To be good or to be evil. Why are people evil? Then again, why are people good? What shapes people to be one or the other? Jean-Jacques Rousseau says and thinks that it is our environment that shapes us to be good or evil. Not saying that being born evil isn’t correct, but if growing up in an environment makes us more evil, it truly does depend on the environment that he or she grew up in. Again, not saying that being born evil is not correct, in fact, William Golding believed that every human is born with the propensity to do evil, and some people can or do agree with him on that, but some others disagree with that.
In the Stanford Prison Experiment people signed up to be apart of this experiment, and were given the option to either be guards or prisoners. In the Stanford Prison Experiment article:
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It was described as the real like Lord of the Flies, and that is because it showed a breakdown of the established rules and morals dictating exactly how people should behave towards each other in situations and establishments (the prison)”, Saying, that experts sent out a request looking for people from off the street to come in and be apart of this experiment. Which was to ask them which they would rather be; a guard or a prisoner in the prison. The experts gave the people the option to say what they wanted but then split them into 2 different groups later on. The experts wanted to put these people in this situation to see what would happen.. The people going through this experiment are going to become more open with their “role” and they will eventually begin to think that it is almost real because no one is stopping the
In the end it is you how chooses if you do the evil thing or a good thing., People are generally born good, but there are many factors that can leave a person to act watchful. The way someone is raised has an impact as well as society and human
There are many theories why people could do evil things. Is it because they were abused or had a rough childhood? What if the society isn’t to blame at all for their behavior? (Olivia Goldhill “Are Some Humans born evil?”) People say people are born evil or people who are born good turn evil. This topic has been studied for many years and many people have different opinions about it. A person may say they don’t believe that people are born evil. Another person may think that people are born evil or good people turn evil. An example is babies aren’t born evil. Their minds are wonderful. Their minds are innocent and they don’t know much. A person can’t possibly be born evil. It really depends sometimes how a person is raised or what that person experiences in life.
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
Genetics are the main factor when it comes to humans being inherently “evil”. They play a big part in our life, see as how our genes determine everything about us before we are even born. Before humans are they are selfish and have evil tendencies, they want everything to themselves and will do anything to achieve it. Genes have been proven to be a
No one is born good or evil; it is one's environment and the people they encounter in life which makes them good or evil. A lot of time it is not the individual's fault of the way they are, they might have seen so many bad doings that, they are use to it and might think that it is right. One is not born with a vision of knowing what is wrong and what is right in life, but learns when something happens to
It is a very arguable subject on whether or not people are born with good intentions, and therefore taught by others the ‘evil’ side of their personality. Whether it is the absence of ethical conduct in human nature, or just the way one perceives a situation, evil seems to be prominent in our everyday lives. Humans seem to have a moral code that follows them with every decision they make, yet despite the laws of morality and society, people of this world still seem to behave inhumanely because of the act of self-preservation, human interest, and who exactly the authority figure is at the time.
“That line between good and evil is permeable,” a psychologist from Stanford University by the name of Zimbardo once said. “Any of us can move across it… I argue that we all have the capacity for love and evil — to be Mother Theresa, to be Hitler or Saddam Hussein” (qtd. In Dittmann). Social psychologist Zimbardo implies that we can easily swap from side to side. What factors elicit darkness? What draws out the darkness, making us jump from good to bad? There are many views in the society that attempt to tackle this question. For instance, social psychology and philosophy. Social psychology tends to side with situation and or authority. On the other hand, philosopher John Locke is certain that the accumulation of experiences is the cause. What is the ultimate answer?
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).
Some other preconditions were to make the experimental setting bear a resemblance as closely to a functional simulation of the psychology of imprisonment as humanly possible. He also wanted to make sure that there was the absence of any earlier indoctrination in how to play the randomly assigned roles; to leave that up to each participant’s prior societal teachings of the meaning of prisons and the behavioral scripts associated with the oppositional roles (Zambardo, 2005). Although he had a significantly large abundance
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.
Many people have their own views on humanity. They can either be that humans are essentially good but can become corrupt or that people are just essentially evil. They have their own opinions, some people can tell their perspective on humans in other fashions. If people are essentially good, they how do they become corrupt? Or if are truly evil, then why do some people seem like they are kind people and they can never do such things? To take both of these into account, a person may saw that people are good but deep down have evil within them. People may ask how does the evil within a person come out, the answer to that is that it is thanks to their environment. The environment around a person can undoubtedly draw out the evil within them
Imagine waking up, reading the local Sunday newspaper, and coming across an advertisement that offered fifteen dollars a day to any male college student that was willing to participate in a study at Stanford University for three weeks (Dunning). Close to seventy broke college boys hustled their way to Stanford for an interview with the professor who was leading the experiment, Philip Zimbardo. An interview was conducted to determine whether the boys were healthy, mentally and physically. Only twenty-four of the seventy men were chosen though, only to be test subjects in a study that would look further into the psychological effects of prison life. Making the ones who weren't fit for the study, essentially lucky (Zimbardo).
“Human nature is evil and goodness is caused by intentional activity” - Xunzi. Humans by nature have natural tendencies to evil however not everyone acts on those emotions.
Imagine a world without adults or authority. Where there is no guidance to save people from turning into barbaric beasts. In the Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the story begins with kids being stranded on an island without anything and drifting away from human nurture to human nature, where there is deep chaos and ends up with two big children dead. Even though, this storyline seems unrealistic and out of this world, it happened in a real life experiment under the supervision of Philip G. Zimbardo. The Stanford Prison Experiment is known as “the most unethical study” in history, due to the events that occurred that resulted in complete change of people’s behavior. By learning about the Stanford Prison Experiment, one can learn about the
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.