My Analysis of the 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

McLeod, Saul. "Stanford Prison Experiment." Simply Psychology. SimplyPsychology, 18 Sept. 2016. Web. 21 Sept. 2016.

The experimental study that I chose to write about is the Stanford Prison Experiment, which was run by Phillip Zimbardo. More than seventy applicants answered an ad looking for volunteers to participate in a study that tested the physiological effects of prison life. The volunteers were all given interviews and personality tests. The study was left with twenty-four male college students. For the experiment, eighteen volunteers took part, with the other volunteers being on call. The volunteers were then divided into two groups, guards and prisoners, randomly assigned by coin flips. The experiment began on August 14th, 1971 in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building. To create the prison cells for the prisoners, the doors were taken

The Stanford prison experiment (SPE) was study organized by Philip George Zimbardo who was a professor at Stanford University. Basically, SPE was a study of psychological effect. He studied about how personality and environment of a person effect his behaviour. Experiment he performed was based on prison and life of guards. He wants to find out whether personality get innovated in person according to given environment (situational) or due to their vicious personalities that is violent behaviour (dispositional). The place where the whole experiment was set up Philip Zimbardo and his team was Stanford University on August 14Th to August 20th in the year 1971 (Wikipedia).

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 air is saturated with the smell of concrete and fear. The wailing of men echoes through the dark, unholy halls. A new face makes its way in. Only thing harder than holding back tears, are trying to not show fear. They will feed of it, off of me. It will not break me; I will not break. This is what to expect from an evil place where grown men can be molded; broken and reformed into a weaker being or into a strong piece of iron. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a study put together by Phillip Zambardo to test the psychological effects of a prisoner and guard scenario in a mock prison setting. The experiment lasted seven to fourteen days and was comprised of twenty-four male students, who were picked at random to take part in the experiment. The role of guard and prisoner were also selected at random. The mock prisoners were subjugated to psychological abuse, harsh authoritarian rule by the guards, and intense living conditions to ensure maximum results were met. The experiment concluded early and a couple prisoners left due to an intense amount of stress brought on from the ordeal. Although the experiment was brief, it gave a great deal of insight into how environment can abruptly affect the psychological well-being of an individual. Zimbardo states, “Would those good people, put in that bad, evil place—would their goodness triumph?” (Cherry, 2006) Everyone has darkness within them and all it takes is a little push. Every person picked for this experiment was not

The year was 1971 and no one was ready for the results that the study, known as the Stanford Prison Experiment would conduct (Whitbourne). A test subject’s fate was determined by the flip of a coin, twelve prison guards and twelve prisoners (Zimbardo). Now that Zimbardo knew he had test subjects, he assembled a team to begin construction of the “Stanford County Jail.” With the help of a former imprisoned convict, the prison was built to be as realistic as possible. Zimbardo said, “The Prison was constructed by boarding up each end of a corridor in the basement of Stanford’s psychology department building (Zimbardo). That corridor was the ‘yard’ and was the only outside place where prisoners would

In the Stanford Prison Experiment, a group of college kids were offered money to help out a psychiatric professor with an experiment. The experiment was to see how college kids who were being held in captivity (Zambrano 1)

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a study conducted by Phillip Zimbardo to better understand how people will react if put into an evil setting, and if we as humans, would allow it to consume us, or overcome it with our moral values and obligations. 24 participants were selected to participate out of the 70 volunteers. Before the experiment began, Zimbardo randomly selected students, either as “Prison Guards” or “Prisoners”. Zimbardo expected it to be a boring study that would last one to two weeks, but soon realized he would need to end the experiment within six days.

The Stanford Prison experiment was conducted by Philip Zimbardo and his associates, David Jaffe, Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Carlo Prescott. The experiment began in 1971 and was located in the Stanford Psychology department’s basement, converted into a makeshift simulated prison able to hold 24 male participants who were interviewed and randomly sorted into guard and prisoner roles (McLeod). The experiment was initially conducted to further understand “interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison” (Haney, Banks, Zimbardo) meaning the way individual persons react

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in the basement of Stanford’s Psychology Department building by Philip Zimbardo. The exploratory study used a jail simulation to evaluate the hypothesis that prison atmospheres are brutal and dehumanizing because of the types of people who run them and are placed in them. Also the experiment tested the prison environment. This hypothesis was the prison atmosphere on its own creates the “brutal dehumanizing conditions independent” of the people who work and live in them (Noelle). Cells, solitary confinement, and a yard were created to give the prisoners and the guards the illusion of a real jail.

Ethics in Experiments: The Stanford Prison Experiment Lyndsey Brady Brigham Young University I chose to read and research more about the Stanford Prison Experiment that was headed by Philip Zimbardo. He conducted this experiment as a way to “demonstrate the power of social situations to distort personal identities and long cherished values and morality as students internalized situated identities in their roles as prisoners and guards” (Zimbardo, Research, 2004). On one of his websites, prisonexp.org, Dr. Zimbardo explains that he gained his sample from placing “a local newspaper ad calling for volunteers in a study of the psychological effects of prison life.” He continues to explain that after receiving about 70 applicants

One of the most revealing psychology experiments done by universities is the Stanford Prison Experiment, done by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1971 in a mock-prison constructed in the basement of Stanford University. The primary purpose of Zimbardo’s experiment attempted to show was how the guards and prisoners would slip and behave in roles to what they thought was expected of them, however it displayed the destruction of rules and morals that society established and it raised a lot of questions about the darkness and cruelty in humans. The experiment first started with the construction of a mock-jail institution in the basement of Stanford University. Psychologists who were part of this experiment put up an ad on a newspaper to be part of this experiment for $15 a day and the people who respond to the

has impacted the study of psychology to this day by how the prison experiment was set up, what

Another fact we cannot deny we learn from the Stanford Prison Experiment is about the fragility of the human mind. It is important to seek internal balance of emotions, values and feelings to achieve a healthy mental life but when an individual is exposed to an environment of extreme oppression it can definitely shake ones stability.