Summary Zimbardo

Zimbardo (1973) was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards or had more to do with the prison environment.

She begins recounting the notorious details, how innocent college students labeled prisoners and guards displayed psychological abuse after only six days of confinement, and makes reference to Stanley Milgram’s obedience study and Abu Ghraib, where similar maltreatment, perceived or real, was conducted on civilians by civilians. She addresses and refutes the accepted belief that the Stanford Prison Experiment proved that anyone could become a tyrant when given or instructed by a source of authority. Instead, she suggests that Zimbardo’s inquiry points toward but does not land on one exact conclusion. She explains the influence of the setting, the presentation of the roles, Zimbardo’s participation, and perhaps a sense of expectation felt, all of which can be reflected in the shocking behavior of a few guards. She argues that it should not have been so shocking. Konnikova discredits the neutrality of Zimbardo’s experiment by insisting that people who would respond to an ad for a psychological study of prison life were not “normal” people. However, with her diction and choice of evidence she displaces the study's culpability in a way that ultimately blurs and undermines her claim.

The article on the Stanford Prison Experiment titled, A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Simulated Prison and written by the Office of Naval Research, provides us with the overall information that deals with this controversial psychological study. The study was conducted by

Philip (2009) to try and see what was being said about prison treatment was true, this was called the Stanford prison experiment. This experiment only lasted 6 days due to the circumstances versus 6 weeks. Zimbardo had to find out whether the prisons were brutal due to the guards or due to the environment. It was clear that the role of the guards was the issue and not the environment. This was discovered when a sample was chosen from the population. Each induvial was set up to be a guard or a prisoner at random. In this study researchers got see the unfortunate power of social situations. Once prisoner and guard roles were assigned each group were told that they were being watched by the researcher and his colleagues, the guards were to not hit the prisoners, and debriefed about the experiment. Although all this was told the guards took situations into their own hands and the power took over. The guards began simply viewing them as prisoners and the prisoners began to fear the guards. It is important to note the researcher did not intervene but continued to observe when the hitting was taking place. This is particularly important because not only are the guards fitting the rod but the researcher is at fault for the fundamental attribution error but viewing the situation for what it

In 1973, in an attempt to understand the conformity to roles of guards and prisoners, Zimbardo launched a role-playing experiment that modeled prison life and reflected the environment of an American prison. The experiment was to see if prison guards are brutal and cruel because that’s their sadistic personality types that cause conflicts with the prisoners or if its due to the prison setting itself. In other words, there is a dispositional hypothesis that states that prison guards act the way they do because their personalities cause

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.

This experiment needed to answer some difficult questions; one being what happens when you put a good man in a horrible, evil place such as a prison. The person leading the experiment was Psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Zimbardo and his contemporaries needed to find people willing to participate in how the impact of prison life affects the guards and the prisoners. Using an ad in the paper offering fifteen dollars a day, seventy people filled out applications and were heavy screened for drug abuse, any involvements in crime, or any underlying mental illness that was not documented, only twenty-four students from various colleges in Canada and the Stanford area were given the paid opportunity to take part of Zimbardo’s experiment (Zimbardo, Haney, Banks, & Jaffe, 1971).

Since I was a little kid my parents taught me that this world is divided into two groups: The first group is the people who always do good and barely sin or offend others, the second group is the evil people who always want to hurt others and make them suffer. They told me that it’s extremely difficult to change someone’s characteristics after growing up in a certain way and acting either with kindness or hatred towards other people. I had been convinced with this idea until I read about the Stanford Prison Experiment. In his article, Doctor Zimbardo talks about an experiment he conducted that demonstrated how normal people would react when they are put in jail. 9 students were playing the guard's role and 9 students were playing the prisoner’s

This paper analyzes both the Pennsylvania, and the Auburn prison projects.This is done in order to help understand the progression of these experiments, and to compare them to the prison culture of today. Through evaluation, it is clear that while many practices in prisons have in fact change. Mostly due to discrepancies relating to cruel and unusual punishment. The end goal has till remained the same. That being to deter people from committing crime by using the fear of going to prison as a weapon.

This paper serves to summarize The Zimbardo Prison Experiment, better known as The Stanford Prison Experiment which was conducted by Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. The purpose of the study was to conduct research in order to better understand the psychological components of human aggression and submission to include conformity and obedience in a prison environment with a select group of subjects playing roles as either prison guards or inmates, however, I should note, according to McLeod, S. (2016), The Navy’s intent or purpose for the experiment was to better understand how to train members of the armed forces on how to cope with stress associated with captivity as opposed to making American Prison systems more humane. Another interesting point of note is that Zimbardo conducted this experiment shortly after World War II, and the Vietnam War where concern was raised as to some of the atrocities carried out in those wars where “ordinary” people conducted heinous acts per instruction from so-called authoritative figures. Experiments with similar objectives were carried out by Stanley Milgram and others. (Jones, A. D., & Milgram, S. 1974)

Richard A. Griggs, a well known psychologist said Zimbardo, “gave the guards an orientation that seems to have produced clear guidance about how they should behave.” Although Zimbardo concluded that a person’s environment caused normal people to become evil, psychologist, Erich Fromm disagreed saying that only one-third of the guards in the study harassed the prisoners. Fromm also mentioned that two thirds of the guards did not mistreat prisoners for the fun of it. Therefore, according to Fromm, it can be proven that people do not become evil just because of a specific situation and environment they are placed in. Other criticisms include, selecting subjects in a bias manner,

The captive says that he snuck into Zoraida’s father’s garden to see her, told her of his plan to escape from Algiers, and finally kidnapped her. Zoraida’s father awoke while the captive was kidnapping her, so they brought the father with them on the ship and dropped him off some miles away from the city. The captive and his companions rowed for several days until French pirates robbed them of all Zoraida’s riches. Once they arrived in Spain, they determined to go to the captive’s father, baptize Zoraida, and get married. After the captive finishes his story, a judge named Licentiate Juan Perez de Viedma arrives at the inn with his beautiful daughter, Clara. The captive realizes that the judge is his brother. The priest, after successfully

When discussing Dr. Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison experiment, designed to examine the psychological impact of prison life on both prisoners and guards, the first question raised is a matter of ethics. Was the Stanford Prison experiment an ethical experiment, if not why? The Zimbardo study did meet the Nuremburg Code requirement that all participants enter into the experiment voluntarily. Every student cast in either the role of a guard or prisoner was a volunteer, had been evaluated and determined to be healthy, and the participants were compensated for their time in the study at 15 dollars per day. It also complied with the Common Rule, which required Dr. Zimbardo to submit his study to the approval of an institutional review board (IRB). In this case, the study met the IRB’s criteria and the study was approved. Also, Zimbardo did not knowingly deceive his subjects. Though little direction was given, the volunteers knew the parameters of the experiment, understood their respective roles as either a prisoner or a guard, and had full knowledge that the experiment had an end date.

Dispositional and situational factors play a crucial role in the psychological explanation of human behavior. There are a range of experiments offering evidence for both dispositional and situational factors and their influence on behavior. The two terms are relevant in psychology because they create a differentiation between external, environmental factors and ones having to do with body chemistry.

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