What's the new status on Egypt? Where does the U.S stand?
After watching a 60 minutes special tonight on television, I learned some useful information on how the Egypt revolution got started, what is happening now, and what will happen in the future. Wael Ghonim is a Google executive in Egypt that is responsible for the beginning of this history-changing revolution. Using social media: facebook, twitter, etc. he was able to spur an entire country into Tahir square to rebel against an oppresive regime of Mubarak. He told 60 minutes that the entire thing started with a campaign of rebellion caused by the death of man who was beaten by the police. Ghonim started a facebook page that united Egypt against the government, and from there, told his followers to meet in Tahir Square.
Now, 18 days later, Mubarak has resigned and a new military government has taken power in Egypt with the promise of demeocracy in the days to come. The people of Egypt are happy, and thankful for the United States' influence on Mubarak resigning, however, during the interview Ghonim stated "we are thankful for the US and Obama's influence, but you have done your work, and now you should get out." The Egyptians want to finally be independent of outer influences. Consequently, today there was an uprising in Yemen very similar to the one in Egypt. The protesters chanted "First Mubarak, now Ali." When asked how other middle-eastern autocrats or dictators should feel about the Eyptian revolution, Ghonim replied "You should be very afraid." As such, Ali is probably in a panic over Yemen as the people of the middle-east revolt against their oppressive regimes.
This week in class:
A) This week we studied Ethics and Social Psychology through the examination of famous social experiments such as The Milgram Experience, The Asch Experiement and the Standford Prison Experiment. Though very different, all the experiments target the reactions of human nature in challenging situations. The Milgram Experiment, conducted in 1961-1962 at Yale by Stanley Milgram, tested the effect of power of authority in a ethical demanding situation. Two subjects are taken into a room, the "teacher" is the person being experimented on and the "student" is a fixed person. The experimenter takes the student and teacher into two sepearte rooms, and sets up an electrical circuit that shocks the learner when a switch is pressed by the teacher. The teacher is instructed by the experimenter to shock the learner every time they get a wrong answer, and the shock level moves up every time. The learner purposely gets answers wrong to test the largest shock the teacher will administer them, even when they hear signs of discomfort from the learner. The experiment showed that many teachers moved on because of the power of authority over the experimenter, and the reason was because they didn't think they were responsible for the harm of the learner. As long as the responsibility was put elsewhere, many people did not think about the harm to the learner.
B) The Second Experiement we studied was the Solomon Asch experiment, a study of conformity. Similar to the Milgram Experiement, the Asch experiment tested the ability of a subject to stand by and assume responsibility for their answer, even if everyone else says a different answer that the subject knows is wrong. Basically, these experiments show that in social physcology it is human nature to not assume responsibility even though it is the ethical thing to do. Both experiements also tested with a partner, and with a partner the results drastically changed in favor of ethics. With even one person agreeing with the subject in the ethical choice, the subject could follow through on the ethical choice with ease. Humans are conformists and don't like taking full responsibility, that is the biggest problem with ethics and human nature today.
C) Applying the revolution in Egypt to these experiements easily compares. Ghonim stated in the 60 minutes interview that the whole reason the revolution started was because people realized on social networking that there were other people who wanted the same thing. Once the fear was broken, that there were too many people for most to be held responbile, and the power of conformity came into play, Tahir Square filled up.
Question for next week:
Follow the story of Yemen's protest. Are there any other protests in the Middle East as well that are sparked from Egypt?
Sources:
60 minutes, television ABC
Blass, Thomas. "The Man Who Shocked The World | Psychology Today." Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness Find a Therapist. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200203/the-man-who-shocked-the-world
"Solomon Asch, Opinions and Social Pressure (1955)." Panarchy.org : Index. Web. 13 Feb. 2011. <http://www.panarchy.org/asch/social.pressure.1955.html>.
No comments:
Post a Comment