Research: The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by three psychologist; Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Philip Zimbardo. They tested two theories about the prisons. The first theory was dispositional hypothesis and the second was situational hypothesis. Basically, what these psychologist were looking for was, to see how people react when place in a position of authority in the prison system and also how the prisoners react to the environment. The experiment was setup in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University.

Groupthink can be defined as a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in irrational decision-making. In 1971, twenty-four psychologically stable men took part in a trial known as The Stanford Prison Experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to prove that an individual’s perception of their own power is heavily influenced by social context and societal expectations of their role. The men involved in the experiment were assigned either the role of a prisoner or a guard to represent positions in society, both with power and without. More specifically, the conductors of The Stanford Prison Experiment focused on analyzing the different behavioral

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.

1. The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment that was created to test the effect between prisoners and prison officers. The experiment took place in the basement of one of the buildings in Stanford University. The prisoners and guards in the experiment were college students. The college students were told that they would get $15 dollars a day and that the experiment would last two weeks. The guards and prisoners were decided by a flip of a coin. The experiment abruptly ended after six days because of the mental break downs and hunger strikes the inmates were having. The BoBo Doll Experiment was an experiment that studied aggression. The way that the experiment worked was that they had adults attack the BoBo doll and they made the children watch to see if they would mimic the adults actions. When presented with the BoBo doll the children acted the same way as they saw the adults act. They were able to learn the aggression and hostile language from the adults.

Zimbardo implies the reason there are negative attitudes in prisons is because of the authority figures in the prison rather than the inmates themselves (although to some extent they do play a part in the aggression).

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.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment to see if normal people would change their behavior in a role-play as a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was conducted by Dr.Philip Zimbardo in 1973 at Stanford University and caused numerous amount of trauma to both prisoners and prison guards in their role-playing position which forced Dr. Zimbardo to officially terminate the experiment six days after it was introduced. Due to the cruel aggressive behaviors from the guards, the experiment led to a question, "Do "normal" people have the capability of behaving badly?" The answer to that question is that most likely an individual who behaves normally will have the capability of expressing evil behavior due to the environment they are

Response to Stanford Experiment          The Stanford Prison Experiment happened because it was a breakdown of their rights,ways of thinking, and physical humiliation.         They sabotaged their way of thinking. The feeling and how the place was set up made it feel like it was real and that they were in a real prison. In the movie the guys really were in into the feel of their location and they were planning to escape it like a real prison ,and in the end when the guy told them that they were able to leave that the experiment and they shocked and just stood there.

The Stanford Prison experiment was performed to discover the phycological impacts of a prison environment. Conducted by Dr Philip Zimbardo on August 14,1971, 12 prisoners and 12 guards were chosen and each payed $15 per day. Intending to run for a period of two weeks the experiment abruptly stopped due to unforeseen outcomes of increasingly damaging and disturbing behavioural activity. Displaying a failed attempt in following ethical guidelines, the experiment violates withdrawal rights, harm was present and informed consent was not obtained. The study does not pass the standards necessary to be considered a true “scientific experiment” and could not be reperformed today as it shows little ethical merit.

In my opinion, I believe that the Stanford Prison study led to more harm than the Immunization study because according to prisoner Mr. Ramsey, “the experiment should never have taken place as it had no true scientific basis and was ethically wrong” (Leithhead, 2011). The abuse in this study was so harsh, that they had to end the study early due to “ a string of mental breakdowns, an outbreak of sadism and a hunger strike”(Leithhead, 2011). This study was conducted to see if the violent behaviors are as a result of the roles of ‘prisoners’ and ‘guards’ or is it solely based on the individual’s personality. What made this study so dangerous is the face that almost everything felt so real, the guards looked real, the prisoners looked real and they both played the part that they were assigned to. The guards were asked to do whatever it takes to ensure that the law was kept, without any physical violence (Zimbardo, 1973).

Into two groups. One were prisoners and the other were guards. Each group had their own

In “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip G. Zimbardo, Zimbardo conducts an experiment to test the human ability to resist authority and the control of social pressures. In order to do this, Zimbardo sets up an experiment that tests the relationship between prisoners and guards within a prison and then relates his results to authoritative relationships in everyday lives outside of prisons. Zimbardo is showing how when humans in the real world are exposed to authoritative power like the guards in this situation, it consumes them as they will do whatever it takes to keep that power and remain in control. He also shows that when humans follow authority figures like the prisoners out of fear they are allowing themselves to become trapped in a metaphorical prison that will hold them back from having their own thoughts and actions until they are able to go against authority and break out of their “prison”. Throughout his article, Zimbardo implies that authoritative relationships trap all humans from forming their own thoughts and opinions, as well as give humans on the other side of the relationship an unhealthy amount of power that leads to out of character behavior. Zimbardo's implication leads us to see that not only are authoritative relationships bad but the same results that occurred inside the prison experiment can also happen in the outside world.

placed in a prison simulation and observed in the roles of both guards and prisoners. At the time

I choose Stanford prison because I feel that the most harm experience in the of life the prisoner .stanford prison study conduct experiment of prison to the real life of prison .the prisoner and the guard select randomly . suddenly arrested from their home and putting them in the prison service place .the guard wears mirrored glasses and the prisoner wears prison clothes ,chains and puts them in basement prison .the guard looking the prisoners in cruel faces and they try jarring them .after one day the situation changed . some of the prisoner are shocking and feels them depression –seriously hurt .the Stanford prison study planned for two weeks but shut down in 6 days because the prisoners