Behavioral Psychology

While reading Fish, I began to see a pattern, I am learning right now in my Ap psychology class. It has to do with Jane Elliot’s classroom experiment “A Class Divided”. The main idea of this experiment was concluded to be, that we begin to adapt and take the role we are put in. For example in this book the prison guards, loose sense of humanity and treat the prisoners extremely bad. They leave aside all their principles and values, because they feel it is their role to act that way. You begin to believe, what you are told. This is experimentally tested with Stanleys Stanford Prison experiment. The experiment had to last at least a week and after two days the experiment had to be called of, because the people were taking their roles too seriously.

Throughout the book there are many examples, one is when the stepmom thinks she is responsible for the children. She beats them up, because she feels it’s her duty. The stepmom adapts to the situation and forgets she is not the mom, she has no reason to hit them. The narrator says, “My momma says she don’t want some old broad hitting me! She said she’s my momma, and if there’s any spanking to be done, shell do it- NOT YOU.”

In jail usually guards become very aggressive and offensive, because they feel superior. This superiority takes them to behave inappropriately, because no matter the crime we are all human beings and deserve to be treated with respect. Many guards turn out to be this way because of the environment they live in, and they justify their behavior with the phrase, “It’s my job.” In Fish we can see how the guards treat the narrator and the rest of the criminals. “Ok, maggots, let’s go.” There is no need to call them maggots, yet since the guard has lost sense of reality he finds nothing wrong with this, he comes to believe they deserve to be called maggots. The criminals, being treated in such manner begin to think themselves as useless garbage, therefore expecting this treatment, which after a while becomes normal to them, making the believe they don’t deserve any better. In Fish the narrator says, “I flinched, half expecting him to hit me.” He thinks he is going to get hit, because of the guard’s attitude towards him, and how the guard makes him feel.

Another great example is when they are playing Barnaby West, it all started as a game but since humans forget it is just a game, they took it to seriously and instead of becoming a game they were really hurting others. They came to believe it was their duty to torture the scouts. This key phrase sums up everything, “The older cousins like being the Indians, but we had to stop playing because they started taking the game too seriously.” This is also proven by many other psychologists’ experiments like the Stanley Milgram experiment, and the Stanford Prison experiment among many others.

Therefore, humans adapt to the role they are put in. The role you are given becomes who you are without taking into account other factors. Humans will do anything to excel and fulfill their role. Sometimes covering up reality, and not making us realize the truth of the matter. Also superiority is not handled well, and minorities are suppressed inhumanly: with no reason.