Personality Characteristics Of Guards And Prisoners

This essay is an investigation of the application from the Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment to some similar scenarios that demonstrate the same or similar findings found within the Stamford Prison Experiment that were influenced by external factors and influences. The Stamford Prison Experiment was conducted to investigate how subtle people are to conform to roles of the guard and prisoner in a mock prison environment and if the behaviours were influenced by the environment or by sadistic personalities of guards (McLeod, 2016). There are several factors that influence good guards to not question orders from bad guards and a few of these factors will be outlined in this essay. The first topic that will be discussed is the similarities of

In the study, Zimbardo wanted to determine whether the brutality reported among American correctional officers was attributable to their sadistic personalities or it was due to the prison environment (Drury, Hutchens, Shuttlesworth, & White, 2012). Several things could have been done differently in the study. One of the most important things left out is a testable hypothesis. Secondly, the study should not have been used as a catalyst for propaganda. Thirdly, the prison simulation was not accurately simulated, since the goal of correctional officers is not to engender boredom and fear but to maintain law and order. The Belmont Standards, through the beneficence standard, proscribe the intent to engender fear, boredom, and a sense of arbitrariness.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a research study conducted in 1973, this study was formed to investigate psychological effects of perceived power by focusing on interactions between prisoners and prison guards within a simulated prison environment. The researchers’ main goal was to examine the theory that innate personality traits of prisoners and guards are a direct cause of abusive behavior in prison. Participants of this study were recruited through a newspaper ad that offered to pay a fee of $15 daily for males to participate in a simulated prison exercise (Haney, Curtis & Zimbardo, 1973). The final selected subjects consisted of 24 males who were chosen based on their psychological stability, maturity, and lack of anti-social behavior.

The Stanford Prison Experiment article addresses the psychology of power by studying a model of the prisoner and guard relationship as represented by the American penal system. The authors, through a unique experiment involving volunteers who would play the roles of guards and prisoners in a somewhat realistic prison setting, hoped to provide empirical scientific evidence and information proving that the American penal system is not only dysfunctional and inherently flawed, but causes real and lasting harm to the temperament, attitude and personality of both the prisoners and the guards in American prisons.

The overarching question in this research is to understand how people would conform to roles of a simulated prison experiment.

In the summer of 1971, male college students were seeked for a “psychological study of prison life” led by Philip Zimbardo (Zimbardo). Zimbardo, then a psychology professor at Stanford University, aimed to investigate how willingly people would adhere to the roles of guard and prisoner in a simulated prison. Of more than 75 applicants, 21 law-abiding, physically healthy and emotionally stable students were chosen. They were each to be paid $15 a day and the experiment was set to run for one to two weeks in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building. Participants were divided into 10 prisoners and 11 guards by the flip of a coin. Hidden microphones and a camera were used to record much of the interaction between guards and prisoners.

The article being discussed in this section disclosure the results of two similar psychological studies conducted in different prisons. One of the studies was conducted by Professor Philip Zimbardo in a simulated prison setting at Stanford University. The study was conducted in England by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Both studies discuss the brutality acts developed in the interactions between inmates and prison guards as well as the reasons why these acts take place.

These participants were put into two groups, ‘guard’ and ‘prisoner’. The experiment was scheduled to last two weeks, after just six days it was cancelled. This was due to the roles being taken too seriously, the ‘guard’ had become to brutal and abusive and the ‘prisoner’ showed signs of emotional disturbance. This example shows how negatively groups can influence people as individuals and that the role and behaviour changes according to the groups that the participants were assigned to. Jail itself is not a positive experience, the norm is that people are sent there as a form of punishment. The ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ may have been influenced as to the group norms by such things as films, T. V programs and stories as told by friends and family.

The SPE conducted by Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (1973) is one of the classic experiments in psychology due to its significant results and implications in understanding of conformity. The experiment set out to investigate the underlying influences of human aggression by creating an environment very similar to a real life prison. There were twenty two participants randomly assigned to either the guard or prisoner role. All prisoners wore identical clothing, a smock labelled with their identification number, a nylon stocking cap, and a light chain around their ankle. All guards wore a khaki shirt and trousers, black reflective glasses, a whistle and had a wooden baton. Zimbardo claims the guards and prisoners were given minimal instructions on

Prisons have taught men to uphold that domination of others due to competition, greed, inability to nurture, and readiness to violence by obtaining one important thing, respect. Repeated frustrations of an inmate’s need to be respected can lead to toxicity such as violence in the prison atmosphere. Men who act in this behavior tend to portray a tough- guy image by acting out on anger impulses in front of other inmates, allowing them to witness this image of control. In contrast, not all inmates portray this tough guy act, since most of them were convicted for minor crimes such

In 1932, Jennes conducted one of the earliest conformity experiments. Jennes took 101 psychology students, divided them into groups of three, and asked them to work together to estimate how many beans were in a glass bottle that contained 811 white beans. The students would come up with their own individual answer and then after discussing it with the group, would have the opportunity to change their answer. Jennes discovered that nearly all of the students had chosen to change their answers after the group discussion, and that the answers led further into the average median of the estimates. His experiment demonstrated the power of conformity in a relatively low-pressure environment, and the effects of “informational social influence”. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, the object of the experiment was to observe how readily volunteers would conform to their roles as prisoners or guards in a prison-setting. And to do this, Zimbardo transformed Stanford’s psychology building basement into a makeshift prison, and asked volunteers to study the psychological effects of life in prison. 10 prisoner roles and 11 guard roles were assigned to healthy male college students. As the prison days commenced and continued, the prisoner’s dependence and the guard’s aggressiveness grew in proportion. Abuse against prisoners escalated, with various cases of emotional/mental breakdown from prisoners resulting in the need for psychological care, in less than one week. Like the Milgram

In 1973 Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo conducted an experimental study on prison environment. They recruited 75 males from advertisement in a local newspaper who was attending college; however, only 21 were chosen based upon background information taken from a questionnaire. The participants were divided into two groups – group one were correctional officers – group two were prisoners - to study the interpersonal dynamic of prison environment. The study indicated that one third of the guards’ behavior was aggressive and dehumanizing toward the prisoners. Additionally, the emotional distress which the prisoners’ endured warrant for early release (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973).

The Stanford Prison experiment was conducted in 1971, during the summer, at Stanford University. The mastermind behind the experiment was Philip G. Zimbardo, a psychologist and a professor at Stanford University. To help closely simulate a prison environment they called upon an expert. “Our study of prison life began, then, with an average group of healthy, intelligent, middle class males” (Zimbardo 4). With this group of middle class males they were then split into two groups, guards and prisoners. Once at the prison the environment became harsh. “There were no windows or clocks to judge the passage of time, which later resulted in some time-distorting experiences” (Zimbardo 6). The prison environment, the harsh ruling of the guards, and the stress being in jail took a tole on the prisoners. As Zimbardo once said, “We wanted to see what the psychological effects were of becoming a prisoner or prison guard” (4). It was not only the prisoners that paid the price of being forced into prison life. Many of the guards went through psychological change. “Most of the guards found it difficult to believe that they had behaved in the brutalizing ways they had. Many said they hadn’t known this side of them existed or that they were capable of such things” (McLeod 4). Why do humans readily conform to the specific roles they are assigned? The prisoners and the prison guards both fall victim to this. The Stanford

A psychology professor, Mr. Philip Zimbardo from Stanford University conducted a two week prison experiment to study the psychology of imprisonment. According to the professor, their goal is to investigate how people would conform to the roles of prison guard and prisoner in a role playing exercise that simulated prison life.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a clear model and example of the psychological harm many prisoners go through each and every day. Whether the harm is as intense as seen in this experiment, it still shows responses to experienced pressure. The experiment began with the original intent of keeping guards and prisoners in their roles for two weeks while being paid, which would allow them time to see the progression of their symptoms and psychological responses to the pressure. Two main factors affected how participants who were normal began to evolve into bad people, or participants who exhibited bad behavior.