Social control and conformity. Part 2.

Part 2 on trying to understand why people do the things they do. Please read part one first. Much more recent.

The Third Wave

The third wave was a creative and ingenious idea from a school teacher, who wanted to help his high school class understand how average German citizens could have gone along with the holocaust.

http://www.ronjoneswriter.com/wave.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave

Remember that after just 4 days these kids were getting out of control. You really have to read the experiment to believe it. I also understand that they have tried this on much younger children as well. These kids were forming groups, doing their own version of the hail Hitler sign (third wave), they were ratting each other out, and expelling other students who did not want to go along with the experiment. It really does not take long, or take much.

[quote]The experiment took on a life of its own, with students from all over the school joining in: on the third day the class expanded from initial 30 students to 43 attendees. All of the students showed drastic improvement in their academic skills and tremendous motivation. All of the students were issued a member card and each of them received a special assignment (like designing a Third Wave Banner, stopping non-members from entering the class, etc). Jones instructed the students on how to initiate new members, and by the end of the day the movement had over 200 participants.[3] At this point first Jones was surprised that some of the students started reporting to him other members of the movement who failed to abide by the rules.[3]

On Thursday, the fourth day of the experiment, Jones decided to terminate the movement because it was slipping out of his control.[/quote]

This was middle class America in the 70's I believe, hard to believe, that these kids could be conformed so easily, but there it was.

[b]Give people a common goal, agenda, some unity, a common enemy, throw in just a little power and watch them go at it, and it does not take long. [/b]

Next time, the Stanford Prison Experiment. Same game different setting.