Stanford Prison Experiment Essay

Stanford Prison Experiment: In this experiment it took a group of people and made half of them guards and half of them prisoners. The guards were given sunglasses to make them feel more powerful and have a mask to hide behind and the prisoners had chains put on their legs so they can feel a loss of freedom. In the experiment they were not given any rules to how there supposed to treat the prisoners, because these were fake prisoners they challenged the fake guards power. Since the guard’s were not given

I believe that although valuable information came from it, the ethical quality of this experiment is very questionable. I suspected that the guards would turn more authoritative than any of them would have in real life, but I never thought that they would go as far as ridiculing some prisoners to tears. Although there were none of the prisoners had any long term effects from participating, while in the experiment they would be harassed and punished for no reason, which is where I think the experiment should have been discontinued. Control of the experiment was lost as everybody involved, including Zimbardo became completely engulfed in their roles of the prison. This really makes me question Zimbardo and the other researchers to how they could be too involved in their own experiment to stop the experiment when it began to grow out of control. I think that in the experiment the guards showed who they really were. None of them would have acted that way in their own lives. Zimbardo watched all of this on a hidden camera, and didn’t do anything until long after I along with many others think it should have been. It’s not only that the participants didn’t see the unethical characteristics of this experiment, a priest that was called in and the prisoners parents that came for a visitation day didn’t protest the treatment of their sons after hearing stories of the mock prison. There is something about these symbols of

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

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.

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).

When put into an authoritative position over others, is it possible to claim that with this new power individual(s) would be fair and ethical or could it be said that ones true colors would show? A group of researchers, headed by Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing either as prisoners or guards to test the power of the social situation to determine psychological effects and behavior (1971). The experiment simulated a real life scenario of William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies” showing a decay and failure of traditional rules and morals; distracting exactly how people should behave toward one another. This

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.

The year was 1971 and no one was ready for the results that the study, known as the Stanford Prison Experiment would conduct (Whitbourne). A test subject’s fate was determined by the flip of a coin, twelve prison guards and twelve prisoners (Zimbardo). Now that Zimbardo knew he had test subjects, he assembled a team to begin construction of the “Stanford County Jail.” With the help of a former imprisoned convict, the prison was built to be as realistic as possible. Zimbardo said, “The Prison was constructed by boarding up each end of a corridor in the basement of Stanford’s psychology department building (Zimbardo). That corridor was the ‘yard’ and was the only outside place where prisoners would

This case study will be assessing and defining the methods and effects that came out of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment was designed to shed light on the different psychosocial roles which influence the power has on ordinary people in a prisonlike setting. This psychosocial experiment concluded in several unexpended outcomes compared to the original though behind the initial planning and had to be terminated before the experiment was scheduled to end.

”If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” This small sentence known as the Thomas Theorem carries a lot of meaning in the context of our subjects. The idea of the Thomas Theorem states that if we perceive something to be reality, it will determine how the way we act and think in the situation (Alleydog). The Stanford Prison Experiment is seen in history as one of the most significant psychological experiments of it’s time, and the Abu Ghraib Scandal which happened 30 years later became famous for many of the same reasons. Because of the way this experiment was conducted and the way the real life prison was run, with little control and no intervention in how

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 Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by a research group led by Dr. Philip Zimbardo using Stanford students during August 14 through the 20th of 1971. Dr. Zimbardo wanted to see how people reacted when they are either put in captivity or in charge of others. The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research and grew interest to both the US Navy and the Marine Corps for an investigation to the purpose of conflict among military guards and prisoners. In the study, 24 male students were selected out of 75 applicants to take on randomly assigned roles. One of the surprises of the study was how participants quickly adapted to roles well beyond expectations. After the first eight hours, the experiment turned to be a joke and nobody was taking it seriously but then prisoners

The Stanford prison experiment was unique because they wanted to watch and learn the behaviors of a prisoner and a prison guard, observing the effects they found some pretty disturbing things among the students. Dr. Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University stayed true to what they believed, and they did what they felt they needed to do to find a set of results for their simulation. Unfortunately they where swallowed into the experiment, when they became the roles, just as the students where. So from their point of view I want to say that what they where doing was ethical, and being that the prison experiment was stopped before its half way mark showed that they realized that it was time to call it quits. Dr. Zimbardo noticed

This report on the Stanford Prison Experiment will define the ethical issues related to prisoner treatment and prison culture in a mock scenario created 1971. The findings of this study define the inclination towards corruption and riotous behavior within the overarching relationship between guard and the prisoners. In a short period of time,. The prisoners became hostile and sought to start a riot in order to free themselves from abuses of the prison guards. In some instances, the issue of role-playing limited to reality of the event, but the ethical issues related to issue of prison corruption became evident in the study. The Stanford Prison Experiment provided some important aspects on how good people can became violent lawbreakers within the orison system. In essence, the ethical and experimental conditions of the Stanford Prison experiment define the corrupting culture of prisons in American society during the early 1970s.

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