Harlow's Monkey Studies - wired v. cloth mother

Manor House (Edwardian Britain)

Couldn't find episode 1 but read description here

It's a version of the Stanford Prison Experiment but in the context of an Edwardian Country House during the turn of the 20th century (1905), in which volunteers talk on the role of Master and Slave or slightly more euphemistically, servants. 


" Help me O' Lord, to obey all things lawful of those in authority over me. Grant that I may be respectful, painstaking and honest. Not answering again but with good will doing my work as to the Lord and not to men. May the Lord make our servants dutiful."





Video diaries here

Primates and Sign Language

Koko, Kanzi, Washoe, Nim Chimpsky

Nicaraguan Sign Language

Philosophie et vérité (1965) - Badiou, Canguilhem, Dreyfus, Foucault, Hypolite, Ricoeur

The Boy with No Penis

This case is referenced in the debate on history v. nature. Twins; but during the circumcision procedure, as infants, one lost his penis. The doctors decide to raise him as a girl - this is the documentary.

Inverting the "other"

African ethnologist in Germany

Strangers Abroad - Everything is relatives: William Halse Rivers (1864-1922)

"William Rivers, trained as a doctor, administered psychological tests to the islanders of the Torres Straits north of Australia and discovered the importance of relatives in their society. His work as a psychologist and medical researcher enabled him to bring something new to anthropology: a scientific approach. His field study with a hill tribe in southern India, the Todas, ultimately set the trend for anthropologists to go and visit the cultures in which they were interested, rather than staying at home and theorizing.

In the 1980s, Bruce Dakowski and Andre Singer collaborated on a series of video documentary portraits intended to introduce six founders of "social anthropology." The project was sponsored and supported by the Royal Anthropological Institute. The six selected "pioneers" were Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer (1860-1929), William Rivers (1864-1922), Franz Boas (1858-1942), Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973), and Margaret Mead (1901-1978)."

Heaven's Gate initiation

A Class-Divided (1985)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html

Genie: Secret of the Wild Child

An important case study that would provide an opportunity for psychologists and linguists to test the 'Critical period hypothesis' and Chomsky's 'Universal Grammar'. The question was: could Genie learn language? A contemporary parallel to France's 'Victor' from L'enfant Sauvage. Except, the important lesson doesn't come in the form of insight into language but the failure of these scientists within the system of funding.

In other ways, I think, the case of Genie can provide some additional insight for questions regarding embodiment.

John B. Watson, Behaviourism and "Little Albert"

Classical conditioning was demonstrated by Pavlov in dogs. Watson sought to do the same with babies in the early 1920s by creating a fear response in furry animals through the association with a loud clanging noise.



More here  and here

There has been much controversy over the ethics of this study and, if my memory serves correctly - which it may not, Watson later came back and stated that he was able to de-condition the fear response he created but to my knowledge there was no evidence to support that he did.

Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment 



"the Zimbardo study sheds the harshest light of perhaps any research ever done on the nature of power and its pervasive corruptive powers.

From the standpoint of the guards, the pathology of power led them to exert an “unprecedented degree of control” that was “self-aggrandising” and “self-perpetuating.”  Prisoners in the real world want to wrest back some of this control by any means necessary, and so when released, they “will take action to establish and assert a sense of power.”

While in prison, though, the loss of personal identity and control led  the prisoners to adopt the pathological prisoner syndrome a reaction that took several forms of coping strategies.  They went through stages from disbelief to rebellion; when these didn’t work, they tried to work the system (the “grievance committee”). When those efforts to gain control failed, it was every man for himself as each tried to find ways to preserve their own self-interests and identity. For some, this meant further rebellion and for others it meant becoming excessively obedient, even to the point of siding with the guards against intransigent prisoners.

Zimbardo and his co-authors hoped that the emotional and human price of the study  would provide a model for improvements in the penal system as a whole.  You might not agree with his conclusion, but it’s a thought-provoking one, so I’ll offer it here: “… since prisoners and guards are locked into a dynamic, symbiotic relationship which is destructive to their human nature, guards are also society’s prisoners.” "

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fulfillment-any-age/201307/the-rarely-told-true-story-zimbardo-s-prison-experiment


Zimbardo also wrote a book called 'The Lucifer Effect', which focused on why good people do bad things. The book is based on his famous Stanford Prison Experiment and his experience as an expert witness in the Abu Ghraib trial against an "all-american" prison guard.

Bandura's Bobo doll study (1961)

'Psychology of Evil'

Why do good people do bad things?



The Stanford Prison Experiment

Franz Boas - The Shackles of a Tradition