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

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been one of great controversy since it took place in 1971. Originally established to observe and record the psychological effects the criminal justice system has on prisoners and guards, the experiment went awry due to the neglect of Zimbardo, the scientist holding the experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment or SPE consisted of 18 students and 6 alternatives recreating regular prison life by being randomly assigned the roles of prisoner and guard. Due to his gross misconduct, Zimbardo is personally responsible for the stripping of scientific value from his “experiment.” He is remembered not his contributions to the scientific community, but for being memorably cruel and resulting in a full re-establishment of the ethical guidelines of the Institutional Review Board.

In the Zimbardo’s The Stanford Prison Experiment; however, the ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ were placed in the same facility and were face to face on a daily basis unlike the Milgram experiment. The ‘guards’ would tell the ‘prisoners’ jokingly to do something, however the ‘prisoners’ would do what they were commanded to do to try to hang on to their identity. (Zimbardo 393) By the end of the experiment most ‘prisoners’ showed increased stress levels in the ‘prisoners’ within days, some ‘prisoners’ could not handle the stress induced and had to be released early. The ‘guards’ were equally changed do to the scenario they were put in. One journal of the ‘guards’ showed how a passive person became a person shoving food down another person’s mouth and locking them up in solitary confinement (Zimbardo 389-399).

The famous Stanford Prison Experiment, of 1971, was a psychological experiment put together by Philip Zimbardo, who was a social psychologist. The main point of the experiment was to observe the social powers of a given role, the social norms, and the script of a person. However, not being able to go to an actual prison, Zimbardo created a mock prison in the basement of the Psychology building at Stanford University. An ad was placed in the local newspapers asking for male volunteers. All volunteers were male college students, of Stanford or the surrounding counties. Over seventy men volunteered to play a role in the experiment. Every single one of them was put through psychological testing. the psychological test was used to

In the summer of 1971, male college students were seeked for a “psychological study of prison life” led by Philip Zimbardo (Zimbardo). Zimbardo, then a psychology professor at Stanford University, aimed to investigate how willingly people would adhere to the roles of guard and prisoner in a simulated prison. Of more than 75 applicants, 21 law-abiding, physically healthy and emotionally stable students were chosen. They were each to be paid $15 a day and the experiment was set to run for one to two weeks in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building. Participants were divided into 10 prisoners and 11 guards by the flip of a coin. Hidden microphones and a camera were used to record much of the interaction between guards and prisoners.

The 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, led by Philip Zimbardo, was the study on the psychology of imprisonment and the investigation of abusive power through military guards and its effect on prisoners. The result of this experiment mirrored historical events and figures who had taken advantage of their positions of authority. College students were brought in as prisoners and were surprised with casual arrests. From that point, they were booked, and brought to the undisclosed location or prison, that was held in the lower ground floor of The

In 1971, Stanford Researchers, led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to understand the relationship of the prison environment on behavior (Thistlethwaite & Wooldredge, 2010). The intentional focus on the experiment was how people react in a powerless situation, not specifically aimed at just the guards (Ratnesar, 2011). The experiment's subjects were volunteers who were split into two groups - “guards” and “inmates.” The prison was a makeshift jail built in the basement of Stanford's psychology building. The guards were given very broad authority in maintaining order and control of the prison. The inmates were stripped of their identities by wearing prison gowns and caps and were referred by only their inmate number, not by their names. During their detainment, they were sleep deprived, kept to a strict routine of bathroom breaks and offered three meals per day. Over the course of thirty-six hours, the boundaries of the

Professor Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to figure out whether the brutal tendencies of prison guards were due to their personalities, or simply their environment. In this experiment, Zimbardo converted the SU basement into a replica of a prison. Following this, he advertised the experiment asking for students to participates in the “prisoner and guard” scenario. About 75 students responded to the ad, and were tested and interviewed in order to checked for psychological disorders or any other disorder which would interfere with the experiment and its results. Out of the 75, 25 students were chosen to participate and were each given $15 a day for their troubles. They were then randomly assigned to one of two roles: prisoner or prison guard. The prisoners and guards were all in groups of three; prisoners in the “cells”, and the prison guards doing their jobs as guards. The prison experience was intended to be as real as possible, prisoners were treated as such. They were arrested, fingerprinted, stripped, and blindfolded. Their personal possessions were confiscated, they were to wear uniforms, and they were referred to by their “ID numbers”. As for the guards, they were all dressed in khaki uniforms, they carried a whistle and a billy club. They were to wear sunglasses to prevent eye contact with the prisoners and were instructed to do whatever

This way was just as effective as physically harming them. From the very beginning the guards needed to assert their power and authority so it gives the impression of a real prison and makes the experiment as real as possible, they succeeded. They brought in a priest who heard confessions from prisoners and when he listened to the mock prisoners even he began to think it was a real prison and he said that the responses that he heard were similar to real prisoners who had just been imprisoned.

In 1971 Dr. Philip Zimbardo, conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment at Stanford University in the basement. According to Zimbardo, the study was an effort to see how well people would react in a place of confinement, Classic Studies in Psychology, (2012). There were 24 male randomly assigned to act as guards or prisoners in the derision prison. The endeavor was of this study was at the start to last two weeks, but was ended after six days due to the immoderate action of the participants, because some guards were abusive, prisoners became passive. The participants prisoners was unexpectedly arrested at their home, fingerprinted, booked, and taken to the simulated prison by officers of the local police department. The normal setting for arrest, However, the stage was set for this experiment.

What started out as a make-believe prison setting experiment quickly evolved into a real prison situation with the inmates and officers. The guards were giving the

“The Stanford Prison Experiment has become one of psychology's most dramatic illustrations of how good people can be transformed into perpetrators of evil, and healthy people can begin to experience a pathological reaction,” ("Demonstrating the Power of Social Situations via a Simulated Prison Experiment"). Dr. Philip Zimbardo conducted this “dramatic illustration” in the basement of Jordan Hall, a psychology building on the Stanford University campus from August 14th - 20th, 1971. As a result of the experiment, multiple "prisoners" had breakdowns and were “released;” the experiment had to be ended after six days, before it was halfway through the planned two weeks. Although the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was at the time considered technically

The study took place in the basement of the Stanford University Psychology which was turned into a mock prison and the study was compromised of 24 male college students who were paid to take part in the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to be a guard or prisoners and the prison simulation was kept as real as possible with prisoners being treated as they would be treated if they were in an actual prison and the guards were able to give out punishment of those prisoners who they deemed non-compliant. The prisoners faced harassment, physical and psychological punishment from the guards and in some cases, were put in solitary confinement.

Words printed under the part-time job section of a local newspaper: “Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1 – 2 weeks beginning at Aug. 14. For further information & applications, come to Room 248, Jordan Hall, Stanford U.” In only a few days following the publication of this ad, 24 young men would enter what can only be described as one of the most psychologically horrifying experiments that would ever be carried out. The Stanford Prison Experiment was an iconic study conducted by Philip Zimbardo that aimed to observe the response of human captivity, and more specifically, how being held captive as a prisoner affected a person. Additionally, this study was designed to see how power, even

“Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment remains an important study in our understanding of how situational forces can influence human behavior” (Cherry).“The purpose was to understand the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels, and social expectations in a simulated prison environment” (“Stanford Prison Experiment”). What was supposed to be a two week experiment only went on for six days because Philip G. Zimbardo says “our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress” (“Stanford Prison Experiment”). In 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment successfully proved that predefined roles strip away individuality, moral values, and dignity.

After critically going through and reviewing the Stanford Prison Experiment article, I have found that the general topic was to find out how people react or act out to different situations mainly when they have been assigned roles or responsibilities to play. From the introduction, the guards forgot that it was just an experiment not