Philip Zimbardo Experiment Summary

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 experiment, people were picked randomly and one as a teacher and one as the student. They were told to take a quiz and give electric shocks of increasing intensity as punishment if the student can’t answer. During the experiment, many people were concerned as someone can be heard shouting but only a few people who decided to stop and stick to their morals. But the others kept on going because they were just following orders from a superior (Milgram 77). "The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip Zimbardo, is about an experiment that was made to understand the roles people play in prison situations. For the experiment, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. The participants were told to act as prisoners and guards. It was planned to be a two-week experiment but was forced to shut down in 6 days, all because of people quickly getting into their roles and started acting like the real prisoners and guards (Zimbardo 104). To compare both experiments, although they differed vastly in design and methodology, the point of both experiments was to observe how far an individual would go in inflicting increasing pain on a victim. Also how people obey under authoritative circumstances, when given power or different roles, however the writers differ in the seriousness of the fight for individuality and the use of reality.

Philip (2009) to try and see what was being said about prison treatment was true, this was called the Stanford prison experiment. This experiment only lasted 6 days due to the circumstances versus 6 weeks. Zimbardo had to find out whether the prisons were brutal due to the guards or due to the environment. It was clear that the role of the guards was the issue and not the environment. This was discovered when a sample was chosen from the population. Each induvial was set up to be a guard or a prisoner at random. In this study researchers got see the unfortunate power of social situations. Once prisoner and guard roles were assigned each group were told that they were being watched by the researcher and his colleagues, the guards were to not hit the prisoners, and debriefed about the experiment. Although all this was told the guards took situations into their own hands and the power took over. The guards began simply viewing them as prisoners and the prisoners began to fear the guards. It is important to note the researcher did not intervene but continued to observe when the hitting was taking place. This is particularly important because not only are the guards fitting the rod but the researcher is at fault for the fundamental attribution error but viewing the situation for what it

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.

This experiment goes to show that there are few people who have the capability of keeping themselves together in situations that are out of their control. When given the opportunity, the men who played the guards took advantage of the inmates, and the men who played the inmates let themselves be taken advantage of. Both groups were obviously manipulated by Zimbardo and his men though. There are many points that can be brought from this study in order to educate people on themselves. One being that no matter how in control that you feel you are right now, in a split second that can all change. Another that one of the guard pointed out, is that just when you think that you know yourself and the things that you are capable of doing, you can be pushed to different level and do things that later you will be ashamed

August 14, 1971 was the first day of the experiment, filled with individuality and unknown being of what this experiment was to bring. The college students were picked up in a police car, mirandized, and after processing landed in the experimental jail. Though the experiment collected important data on the psychological break down over what happens when innocent people go to jail, the gruesome and eye opening transformation of each of the prisoners over just six days is shocking. Hopeless and dehumanized, each of the prisoners experienced psychological trauma of varying degrees. Towards the end of the experiment, they were only identifying as their prison number and it was almost as if they had forgotten

During the summer of 1973 an experiment of the psychology of imprisonment was conducted by psychologist Philip K. Zimbardo. Zimbardo created his own jail in the basement in the Stanford University psychology building. Every participant had to be mentally and physically fit in order to participate in this experiment. Participants were randomly split into two groups’, guards and prisoners. Participants who were selected to be prisoners were arrested, blindfolded and sent the Stanford prison. The prisoners had to strip down and put on a prisoner uniform. The guards had to have a uniform also. Their uniform was composed of silver reflective sunglasses, handcuffs, whistles, billy clubs, and keys to all the cells and main gate. Prisoners had no freedom, rights, independence and privacy. Guards had social power and the responsibility of managing the prisoner’s lives. The day of the experiment everyone fell into their roles of guards and prisoners. The next day the prisoners started to rebel which motivated the guards to take affirmative action against the prisoners and maintain law and order. By the last days of the experiment the guards became sadistically aggressive and the prisoners became and passive. To explain the behavior of the guards and prisoners of this experiment we must look at, “Obedience to Authority,” “The Roles of Guard and Prisoner,” and “Prison

The Stanford Prison Experiment was created by Philip G. Zimbardo, a psychologist, and professor who taught at Stanford. The experiment's goal was to study how easily one will adapt to roles that are assigned to them. The study began with volunteers who were randomly assigned to become either prisoners or guards. It didn’t take long for the guards to harass the prisoners. On the second day of the experiment, the prisoners started to rebel and test the guard’s boundaries. In an attempt to keep the prisoners in line, the guards started to use physical violence; which was against the rules. The guards became more and more violent every day, the amount of abuse the guards displayed was totally unexpected.

Imagine that the year is 1971, and you are a male college student at Stanford University in California. Like most college kids, you are strapped for cash, so you begin to seek a part time job. You see an ad for a psychology study that pays $15 per day posted in the local newspaper, and decide to submit an application. Little do you know at the time, that the study you are applying for will become known worldwide and create such an impact that it remains relevant over 44 years later. This infamous study is known today as the Stanford Prison Experiment. The experiment was led by psychology professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo along with his team of researchers in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University. Today, I am going to speak about why the experiment was conducted, what occurred during the experiment, and the ethical implications that resulted because of this notorious study.

The experiment was led by a Stanford Psychology Professor named Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo randomly separated 24 mentally and physically healthy participants into authoritarian guards armed with batons and dehumanized prisoners who were identified by numbers instead of their individual names. This naturally created conflict between the two opposing groups however the experiment soon went out of hand. Soon the guards who were placed in a positon of power over the inmates began to become increasingly abusive and inhumane towards the prisoners. It would be important to note however, the prisoners did within days start to disobey and revolt against the oppressive guards.

After six days, the prisoners and prison guards could no longer differentiate between the experiment and reality. The prisoners actually believed that they were prisoners subject to the commands of the guards, and the guards actually believed that they had to power to punish the prisoners as they deemed fit. The guards developed extremely cruel routines to discipline disobedient prisoners and eventually most of the prisoners underwent psychological and emotional breakdowns. Overall, the experiment demonstrated chilling aspects of our society’s prison culture and also revealed the influence of our environment on our own

The Stanford prison experiment was a milestone study. Led by Philip Zimbardo, volunteers played the roles of guard and prisoner, and lived in a mock prison. Although the duration of the experiment was half of what was expected, the experiment highlights the “impressionability and obedience of people with a legitimizing ideology”. Zimbardo specifically set up conditions to trigger disorientation of the participants.

However, after 6 days Zimbardo had to cut the experiment short because of severe psychological distress among the inmates, and some radical actions taken by prisoners and guards. Prisoner 819, for example, suffered severe mental stress and asked to leave the study very shortly after the experiment had begun. The rest of the prisoners reacted to this by condemning prisoner 819. The other prisoners had reacted with other mental stress. “You had to be there to believe that human character could be so swiftly transformed in a matter of days--not only the traits of the students, but of me,” (Zimbardo, 1971).

Therefore, after six days, the study was called a quit. It is evident that the study became well known, and has had significant impact on the study of psychology. It is now 2017, almost half century past, and here we are discussion the effects of this controversial experiment. The prison mock simulation, even after being cut short, was able to demonstrate how much of a destructive effect the penal system can causes an incarcerated individual and the process it also shows how dehumanizing the real prison environment can be, both for guards and prisoners, which in fact seemed to be one of the study main goals. Nonetheless it also brought to light that any health minded human being is capable of developing an aggressive pathological behavior accordingly to the environment they are put in.

We also learned that due to authority some people just accepted their role as seen with the prisoners. The experiment had a lot of negative physiological effects on the prisoners. The guards dehumanized and humiliated the prisoners making them feel powerless. The environment of the prison also lead to harsher behaviors from the prison and prisoners were put in psychologically damaging situations. The harsh environment caused most prisoners to experience emotional trauma.