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The Environment Of A Prison Is Affiliated As An Aggressive And Violent Institution

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The environment of a prison is affiliated as an aggressive and violent institution. Paul Zimbardo, a psychologist and Stanford University professor believed it was the nature of the roles that prisoners and guards were expected to portray that induced such violent behavior. He conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 to observe ordinary people when randomly assigned the roles of a “prisoner” or a “guard”. He gathered 24 young male students from the United States and Canada, converting the basement of the Stanford psychology building into a mock prison to conduct the experiment. Costumes were provided in an attempt to make the experiment more “realistic”. The participants who were to be guards were given uniforms, mirrored…show more content…
The experiment was also a good way to demonstrate power difference and its effects. When one is given the power of authority, they may begin to abuse it. It is in this experiment that displays that in every human, we have a “dark” and “sadistic” side, and it takes the right conditions to be released. In relation to this, psychologists were able to derive several ways to foster “evil” among humans. Among the list include; “make those in charge seem like a “just authority”, transform compassionate leader into a dictator, provide people with vague and ever changing rules and provide people with an ideology to justify beliefs for actions.” (American Psychological Association) The experiment offered such lessons which gave us a better understanding between the connection of human behavior and the environment surrounding. During the experiment, there was a huge disconnect between reality and role-play. After the subjects were told to take on the roles of guards and prisoners, they became extremely absorbed in their roles. When the prisoners rebelled against their incarceration, as a stereotypical prisoner would do, the guards acted as any stereotypical power abusing prisoner guard. Their actions included stripping the prisoners naked, removing the beds from the prison, and placing the rebellions ringleader in solitary confinement while harassing the rest of the prisoners. The prisoners than began to
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