Zimbardo's Prisoner Study

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Ms. Britt: Something they teach you in psychology is the power of suggestion. They demonstrate this by telling you about things like the placebo effect, or Zimbardo's prisoner study, or an experiment involving three classes: A, B, and C. What they'll tell you in psychology is that classes A, B, and C are all made up of mediocre students. They're nothing special, but they're not flunking, either. What the people who run the experiment do is they take three teachers as alike as they can find for classes A, B, and C. The teacher for class A is told that the students are high achievers (remember that all the students are considered average). The teacher of class B is told that the students are average, and the teacher of class C is told that the students are failures. Do you see where I'm going with this? All three classes were taught and tested on the same material. Class A, the one with the teacher who believed them to be exceptional students, consistently scored the highest of all three classes. Class B scored averagely, not good, not bad, and class C, interestingly enough, did not just poorly, but abysmally. I did mention that all the classes were average, right? And taught the same material? And that the only variable is what the teacher thought of them? Because if I didn't, I'm thinking now would be a good time…show more content…
Britt, after pretty much a whole lifetime of being told I'm not good enough by people who are important to me; I can't prove anyone else wrong. I don't have that kind of energy. I'll fight my dad on it, and I'll fight my best friend on it, Ms. Britt, but I won't fight you. I'm trying to accept that your opinion of me doesn't matter. I'm trying to believe that I not walking across the stage because I got in trouble or something, even though I know deep down that's not why. I'm trying to think that you thought you were doing the best thing, and that my networking teacher was right when he turned around and said, "You're not a failure,

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