Critical View Into Philip Zimbardo 's ' Stanford Prison Experiment '

Dr Philip Zimbardo created the Stanford prison experiment in 1971, the aim of this experiment was to find out the psychological effects of prison life, and to what extent can moral people be seduced to act immorally. The study consisted of 24 students selected out of 75, the roles of these 24 men were randomly assigned, 12 to play prison guards and 12 to play prisoners. The prison set up was built inside the Stanford’s psychological department, doors where taken of laboratory rooms and replaced with steel bars in order to create cells. At the end of the corridor was the small opening which became the solitary confinement for the ‘bad prisoners’. Throughout the prison there were no windows or clocks to judge the passage in time, which resulted in time distorting experiences. After only a few hours, the participants adapted to their roles well beyond expectations, the officers starting

Another issue in Zimbardo’s experiment was in the treatment of the prisoners. The guards would curse at the prisoners and force them to ridiculous and arbitrary tasks such as forcing them to pick thorns out of their blankets which the guards had dragged through the bushes (737). Even the prisoners would make detrimental remarks about their fellow prisoners (737). The extreme actions taken by the guards resulted in some prisoners developing anxiety symptoms, one symptom even exhibiting itself in a psychosomatic rash when one prisoner’s parole was rejected by the parole board (738). The American Psychological Association makes it very clear on this type of behavior in their code of ethics they state that “any direct or indirect participation in any act of torture or other forms of cruel, degrading or inhuman treatment or punishment by psychologists is strictly prohibited. There are no exceptions.”

In the Stanford prison experiment, Zimbardo analyzes how human behavior can change based one’s surroundings and what they are told to do. Normal college students are given roles to play in a mock prison. In this experiment, people are assigned jobs as prison guards and prisoners. The prison guards quickly adapted to their roles. They saw no problem treating the prisoners with no respect. These students use violence against the other students to show their leadership and dominance. The prisoners quickly got accustomed to their parts as well.The prisoners believed that they deserved the punishment. “The experiment shows that good people under the wrong circumstances can behave just like those that we vilify” (Zimbardo). With this experiment, Zimbardo studies the Lucifer Effect. The Lucifer Effect is understanding how good people become evil. He uses his data from this experiment to further develop the Lucifer Effect theory and find out why the Nazis treated the Jews with such cruelty. His results show that when given the opportunity and in the right environment, humans will dehumanize other

The prisoners became dependent, helpless, and passive. On the other hand, the guards acted exactly opposite. “They became abusive and aggressive at the simulated prison, bulling and insulting the prisoners’. “After the experiment was completed, most of the guards said that they enjoyed the power. Some of the others said that they had no idea of what they were capable. Everyone in the experiment was surprised at the results as well as saying, It was degrading.

I believe that although valuable information came from it, the ethical quality of this experiment is very questionable. I suspected that the guards would turn more authoritative than any of them would have in real life, but I never thought that they would go as far as ridiculing some prisoners to tears. Although there were none of the prisoners had any long term effects from participating, while in the experiment they would be harassed and punished for no reason, which is where I think the experiment should have been discontinued. Control of the experiment was lost as everybody involved, including Zimbardo became completely engulfed in their roles of the prison. This really makes me question Zimbardo and the other researchers to how they could be too involved in their own experiment to stop the experiment when it began to grow out of control. I think that in the experiment the guards showed who they really were. None of them would have acted that way in their own lives. Zimbardo watched all of this on a hidden camera, and didn’t do anything until long after I along with many others think it should have been. It’s not only that the participants didn’t see the unethical characteristics of this experiment, a priest that was called in and the prisoners parents that came for a visitation day didn’t protest the treatment of their sons after hearing stories of the mock prison. There is something about these symbols of

The Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment has to be one of the cruelest and disturbing experiments I have witnessed since the Milgram experiment. This experiment was pushed far beyond its means and went extremely too far. I know experiments in 1971 weren’t as thorough and strategic as today's but I know today's rules and regulations never allow cruel and unusual punish just to test out one’s theory’s. I don’t believe criminologists should be permitted to conduct replications of Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. I also know that the ACJS and other organizations who set the rules and guidelines for experiments would not promote or condone an experiment that is dangerous and is unethical such as Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. There were no boundaries or a level

The prisoners were emotionally and mentally harmed during the experiment. The prisoners started to lose their identity, and instead started identifying themselves as their number. One participant even went on a hunger strike for the time that he was in the prison. Another participant had to leave the study because he became excessively disturbed as time went on. After the study was done, people had trouble separating what the people did in the study to how they were in real life, which caused a problem when they all had to meet after the trial was over. This ethical violation is very apparent because Dr. Zimbardo did have to end the study before the two weeks was done.

Less than two days into the experiment, one of the prisoners began to experience rage, emotional disturbance, uncontrollable crying, began acting crazy, and screaming. The experiment leaders realized he was really suffering and they had to release him. The next day was visiting day for the parents and friends of the prisoners. In order to stop parents from taking their children home, the experimenters cleaned the prison and the prisoners to make them seem pleasant. After the parents visited, there were rumors going around that the prisoners were going to attempt to escape. After the rumor was proved to be untrue, guards acted harshly towards the prisoners and added punishments. A priest who visited the prison, talked with prisoners and offered to contact some of their families for legal help. By day five, there were three types of guards; tough but fair guards, good guards, and hostile guards.

Method of conduction- To conduct the experiment Zimbardo and his team chose university’s basement of psychology’s department and turned it to a mock prison. The surroundings of prison were made like the surroundings of prison in real life. Cells of prison were not big, walls and windows were barred. In this experiment Zimbardo acted as prison’s superintendent and he also played his duties of a researcher.

She begins recounting the notorious details, how innocent college students labeled prisoners and guards displayed psychological abuse after only six days of confinement, and makes reference to Stanley Milgram’s obedience study and Abu Ghraib, where similar maltreatment, perceived or real, was conducted on civilians by civilians. She addresses and refutes the accepted belief that the Stanford Prison Experiment proved that anyone could become a tyrant when given or instructed by a source of authority. Instead, she suggests that Zimbardo’s inquiry points toward but does not land on one exact conclusion. She explains the influence of the setting, the presentation of the roles, Zimbardo’s participation, and perhaps a sense of expectation felt, all of which can be reflected in the shocking behavior of a few guards. She argues that it should not have been so shocking. Konnikova discredits the neutrality of Zimbardo’s experiment by insisting that people who would respond to an ad for a psychological study of prison life were not “normal” people. However, with her diction and choice of evidence she displaces the study's culpability in a way that ultimately blurs and undermines her claim.

As he talks about the prisoners, he claims that - were they not released and able to go into the outside light - they “would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects” (Plato). He describes their original life in the cave as being primitive and conjecture in nature. Once released from their chains, though, the prisoner must make his way past the fire and into the outside world because for Plato, “the entire ascent out of the cave, is a story of progress toward understanding values”

The experimentors proposed that these reactions were caused by a loss of personal identity, dependency, emasculation and acceptance sadistic treatment from the guards and the unpredictable and arbitrary control of the prison system.

Although there many articles and chapters the experiment, Zimbardo had a really good reason to write this book and it was the prisoners at Abu Ghraibs. He worked closely with the trial as he was an expert witness to Ivan Frederick, a policeman at the prison. His transformation from good to evil was similar to the the guards of the the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo thought he was charged unfairly and wanted to prove that it was the system that made them act the way they did and not that they were a few “bad apples.”

The Zimbardo prison experiment was set up to investigate the problem of what the psychological effects for normal people result from being a guard or inmate, and in a broader sense are normal people capable of being ‘evil.’ The research question being asked was, “How would normal people react to being in a simulated prison environment? In Zimbardo’s own words, "Suppose you had only kids who were normally healthy, psychologically and physically, and they knew they would be going into a prison-like environment and that some of their civil rights would be sacrificed. Would those good people, (when) put in that bad, evil place (have) their goodness triumph?"

Tyranny is defined: an unequal social system involving the arbitrary or oppressive use of power by one group over another (Reicher & Haslam, 2006). The link made between groups and tyranny has a long history in social psychology being prominent nearly 2,400 years ago with the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle believed that collective rule leads to moral irresponsibility, haphazardness and is a disguised form of tyranny. Research into tyranny has been carried out ever since.