Simulated Prison Experiment

In the summer of 1971 at Stanford University psychologist Phillip Zimbardo conducted a behavioral experiment meant to simulate a prison. This experiment was supposed to study the behaviors both guards and prisoners go through by using student volunteers to play the parts. This experiment, conducted in the basement of a Stanford University building, began to take on a life of its own and has since gone down in infamy. This paper will look into the person responsible for this experiment, how it was conducted and the outcome of the infamous study.

The aim of this experiment was to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of a guard and a prisoner. In this role playing simulation, individual would experience prison life. Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was dispositional: due to the sadistic personalities of the guards, or Situational: having more to do with the prison environment. For example, prisoner and guards may have personalities which make conflict inevitable, with prisoners lacking respect for law, order, and any authoritative figure and guards having domineering and aggressive personalities. Alternatively, prisoners and guards may behave in a hostile manner due to the rigid power structure of the social environment in prisons. If the prisoners and guards were not aggressive towards one another this would support the dispositional hypothesis, or if their behavior was similar to those in real prisons this would support the situational explanation.

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

In 1971, Stanford professor and psychologist Philip Zimbardo, arranged and conducted an experiment with the intention of gaining a better understanding of the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels, and social expectations in a simulated prison environment. However, what professor Zimbardo was not expecting, was just how much insight this study would provide into the psychology of individuals and social groups, as well as, the aggressiveness of human nature. Participants in the study had responded to newspaper advertisements in the Palo Alto Times and the Stanford Daily, which offered $15/day to male college students for a study on the psychology of imprisonment. It is important to note that all volunteers in the experiment were

In the journal I decided to review, researchers observed and analyzed the different behaviors between prisoners and guards in a simulated prison at the Stanford University during the dates of August 14-20, 1971. The simulated prison was in a basement of a psychology building at the university. The researcher conducting this experiment was psychology professor Philip Zimbardo and the rest of his team which included Craig Haney and Curtis Banks. In the study, they were able to collect many valuable information regarding roles in different institutions.

The Standford Prison Experiment was designed to show the development of norms and how the socialization of the roles would proceed in the prison environment. I strongly believe that this experiment was highly unethical because the prisoners were forced to break norms that they would not have done otherwise. The guards believed that in order to maintain control in the prison, they must resort to unreasonable punishments like cleaning the toilets with their hands or be locked in confinement. I do not believe that this experiment would be able to be repeated in today's society. This experiment caused psychological problems and distress to the prisoners. The participants became their roles and lost their self control and respect. The results of

In 1971, this experiment was designed and executed by using a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing prisoners and guards to test the power of the social environment to determine behavior. The research has become a classic demonstration of power influencing individual attitudes, values and behavior. The extreme and unexpected were the transformations of character in many of the participants. This study planned to last two-weeks but had to be ended by the sixth day. The major results of the study show that many of the normal, healthy mock prisoners suffered such intense emotional stress reactions that they had to be released in a matter of days. Most of the other prisoners conformed and obeyed the humiliating order of the guards. The guards were given no instructions to act in such a brutal way however given the authority role many went to extreme measures. The suffering of the prisoners was caused by their sense of powerlessness provoked by the guards who began acting in cruel and dehumanizing ways. Not only did this experiment shock people but it also showed us what humans are really capable of with having a sense of role. Social and moral factors also determined how both groups behaved, with individuals acting in a way that they thought was required, rather than

It is Sunday; a college aged man sits at home waiting to start an experiment he is being paid $15 a day to participate in, when minutes later he finds himself in the back of a police car, soon to be incarcerated in the basement of Stanford University. The Stanford Prison Experiment, a study performed in 1971 by Phillip Zimbardo, was created to study the impacts of prison environment on both prisoners and guards (Zimbardo, 1973). Ultimately the goal was to prove that the rolls of guard and prisoner would create behavioral changes in the participants of the study.

The Milgram Obedience Experiment is very interesting experiment. Inspired by the Nuremberg trials, Milgram’s experiment studied how far someone would hurt a man when under the sight of authority. 65% of the participants continued regardless of the pain felt by the ”student”, who actually was an actor. This experiment taught us a lot about the herd mentality of humans. Once the “herd” is convinced that the ideology is good they feel obligated regardless of what they feel.

It was an experiment where all the participants were fully understanding in what they were getting into so hopefully the fake prison wasn’t exactly like a real one. I find that your knowledge on actual prison probably made this chapter more interesting because you probably know more things about what actual go’s on than someone like my self who’s only knowledge on prison comes from the shows and movies I watch. Also, the real surprise I think was when the men in the experiment fit into there respective roles and they all seemed to fit the same role. Either a guard as oppressor and the prisoner as the oppressed. But from what you wrote about how the prisoners throwing feces at the guards seem to show that they were not weak like the prisoners

The Stanford prison experiment was a study conducted by Professor Phillip Zimbardo about psychological effect on prisoners and prison guards. He conducted the experiment because he wanted to find out whether the brutality of guards in American prisons was due to sadistic personalities of the guards or the behaviors of the guards towards the prisoners had to with prison Environment. The study elicited pathological reactions from many of the participant. The purpose of the study was to understand the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels and social expectations in a simulated prison environment.

There was no clear rules in that experiment, so the prison guards could do everything they wanted to do to prisoners.

Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (1973) were fascinated as to why people do bad things. Convinced the answer was attributed to bad environments corrupting good individuals, Haney et al. (1973) created a prison simulation to explore Zimbardo’s hypothesis that personality characteristics of guards and prisoners underlie aggressive behaviour in prisons. A newspaper advertisement asking for volunteers to participate in a two week study examining prison life, was used to recruit twenty-four participants, who were assigned randomly the role of prisoner or guard. Prisoners were arrested, referred to by identification numbers, dehumanised and made to wear identical clothing (nylon cap, a smock); whilst the guards wore khaki shirts and trousers and were given black sunglasses. Haney et al., (1973) told participants physical misconduct was prohibited; claiming this was the only direction participants were given regarding how they should behave.

Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo are focusing on the dispositional hypothesis. This theory suggests that the nature of these social institutions stems from the essence of the people within them, rather than the prison itself. The “guard mentality” suggests that prison guards are sadistic, uneducated, and insensitive, therefore, bring violence and brutality into the environment. In response, the prisoners act aggressively and impulsively. However, there is an alternative theory, that individuals incarcerated have proven to disregard the law, order, and

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a 1971 study conducted by Professor Phillip Zimbarbo from Stanford University. Participants were students of the University who volunteered in exchange for a daily stipend. Male college students responded to a newspaper ad to take part in “a psychological study of prison life,” to be paid $15 a day for a study to last for 1 to 2 weeks (Carnahan & Mcfarland, 2007). Participants were randomly assigned roles of prisoner o guard. The experiment fully immersed participants and researchers into the study. Those involved became so submerged in the study that an intended two-week study was terminated after six days “because too many normal young men were behaving pathologically as powerless prisoners or as sadistic, all-powerful guards” (Carnahan & Mcfarland,