Jane Elliot's Experiment

This is also shown in an experiment done by an elementary school teacher, called “The Brown Eyed-Blue Eyed Experiment. In this experiment, students were told by a teacher that students with blue eyes were better/smarter. When the teacher gave them a test the students with blue eyes performed much better. The next day, the teacher told the brown eyed students they were better/smarter. When they took the test they performed better than the students with blue eyes.

Their rights to do things, such as play on playground equipment and get second helpings of food at lunch were taken away, and they were informed that they had to drink out of the water fountain with a paper cup. Elliot told the brown-eyed children that they were cleaner and more intelligent than blue-eyed children as well as encouraged them to cause physical harm to and belittle the others.2 This led to brown-eyed students ganging up on the children with blue eyes and beating them up, degrading them, and making comments that were conforming to the stereotypes that Elliot enforced on the children. The next day, Elliot switched the roles in the experiment and made the children with brown eyes inferior. After the experiment, children were 2 Bloom, S. G. (2022, BLUE EYES, BROWN EYES: On Race and Jane Elliott's Famous Experiment on Prejudice.

In the novel, Their Eyes were watching God, Zora Neal Hurston drew attention to a controversial topic in the identification of biracial people. Growing up, Janie lived with her grandma and grew up with the Washburns children. She supposes she is white like them until she sees a photograph and understands that she is black. “So when we looked at depicture and everybody got pointed out there and there wasn’t nobody left but a real dark girl with real long hair standing beside Eleanor. Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark girl as me …

Identity speaks of who we are as individuals but it also comes from two different groups: social and cultural. These groups are connected to power, values and ideology. Social identities are related to how we interact with people and how we present ourselves. Meanwhile cultural identities relate to society in whole such as religion, values, etc. In this paper I will talk about the dominant and subordinate identities.

The documentary titled, “ A Class Divided” introduces us to the experiment made in an elementary school in Iowa by the schoolteacher named Jane Elliot. The documentary begins with Mrs. Elliot reuniting with the students who she did this experiment with the first time. The students are much older now, and they willingly want to watch the experiment that they were part of when they were elementary kids. The experiment was done days after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Mrs. Elliot has always thought about doing the eye color experiment, but she was never sure of when to do it. She asked her third grade student if it would be interesting to see what would happen if they were judged by their eye color.

While reading both the Tressie McMillan’s essay “The Logic of Stupid Poor People” and Scott Russell Sanders essay “The Men we Carry in our Mind”, I thought about the social identity (us-them) theory which states that we have all divided the world into an "us" and a "them"; a root for all stereotyping and prejudice present throughout society. The "us" is one's view of an in-group and the "them" are the out-group. When we split society into these two organizations, the in-group begins to discriminate against the out-group leading, inherently, to stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. This is clearly present throughout the two essays in that McMillan was taught that she was part of “them” and in order for her and her family to be more accepted

Some vital end results of social identity and self categorization include stereotyping, prejudice and conflict (Tajfe & Turner, 2004). That is, as the identity groups engage in in-group, the out-group members are likely to be discriminated. The formation of sub-groups (“us” versus “them”) within an organization due to demographics diversity may pose

The identity a person holds is one of the most important aspects of their lives. Identity is what distinguishes people from others, although it leaves a negative stereotype upon people. In the short story Identities by W.D Valgardson, a middle-aged wealthy man finds himself lost in a rough neighborhood while attempting to look for something new. The author employs many elements in the story, some of the more important ones being stereotype and foreshadow. For many people, their personal identity is stereotyped by society.

Introduction Social identification is a very important source of both one’s pride and self-esteem. Because groups give us a sense of social identity and belongingness to the social world, intergroup relations have a huge impact on the actions we engage ourselves in. “We are not born with senses of self. Rather, self arises from interaction with others” (Griffin, 2012). In this paper I will first give a summary of Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory.

Introduction The concept of identity has been a notion of significant interest not just to sociologists and psychologists, but also to individuals found in a social context of perpetually trying to define themselves. Often times, identities are given to individuals based on their social status within a certain community, after the assessment of predominant characteristics that said individual has. However, within the context of an ethnicity, the concept identity is most probably applied to all members of the ethnical group, and not just one individual. When there is one identity designated for the entire group, often times the factor of “individuality” loses its significance, especially when referring to the relationship between the ethnic

Identity is something people tend to think of as consistent, however that is far from the case. The Oxford English dictionary states that the definition of identity is “ The characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is.” The allegorical novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding tackles the issue of identity while following young boys from the ages twelve and down as they struggle with remembering their identities when trapped on a deserted island. Identity is affected by the influence of society and how individuals influence society based on their identities. By looking at Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the Stanford Prison Experiment, and Sigmund Freud 's philosophical ideas, it becomes clear that identity is affected by society through peer pressure and social normalities.

Social Identity theory can also be applied in the library scene. People around Andrew did not pay attention to him until the librarian brought him the AID book, which signal to those around him that he had AIDS. People immediately perceived him differently and changed their attitude toward him, which ended with most of them

By shaming the blue-eyed people the brown-eyed people feel a sense of power and superiority. The group quickly was able to establish racism and act as though it had been there of

Each individual has their own different social identity. One’s social identity is constructed based on the different influences around them. The development of social identity is influenced by various factors such as the historical, cultural and religious beliefs of the society, community or family where one is brought up. It is influenced by the behaviours and attitudes of authority figures such as parents, teachers and community leaders around them, it is also influenced by external factors such as the media, one’s peers and the overall exposure one has (Carrim, 2006, p56).

However, Judy had to divide the children into categories to be able to see if the videos had any affect on the children. Therefore, the first category watched best selling learning DVDs many times every week. Some of the children in this group would watch these DVDs with their parents and the other half of the children would watch these DVDs alone. In addition, half of the parents who watched the videos with their kids made interactions during the video that the experimenter gave the parents to make sure the parents were saying and doing the correct things during the video. This group had to keep daily logs to make sure they were doing it properly.