Quiet Rage, By Stephen Zimbardo

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 psychology, there are lots of controversial experiments that have been done and are still talked about today. The experiment that sticks out for me is Zimbardo’s Prison study, it catches my eye for more than one reason. In this study, Philip Zimbardo gathered up a bunch of students to play the roles of prisoners and guards. Zimbardo wanted to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role played situation that would be equivalent to prison life. (McLeod 1) During this experiment that lasted six days, Zimbardo found out that the guards treated the prisoners horribly (McLeod 1) This turned the tables and Zimbardo became interested in finding out if the brutality of the guards were due to their malicious personalities or if it had more to do with the environment of being in a prison. One form of behavior that Zimbardo noticed was that the prisoners did not respect the authority of the guards which resulted in the guards being aggressive towards the prisoners (McLeod 1).

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

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 Philip Zimbardo and his collages Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, David Jaffe, and ex-convict consultant, Carlo Prescott formulated a social experiment that addressed the underlying and basic physical mechanisms of human aggression (Henry, Banks, and Zimbardo, 1973). The experiment was planned to last two weeks and consist of male college students. The study was based upon the dynamic of the authority of prison guards and submissive behavior of the prisons inmates. Therefore, the experiment required for a mock prison to be built.

In 1973, in an attempt to understand the conformity to roles of guards and prisoners, Zimbardo launched a role-playing experiment that modeled prison life and reflected the environment of an American prison. The experiment was to see if prison guards are brutal and cruel because that’s their sadistic personality types that cause conflicts with the prisoners or if its due to the prison setting itself. In other words, there is a dispositional hypothesis that states that prison guards act the way they do because their personalities cause

The psychological effects of imprisonment vary from individuals to individual and very few people who are incarcerated are able to conform back to society. Prison is painful, and incarcerated people often suffer long-term consequences from having being treated to pain, deprivation and extremely abnormal patters and norms of living and interactions with others (Haney, 2001). In the course of becoming institutionalized, a transformation begin. The inmate becomes accustomed to the restrictions that the prison imposes on them. The various psychological adaptions must be employed to adjust.

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 Zimbardo prison experiment was a study of human responses to captivity, dehumanization and its effects on the behavior on authority figures and inmates in prison situations. Conducted in 1971 the experiment was led by Phlilip Zimbardo. Volunteer College students played the roles of both guards and prisoners living in a simulated prison setting in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by psychologist Dr. Philip Zimbardo, as an expansion to Dr. Stanley Milgram’s research on obedience (Cherry, para. 1). Zimbardo wanted to further investigate the impact of situational variables on human behaviour (Cherry, para. 1). He did this by looking at the impact of becoming a prisoner or prison guard (Cherry, para. 1). Zimbardo and his colleagues were interested in how the participants would react when placed in a simulated prison environment (Cherry, para. 1).

2. The Concept The Stanford Prison Experiment was created as a way to investigate whether people would change to conform to roles assigned to them in a simulated environment. Dr Philip Zimbardo was interested to find out whether prison brutality was due to people having underlying sadistic tendencies or whether people’s personalities are altered by the prison environment itself (McLeod, 2008). This research concept was supported by the American Office of Naval Research (Haney, Banks & Zimbardo 1973)

Biologically speaking, there were many factors within Dr. Zimbardo’s Stanford experiment that could be objectively analyzed and possibly explained. As mention previously, the “gene by environment” interactions could be one possible theory as to why the guards only began to show aggressive behavioral tendencies once they were placed within the socially constructed environment. One theory that could explain the behavior of the prisoners

Furthermore, from the prison officer’s perspective, certain aspects of exploitative behaviour was not always defined as bullying. Thus, it becomes difficult to categorise bullying which leads to certain behaviour being ignored, making an unpleasant experience for individuals in prison. This can lead to individuals becoming psychology distraught and it said they often learn and adapt to the behaviour in their surroundings. This is evident in the Stanford prison experiment conducted by Psychologist Zimbardo, where he found that prisoners adapted to the ‘prison like behaviour,’ where some of their thinking became disorganised and even entered into deep depression. With regards to this, it is evident that prison has a negative effect on its inmates and therefore is not as effective as some individuals believe. Due to the negativity endured in prisons, inmates can become angry and frustrated which can lead to them becoming more careless, reflecting this back in society.

Throughout history there have been hundreds upon hundreds of influential figures, although not all of them have devoted their career to understanding the human mind. Of the few who have devoted their time to this hugely important task, Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo’s theories and experiments have made him stand out, and differentiate himself from the rest in his profession. Zimbardo 's area of expertise in the field of psychology is social psychology, the branch that deals with social interactions, including their origins and their effects on the individual. Zimbardo may be most well known for his Stanford Prison experiment, an experiment that seems to address the definition of social psychology perfectly. In this experiment Zimbardo had clinically healthy and sane people volunteer for the position of a prison guard or a prisoner and see how they behaved, for fifteen dollars a day. The prison was actually the basement of the Stanford psychology building, where the experiment would take place for a planned 14 days. As said before, the prisoners and guards were all tested as mentally healthy, and for the sake of the experiment were arrested, and processed on a random morning, August 14th 1971. (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 23). The results of this experiment are outstanding, shocking, and somewhat disturbing, making this one of, if not, the most unethical psychological experiments. Although the experiment is considered wildly immoral, Zimbardo is one of the most influential psychologists

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