The Role Of A Guard And A Prisoner

Conclusion: People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards. The “prison” environment was an important factor in creating the guards’ brutal behavior (none of the participants who acted as guards showed sadistic tendencies before the study). Therefore, the roles that people play can shape their behavior and attitudes.

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

On the other hand, the guards were treated differently from the inmates as they were given identical guard-style uniforms, reflective sunglasses that aimed to provide them an authoritative, secretive appearance and the freedom to live their normal lives when they were not on their 8-hour shifts. The independent variable of the “Stanford Prison” study is the roles into the participants were randomly assigned to in the mock prison environment, while the dependent variable of this study is the behavior measures, he emotional measures of mood and pathology, attitudes toward self among these prisoners and guards. The findings of this experiment were absolutely mind-blowing. The mock prison environment turned into a reality and the roles assigned to these college students became their real identities (either prisoners or guards). The guards treated the prisoners with no mercy, coming up with creative ways of breaking the prisoners’ spirit. Meanwhile, all the prisoners seemed to forget that they do have the rights to quit the study anytime they intend to, instead they submissively accepted and conformed to the rules set by the guards, including the sadistic and degrading treatments from the

Philip Zimbardo and his team aimed to demonstrate the situational rather than the dispositional causes of negative behaviour and thought patters found in prison settings by conducting the simulation with average everyday participants playing the roles of guard and prisoner. From a total of seventy-five volunteers, twenty-two male participants

One of the most famous psychological studies, the Stanford Prison experiment conducted by Philip Zimabardo, attempts to show how social roles influence our behavior. “Guards” in the study quickly assumed distressing behavior resulting in the experiment to be terminated after six days. “Zimbardo today maintains that the balance of power in prisons is so unequal that they tend to be brutal places, unless the guards observe strict regulations, to curb their worst impulses.” (Gilovich, Keltner, Chen, Nisbett, Social Psychology Fourth Edition Pg.7) The environment in a prison exhibits three major social psychology concepts that can be easily discerned through the fictional film The Shawshank Redemption. The main character demonstrates concepts of social psychology through his relationships, persuasion techniques, and encounters with aggression.

Zimbardo (1973) carried out a study to demonstrate the situational causes of hostile behaviour which refers to the powerful influence that the prevailing circumstances and situations can have on one’s behaviour. The volunteers who were recruited through a newspaper advert were promised $15 per day for their participation in the experiment which was carried out in a mock prison where they were randomly allocated the role of prisoners or guards (Cherry, 2015).

Philip Zimbardo is known for his famous prison experiment that revealed some important facts about human nature. This type of experiment had never been done before. The Stanford prison experiment was designed to find 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” (McLeod 1). Zimbardo was influenced by the Milgram experiment, which was a study of the power of the situation. He says that the Milgram experiment was focused on one-on-one social power. Zimbardo’s experiment was focused on institutional power over the individual in groups due to the change of the environment. Zimbardo has written many books about social psychology, which is the study of human behaviors and the social situation. I learned about Zimbardo in my Psychology 100 class. He was born on March 23, 1933, and is still alive to this day. His studies and experiments are what influenced me to go into the field of psychology. Zimbardo is a crucial social psychologist because of his prison experiment, which led to unique discoveries.

There is no doubt that the study conducted by Dr Philip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University was extremely valuable to not only the Psychology profession, but also to all social science fields. He tested and selected participates to recreate a prison environment separating one group into two, guards and prisoners, and the results were truly ground breaking.

The Stanford prison experiment was a study conducted by Professor Phillip Zimbardo about psychological effect on prisoners and prison guards. He conducted the experiment because he wanted to find out whether the brutality of guards in American prisons was due to sadistic personalities of the guards or the behaviors of the guards towards the prisoners had to with prison Environment. The study elicited pathological reactions from many of the participant. The purpose of the study was to understand the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels and social expectations in a simulated prison environment.

Zimbardo wanted to know if the way guards in American prisons acted was dispositional, explaining behavior due to an individuals personality or situational, explain behavior due to the environment one is in. To make sure the experiment was a real as possible, Zimbardo

Some say Zimbardo converted the basement of an unused Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. He then advertised for students to play the roles of prisoners and guards, all male students. Over 70 people answered his advertisement, the applicants went through a series diagnostic interviews and some personality tests. Zimbardo did these interviews to eliminate the possibility of picking a candidate with psychological problems, medical disabilities, or a history of crime or drug abuse. At the end of his processes he picked about twenty-four male college students, the students where not just volunteer they were paid fifteen dollars per day to take part in the experiment. Before starting his experiment, he hypothesized that prisoners and guards would have personalities which would make conflicts inevitable. And with prisoner’s personalities lacking respect for law and rules and guards being domineering and aggressive. The prisoners and guards may behave in a hostile manner due to the extreme rigid power structures of the social environment in prisons. And that is the reason for the experiment, to find out how people act when given some sort of

Zimbardo’s (1973) aim was to analyze the aftermath of experiencing the life of an inmates. To do so, the latter recruited participants and the subjects were allocated to the position of prison guards and inmates randomly. Only a few hours after being exposed to the prison life, both prisoners and guards got overly impregnated with their respective roles causing psychological harm which lead to the experiment being dismissed after only five days. Zimbardo enquired afterwards and found that the participants started believing that they were really prison officers and inmates, hence showing that they had conformed to their roles. However, similar to Milgram’s study, ethical issues were raised whereby the harm caused psychologically by the study could not be foreseen by any of the experimenters (Zimbardo et al.,

"A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison" is a research project which was created by Haney, C., Banks, W.C. & Zimbardo, P.G. (1973). The article is study for both of prisoners and guards psychological behaviors in a simulation prison. The authors have dispositional hypotheses which are "....despicable conditions, violence, brutality, dehumanization and degradation existing "in prisoners, on the other hand, "sadistic, uneducated and insensitive people” in guards

In conclusion to his study, he found that people will willingly conform to the social roles that they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards. The “prison” environment was an important factor in creating the guards’ violent behaviour (however none of the participants who acted as guards showed cruel behaviour/ mentality before the study). Therefore, this means that the roles that people play can shape their behaviour and attitudes.

The main purpose of Philip Zimbardo’s experiment was to see if inborn personality traits of inmates and guards were the main reason of aggressive behaviors in prison. He wanted to study the human response to captivity and find different effects of personality changes. This research was conducted in a makeshift jail in the school’s building of psychology basement of Stanford University in 1971 for a short period of days. Zimbardo wanted to make sure that the experiment was life-like and treated the assigned student “prisoners” and assigned “guards” as if those were their real-life roles. He wanted accurate results and effects from this experiment.