The Stanford Prison Experiment: Can Normal People Behaving Evil?

From the video provided this week and doing some personal reading, the phenomenon behind the Stanford prison experiment was a social psychology experiment, this was a prison environment simulation that was supposed to last 2 weeks. The goal was to observe the effects of variables on participants' reactions and behaviors, this experiment was designed to determine if prison brutality is a result of malicious guards and evil prisoners, or whether institutional roles of guards and prisoners embitter and harden even compassionate individuals. Zimbardo wanted to put good people in an evil place and see what would happen. As the Social Psychology textbook says “Do the people make the place violent, or does the place make the people violent? Cristina

Second, The Stanford Prison Experiment was a psychological study that was too inhumane to continue because of the behavior of the prison guards when handed with superiority and the mental breakdowns of the prisoners. E: “Now, you 'll all be given sunglasses and uniforms to give the prisoners a sense of a unified, singular authority… And from this point forward you should never refer to this as a study or experiment again,’’ (Dr. Phil Zimbardo).

I found the Stanford Prison experiment to be very disturbing, especially in the context of the recent events involving police misconduct and brutality. I think the Stanford experiment demonstrates that people in positions of power that abuse that power are not necessarily predestined to abuse the power, but the position that they are in can encourage it. For example, nearly all police officers are required to go through an intense background and psychological exams to becomes police officers. However, as recent and past events have shown, police misconduct is a major issue. I think that this evidence demonstrates the need for more continuing education and monitoring to ensure that those who experience high stress situations (without proper

Even though there are people willing to risk it all to go back to the life they had, there are some that become submissive and stop fighting. In Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Stanford phycology department. They recruited college students to run a mock prison so they could study the effect of becoming a prisoner and a prison guard. In this experiment that was supposed to run for two weeks ended up being stopped by the researchers on the six day because it was getting out of control. This is stated by the heads of the experiment Philip Zimbardo, Craig Haney, W. Curtis Banks, and David Jaffe in their report of the experiment.

Stanford Prison Study: The Stanford prison study was created by Philip Zimbardo who wanted to know what happens if you put good people into bad situations. He created an experiment in which individuals were given a role as a prisoner or a guard. They were then placed in a mock prison and instructed to play their roles for two weeks. As the individuals accepted the roles more and more they started to lose reality. Prisoners started going crazy because they were being treated so terribly by the guards.

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo set out to conduct an experiment to observe behavior as well as obedience. In Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment, many dispute whether it was obedience or merely conforming to their predesigned social roles of guards and prisoners that transpired throughout the experiment. Initially, the experiment was meant to test the roles people play in prison environment; Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards, disposition, or had more to do with the prison environment. This phenomenon has been arguably known to possibly influencing the catastrophic similarities which occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.The

He started to behave in a way that was cruel and far harsher than the rest of the guards and at the end of the experiment claimed it was because he was conducting his own experiment to see how far they would let him go until they retaliated. The way he behaved portrayed that, even though he might not have come into the experiment with the intention to release that behavior from within, but his actions became a roll that he took too far. A sociocultural component shown in the film were the ways that the volunteer guards interpreted the stigmas around being a prison guard. That they should be cold, strict, and unnervingly verbally abusive. Time upon time in the film, the volunteer guards were verbally abusive of their power with the prisoners.

The guards were instructed to maintain order anyway they wanted without using physical violence. Zimbardo wanted the guards to seem intimidating while the prisoners were made to look inferior and were to be referred to with their ID number only. After the prisoners were assigned their roles and the guards took their post was the effect of the experiment finally setting in. On the morning of the second day the prisoners began to rebel against the guards by ripping off their ID numbers and barring the doors while taunting the guards. This event was the first step down the slippery slope that would follow.

On day six Zimbardo and Milgram decided to conclude the experiment. Zimbardo originally intended to explore how prisoners adapt to powerlessness, but he has contended that the experiment demonstrates how swiftly arbitrary assignment of power can lead to abuse. (Maher, The anatomy of obedience. P. 408) Once the experiment was completed Zimbardo and Milgram concluded that generally people will conform to the roles they are told to play.

Two ‘prisoners’ had to be removed early from the experiment and several were emotionally distressed. However, it does show the power of situation on people’s behavior and decision-making. The people chosen for the experiment were regular students. They were assigned to their roles randomly – the prisoners had not done anything ‘wrong’ and the guards had not earned their position of authority.

In the article of “The Perils of Obedience”, written by Stanley Milgram, the experimenter explains that the experiment is to see how far a person could hurt a victim in a situation where he is ordered to do so. Also, in the article “The Stanford Prison

Conformity occurs when individuals lose their personal identity and become more focused on fulfilling their assigned roles. In this state, individuals may be more likely to engage in behaviors that they would not typically exhibit as individuals. The "good" guards might have been influenced by the role of a guard, adopting the behaviors and attitudes associated with that role, including following the orders of the tough or bad guards. The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted over a relatively short period of time (six days) and ended abruptly due to ethical concerns when the guards saw each other in civilian clothes again and witnessed the reconversion of the prison setting to a regular hallway, they might have experienced a sense of relief and disorientation. They would likely realize that the intense power dynamics and the authority they held during the experiment were no longer applicable.

Stanford Experiment: Unethical or Not Stanford Prison Experiment is a popular experiment among social science researchers. In 1973, a psychologist named Dr. Philip Zimbardo wants to find out what are the factors that cause reported brutalities among guards in American prisons. His aim was to know whether those reported brutalities were because of the personalities of the guards or the prison environment. However, during the experiment, things get muddled unexpectedly. The experiment became controversial since it violates some ethical standards while doing the research.

Zimbardo’s “Stanford Prison Experiment” was an experiment that turned into more of a catastrophe for all parties involved. It started out as an experiment to observe whether brutality in prison was due to the guards' predisposition and their “sadistic” personalities or if it was due to the general environment of the prison (Mcleod). Both the guards and the prisoners assumed their roles very quickly and behaved according to their role. It did not take long for the rules of the experiment (no physical abuse) to be broken. It was clear that this power and role of authority went to the guards’ heads and the prisoners adapted to a helpless obedient role.

The second aspect that should be highlighted from the author’s hypothesis is that guards themselves, the authority was in a specific mind-set which comes with the role, and most significantly the uniform which played a major role. This enabled them, psychology to commit the negative acts against the prisoners in the experiment. What reinforces this idea the uniforms enabled this is the experiment encouraged negative as well as positive engagement with the prisoners. However most of those involved in the guard roles engaged almost entirely in negative behavior.