Only takes a spark..

It's that time again, when I start to get really bored of the look of my blog. But since I don't have time to do anything yet, I just have to endure. Haha. And apparently, my blog is getting known by more and more people. Actually, I kinda expected it to happen, but oh well.

Btw, it's spring!!! I want to have a picnic. Someone go plan.

So anyhow, we watched the Stanford's Prison Experiment today in Criminology. We studied it in psych, but the video was way cooler. Go read up on it here. Though I have many thoughts on it, one really stood out today. The participants, even the psychologist in charge, had all lost their individuality and were mixing their roles with reality. But with all that aside, the experiment started to become very unethical with the 'prisoners' suffering quite a bit, especially mentally. And the experiment would have continued for the full 2 weeks, if not for that one psychology graduate.

Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. After being confronted by Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating,^[2] and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days.^[3]

(Just to let you know, follow ups have shown that all participants are doing fine)

As such the video reminded me again on how just one person can make the difference. I cannot imagine what would happen to the participants who were prisoners if nothing was done, all the psychological trauma they would have received.

But yeah, I guess this really challenges me; to not like leave things to someone else to do (considering someone else will really do it) but to really rise up when the occasion calls for it. Especially in this day and age when there is so much to be done, but no one ever wants to take that first step. Yeah.