steven Pinker is a thinker with a vision that tends to provoke strong emotional responses in anyone who will listen. The reason may be rather simple. Pinker analyzes human intelligence from a zero sum perspective in which he meticulously deconstructs the foundations of what’s been established as scientific fact. The following video presentation was made at Google Headquarters. The Google geniuses always seem to bring in other geniuses to make the room smarter. Afterwards, please share your thoughts with the Ashworth Psychology community. Click on the image above to watch this video. It’s good.
Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University Psychology Program
Even today, tuberculosis remains a fearsome disease with an uncertain outcome. How much more frightening must it have seemed in 1892 after an epidemic of tuberculosis struck the Rhode Island town of Exeter? Despite the fact that the deaths were limited to a single family, the possibility of it spreading seemed very real to the people of the region. Following the deaths of Mary Eliza Brown and her daughter, Mary Olive in 1883, the two surviving children seemed to be spared for a time. When Mercy Lena Brown suddenly died in January, 1892 and her brother Edwin began to sicken as well, the patriarch of the family, George T. Brown, became desperate for any solution to save his only surviving child. True treatment for tuberculosis would not be available for decades and all that he had to rely upon were the folk remedies that his neighbours suggested.
History does not record who first proposed exhuming the deceased members of the family and burning the heart of the relative that seemed most likely to be responsible for the deaths. The word “vampire” was never actually used in this case but the rural residents of the area had a longstanding tradition of burning the heart of those deemed to have died an “unnatural” death to cure unexplained illness. Since Mercy Brown was only recently deceased and her body was still well-preserved by the cold weather, she was judged to be the guilty party by virtue of the liquid blood that was still in her heart. Although the medical examiner in attendance, Dr. Harold Metcalf, insisted that there was nothing remarkable about Mercy’s condition, her heart was removed and burned on a nearby rock. The ashes were then saved and placed in water for her brother Edwin to drink (his reaction to this “remedy” is not recorded). Sadly, Edwin still died some time later although the epidemic ended with him. Local tradition still holds that Mercy’s exhumation and the disposal of her heart still “took care of the problem” and laid her spirit to rest.
Folklore surrounding vampires varies from region to region but there are still some common elements to be found in many cultures. While legends of undead creatures that feed on the living seem fantastic by modern standards, hysteria surrounding supposed vampire attacks can still occur today. (more…)
Thanks to Curtis Perry for permission to use this Photo.
Since at least the 1930s, mental health professionals in the city of Jerusalem have attested to the existence of a peculiar syndrome affecting some first-time visitors. Referred to as the Jerusalem syndrome, it is described as an intense religious psychosis characterized by delusions, obsessive ideas, or other psychotic symptoms that can affect first-time visitors to the city and can quickly resolve in a matter of weeks. There is a suggested typology of Jerusalem syndrome episodes based on whether there is a preexisting psychiatric history or idiosyncratic ideation involved.
Case histories that have been reported include one individual, who was observed to be dressed in a white tunic and wearing a gilded crown on his head welcomes tourists and pilgrims on their way to the Wailing Wall and proclaiming himself as King David. Being the psalmist, he held a lyre and sang psalms accompanied by occasional preaching. Another case involved a self-proclaimed “messiah” who was observed to guard the entry to Jerusalem and calling on all sinners to repent as he claimed the doomsday is near. Another individual referred to himself as “Samson” and attempted to move the giant stones of the Wailing Wall “to the right place”. After fighting down policemen who tried to interfere, “Samson” was taken to the Kfar Shaul Psychiatric Hospital in Jerusalem where he was treated and later released. (more…)
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