Famous Social Psychology Experiments

A good overview of the major social psychology experiments that have played a significant role in the development of this field of study. 

Experimenter	Topic	Major Findings
LaPiere	Attitudes	Attitudes don’t always predict behavior: establishments that served a Chinese couple later reported they would refuse such a couple service.
Festinger and Carlsmith	Cognitive Dissonance	Changing one’s behavior can lead to a change in attitudes; people who describe a boring task as interesting for $1 in compensation later reported liking the task more than people who were paid $20.
Rosenthal and Jacobson	Self-fulfilling prophecy	One person’s attitudes can elicit a change in another person’s behavior; teachers’ positive expectations led to increases in students’ IQ scores.
Sherif	Superordinate Goals	Intergroup prejudice can be reduced through working toward superordinate goals; campers unfriendly, competing groups came to have more positive feelings about one another after working together to solve several camp-wide problems.
Darley and Latane	Bystander Effect	The more people that witness an emergency, the less likely any one person is to help; in one study, college students who thought they were the only person to overhear a peer have a seizure were more likely to help than students who thought others heard the seizure, too.
Asch	Conformity	People are loathe to contradict the opinions of a group; 70% of people reported at least one obviously incorrect answer.
Milgram	Obedience	People tend to obey authority figures; 60% of participants thought they delivered the maximum possible level of shock.
Zimbardo	Roles, deindividuation	Roles are powerful and can lead to deindividuation; college students role-playing prisoners and guards acted in surprisingly negative and hostile ways.

Taken from Barron's AP Psychology