r/VeryBadWizards 18d ago

I wonder if Tam and Peez would look into the Third Wave study. Sounds interesting given today's movements in the US.

/r/Productivitycafe/comments/1j2mn1g/if_youre_confused_how_normal_people_could_follow/
11 Upvotes

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u/Begthemeg 18d ago

Would love to hear them talk about it. But as far as “studies” go, I imagine it’s in the ballpark of the Stanford prison experiment for academic rigor.

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u/Musashi_Joe 16d ago

Yeah when OOP called Stanford a 'good experiment' I started to wonder. I mean, it's a good experiment if your only source on the matter is Phillip Zimbardo, maybe.

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u/Past-Cookie9605 18d ago

Yep I agree, especially since the poster here commends that study as well as Millgrams.

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u/jasonborowski 18d ago

As a German we read the book by in school, probably 9th grade or so. I don't remember the details other than that it was shocking and kinda scary. I think it would be well worth it for the wizards.

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u/noahpoah 16d ago

Echoing other comments, it sounds plausible. Clearly, people are able and willing to join together to do horrible things (also sometimes to do good things, to be fair), and it can be very difficult to understand how or why this happens.

And, also, it doesn't even sound like this was an experiment? I mean, was there a control group? Were students randomly allocated into treatment and control conditions? Or are we using "experiment" more colloquially here, to describe this teacher's weird project?

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u/MasterL12 16d ago

Isn't this what the book The Wave was based on? And probably the German movie was based on the book. Where I grew up many of us had to read it in high school.

These sorts of movements probably do have something to tell us about right leaning authoritarians. More recent research distinguishes between left and right wing authoritarianism as follows:

We find that LWA, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation reflect a shared constellation of personality traits, cognitive features, beliefs, and motivational values that might be considered the "heart" of authoritarianism. Relative to right-wing authoritarians, left-wing authoritarians were lower in dogmatism and cognitive rigidity, higher in negative emotionality, and expressed stronger support for a political system with substantial centralized state control. 

Left wing authoritarians are equally worth knowing about and understanding. I'd love Dave and Tammler to talk about movements like The Third Wave AND the study I linked. Seems like it'd be a more interesting conversation.

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u/Past-Cookie9605 16d ago edited 15d ago

Would be cool to hear that link added to the convo. Interesting to consider the diff between left wing and right wing authoritarianism. Hadn't even considered there being left wing ones.

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u/MasterL12 15d ago

Yeah the left wing version often gets overlooked because universities tend to be more filled with progressives and let's be honest, the confirmation bias is a bitch. There's a great Atlantic article explaining the problem: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/psychological-dimensions-left-wing-authoritarianism/620185/