Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiments

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Dear Student,
Hi and thank you for using BrainMass. The solution below should get you started. In this particular task, you are being asked a few questions. The idea is for you to reflect on each question, provide your views comprehensively and concisely. The most straightforward way is to answer each directly. You need to open your current class materials to check for certain concepts and ideas raised - you need to include them to show your professor that you have done your reviews. You can use the listed resources to further explore the topic. Good luck with your studies.

Sincerely,
AE 105878/Xenia Jones
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Creative & Critical Thinking Q&A

1 Have you ever changed a strongly held attitude? What caused the change for you?

Yes. I have a series of strongly held beliefs, ideas and perspectives that I have formed or have been instilled in me growing up where I was, being a member of my family, through going to school and meeting people who also shared my views, from my travels and experience - especially lessons learned. I can say that my strongly held opinions are or were due to my socialization. One of these is my idea about religion. I grew up in a household were my parents taught me that religion is not necessary - drives people to madness and creates conflict as religions like Christianity and Islam have, for over the centuries flooded the world with blood - from the time of the Crusades to the radicalism that drove terrorist activities. I always taught that people of faith are blind, one sided and ever judgemental until I met an exchange student from Thailand. He was one of the most tolerant people I know - there was no sense of judgement in his beliefs, no labelling of 'bad people' in that Buddhism appears to be a philosophy - to reach a sense of inner peace, one has to study how one thinks, how we perceive the world. Buddhists strive to be mentally healthy, do away with destructive yearning for the material and the construction of emotions that are destructive to the mind. It perfectly aligns itself with my study of psychology were I came to the conclusion that our fears, our happiness, our limitations - they are all in the mind. Now I know that not all religions are destructive, and I find myself reading the work of the Dalai Lama or Confucius - not because I am a Buddhist, but because they have fantastic views with regards to finding a sense of self in a destructive and confusing world.

2 Do you believe that you are free of prejudice? Which of the many factors that cause prejudice do you think is most important to change?

I do not think I am completely free of prejudice. I don't believe that anyone is. People say - I am not biased, I don't discriminate. But we do - although unintentionally. Our culture, our personalities, the way we are designed as human beings - we are hard-wired to view things a certain way, to like things a certain way. For example, ...