Dostoevsky's Experiment : The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a clear example of how humans can adapt to specific social roles and behave differently under the pressure of control. The experiment illustrated the concepts of deviance and social control through participants behavior. Although the prisoners were not really prisoners, they believed that they were. The behavior of the prisoners began to morph along with the experiment. By day two, the prisoners were showing deviance by barricading themselves inside their cells. The environment and treatment of the prisoners were likely causes of the disobedience. Similarly, the guards showed signs of social control throughout the experiment. Guards were able to show control over the prisoners through various actions, such

This experiment was put through to show how prisoners act within a prison environment while being isolated within the cell and being forbidden from contact with people outside the jail. The prisoners were arrested in their homes and taken to the police station. The normal procedures for a convicted criminal were given, and the prisoners were then transferred to the basement of the psychology department. The basement was designed to replicate an average prison. Standard rules such as forbidden prisoner to guard eye contact were given. Guards were not allowed to address the prisoners by anything besides their uniform number. Although just an experiment, the subjects were quickly adapting to their roles. Prison guards began to harass the inmates, and the inmates began to verbally abuse each other to extreme levels. Guards also started using major brutality. Due to the drastic escalation of the physical and verbal abuse, the experiment was terminated early (McLeod). This suggests that when isolated, people can start to act more cruel than they would in

In the Zimbardo’s The Stanford Prison Experiment; however, the ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ were placed in the same facility and were face to face on a daily basis unlike the Milgram experiment. The ‘guards’ would tell the ‘prisoners’ jokingly to do something, however the ‘prisoners’ would do what they were commanded to do to try to hang on to their identity. (Zimbardo 393) By the end of the experiment most ‘prisoners’ showed increased stress levels in the ‘prisoners’ within days, some ‘prisoners’ could not handle the stress induced and had to be released early. The ‘guards’ were equally changed do to the scenario they were put in. One journal of the ‘guards’ showed how a passive person became a person shoving food down another person’s mouth and locking them up in solitary confinement (Zimbardo 389-399).

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.

Some other preconditions were to make the experimental setting bear a resemblance as closely to a functional simulation of the psychology of imprisonment as humanly possible. He also wanted to make sure that there was the absence of any earlier indoctrination in how to play the randomly assigned roles; to leave that up to each participant’s prior societal teachings of the meaning of prisons and the behavioral scripts associated with the oppositional roles (Zambardo, 2005). Although he had a significantly large abundance

In Maria Konnikova’s “The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment” she reveals what she believes to be the reality of sociologist Philip Zimbardo’s controversial study: its participants were not “regular” people.

The researchers observed the behaviors and mentalities of both guards and prisoners by naturalistic observation.

In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues created the experiment known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo wanted to investigate further into human behavior, so he created this experiment that looked at the impact of taking the role of a prisoner or prison guard. These researchers examined how the participants would react when placed in an institutionalized prison environment. They set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology building. Twenty four undergraduate students were selected to play the roles of both prisoners and guards. These students were chosen because they were emotional, physically, and mentally stable. Though the experiment was expected to last two weeks, it only lasted six days after the researchers and participants became aware of the harm that was being done.

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.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was to determine how conformity and obedience could result in people behaving in ways that are counter to how they would at on their own. The main goal of the experiment was to see how social norms and social convections might influence the behavior of participants who are playing the roles of prisoners and prison guards. The study really elaborates on the relationship between the abuser and the abused. It is interesting to see how easily the human psyche gives repetitive abuse and is conditioned to receive it and accept it. This paper will discuss the motives, procedures, findings, ethical issues, and informed consent the Stanford Prison Experiment concluded on.

In 1971, a research was conducted at Stanford University, by a team of researchers lead by Philip Zimbardo. The experiment would involve a group of twenty-four males being put into a staged prison to see the effects of prison on the guards and prisoners, known today as The Stanford Prison Experience. It is a notorious study not only for the findings but also for the ethical violations. Based on today’s well-developed ethical code of conduct, Stanford prison considerably keeps a very low grade in terms of fulfilling the ethical conditions, rules and criteria that were established after the conduct of the study.

In the Zimbardo Prison Study, 24 subjects were split into two groups, prisoners and guards, and put into a mock prison. The study was thorough, subjects were required to do personality tests and interviews to eliminate any

This paper serves to summarize The Zimbardo Prison Experiment, better known as The Stanford Prison Experiment which was conducted by Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. The purpose of the study was to conduct research in order to better understand the psychological components of human aggression and submission to include conformity and obedience in a prison environment with a select group of subjects playing roles as either prison guards or inmates, however, I should note, according to McLeod, S. (2016), The Navy’s intent or purpose for the experiment was to better understand how to train members of the armed forces on how to cope with stress associated with captivity as opposed to making American Prison systems more humane. Another interesting point of note is that Zimbardo conducted this experiment shortly after World War II, and the Vietnam War where concern was raised as to some of the atrocities carried out in those wars where “ordinary” people conducted heinous acts per instruction from so-called authoritative figures. Experiments with similar objectives were carried out by Stanley Milgram and others. (Jones, A. D., & Milgram, S. 1974)

This report on the Stanford Prison Experiment will define the ethical issues related to prisoner treatment and prison culture in a mock scenario created 1971. The findings of this study define the inclination towards corruption and riotous behavior within the overarching relationship between guard and the prisoners. In a short period of time,. The prisoners became hostile and sought to start a riot in order to free themselves from abuses of the prison guards. In some instances, the issue of role-playing limited to reality of the event, but the ethical issues related to issue of prison corruption became evident in the study. The Stanford Prison Experiment provided some important aspects on how good people can became violent lawbreakers within the orison system. In essence, the ethical and experimental conditions of the Stanford Prison experiment define the corrupting culture of prisons in American society during the early 1970s.

In 1971 Philip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) in the basement of Stanford University as a mock prison. Zimbardo’s aim was to examine the effect of roles, to see what happens when you put good people in an evil place and to see how this effects tyranny. He needed participants to be either ‘prisoners’ or ‘guards’ and recruited them through an advertisement, 75 male college students responded and 24 healthy males were chosen and were randomly allocated roles. Zimbardo wanted to encourage deindividuation by giving participants different uniforms and different living conditions (the guards had luxuries and the prisoners were living as real prisoners). The guards quickly began acting authoritarian, being aggressive towards the prisoners and giving them punishments causing physical and emotional breakdowns. Zimbardo’s intention was for his study to last for 2 weeks, however, it