Summary Of The Stanford Prison Experiment

“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).

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).

”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 the article Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: A Lesson in the Power of Situation Professor Philip Zimbardo claims that “the situation and the system creating it also must share in the responsibility for illegal and immoral behavior” when deciding an individual’s criminal accountability. Because the power of a situation has an enormous influencing effect on not only the subject, but the people around the situation and that dynamics in military detainment operations carry immediate risks of mistreatment and power abuse. Good people can do very bad things when in a bad situation. Zimbardo starts off his article for the Chronicle of Higher Education with several different social experiments that have been done. After explaining these studies he recalls his own experiment, the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo shares these studies as a cautionary tale and for the audience to reflect on our justice system in regards to imprisonment. Due to Zimbardo’s various appeals to pathos and logos and the methods he used, the argument that he makes about the justice system is effective and relevant.

If I was in charge of an experiment like the Stanford Prison Experiment, I think that I would have conducted something like that. I don’t see any moral reasoning why not to, all the participants were voluntary and there was nothing illegal being conducted and extremely valuable data has been extracted from it so I do not see the point of steering clear of this type of experiment. I think a good follow on study might have been a roll reversal, would the inmates have taken a different approach to the guard duties knowing how they were treated while inmates or would they have acted even more aggressive?

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.

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).

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth"~– John F. Kennedy. For many years young adults have been pressured to do things that they might not want to go through, even though the situation might be harmful to them or others. However they go through with it anyway because they feel the need to fit in with their peers. Conformity is defined as the change in behavior that arises from social influences that may be put on one in different situations, in order to fit in with a certain group. Although people may indulge with people who encourage good behaviors, but it usually ends with kids being encouraged to act with inhuman and savage actions.

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

Imagine that the year is 1971, and you are a male college student at Stanford University in California. Like most college kids, you are strapped for cash, so you begin to seek a part time job. You see an ad for a psychology study that pays $15 per day posted in the local newspaper, and decide to submit an application. Little do you know at the time, that the study you are applying for will become known worldwide and create such an impact that it remains relevant over 44 years later. This infamous study is known today as the Stanford Prison Experiment. The experiment was led by psychology professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo along with his team of researchers in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University. Today, I am going to speak about why the experiment was conducted, what occurred during the experiment, and the ethical implications that resulted because of this notorious study.

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 process in which the prisoners were chosen and how the prison was set up were key

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

Without disbelief, if no consequences existed for the actions of people in a society, many individuals would perform whatever selfish acts they intend whenever they desire, usually outside of the social standards. That is to say, power corrupts more. When individuals are granted the position of power, they use the supremacy without being responsible for their acts and thus, use the authority in excess.