Most of us adhere to the social contract and basic ethical commandments on a daily basis. However, despite these rules, it is possible to violate social norms and moral guidelines and harm others. We are usually also protected from this by threats of possible punishment. What happens if we let people do whatever they want without the threat of punishment? Many experiments have a lot to say about this.
Many factors protect us from harming each other - upbringing, moral authority, ethical guidelines, laws and possible official and unofficial sanctions that follow in the event of disobeying the other. But what happens if we let people do whatever they want without the threat of punishment? This is evidenced by the experiments below.
Marina Abramović's experiment
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In 1974, the renowned contemporary artist Marina Abramović performed performance in Naples, where she let all visitors do whatever they wanted with her. Nothing was off limits, including violence. On the table next to her were 72 items and an instruction that they could use them in any way they wanted. At first, the visitors were kind to her - they gave her flowers and hugged her. Later, they started to cut and undress her. Towards the end of the performance, someone even pointed a loaded gun at her, which ended with a fight among the visitors.
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The Stanford Experiment
Professor Zimbardo found out at the renowned Stanford University in August 1971 an experiment with his students. He divided the volunteers into two groups - guards and prisoners. The students, who otherwise belonged to the elite educated class of Americans, incredibly quickly assumed the assigned role and behaved accordingly. This means that the guards tortured the prisoners to a great extent. This was largely a product of the context, which realistically mimicked a prison situation. The experiment was stopped after six days. A movie was also made after this event, and Lars von Trier's Dogville is also about a similar phenomenon.
The Robbers Cave Experiment
In 1954, the Sherif couple took it out an experiment with American elementary school students. The children went to summer camp in Robbers Cave National Park. Before that, the psychologists divided them into two groups that did not know each other. In the first phase, the children had time to get to know each other within their group, and in the second phase, the two groups had to compete with each other for a prize. Due to the limited resources (i.e. the reward), animosity between the members of the two groups was established incredibly quickly, which went so far that some could not bear to even be in the same room as a member of the other group. In the third phase, the two groups resolved the conflict through a joint task that required cooperation.
