The Stanford Prison Experiment

Stanford Prison Experiment: In this experiment it took a group of people and made half of them guards and half of them prisoners. The guards were given sunglasses to make them feel more powerful and have a mask to hide behind and the prisoners had chains put on their legs so they can feel a loss of freedom. In the experiment they were not given any rules to how there supposed to treat the prisoners, because these were fake prisoners they challenged the fake guards power. Since the guard’s were not given

The Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by three psychologist; Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Philip Zimbardo. They tested two theories about the prisons. The first theory was dispositional hypothesis and the second was situational hypothesis. Basically, what these psychologist were looking for was, to see how people react when place in a position of authority in the prison system and also how the prisoners react to the environment. The experiment was setup in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University.

The Stanford Prison Experiment took place in 1986, and even though many years had passed since Milgram’s experiment was conducted in 1963, like “The Wild Beast”, people even today still try to be on top of any situation.

The experimental study that I chose to write about is the Stanford Prison Experiment, which was run by Phillip Zimbardo. More than seventy applicants answered an ad looking for volunteers to participate in a study that tested the physiological effects of prison life. The volunteers were all given interviews and personality tests. The study was left with twenty-four male college students. For the experiment, eighteen volunteers took part, with the other volunteers being on call. The volunteers were then divided into two groups, guards and prisoners, randomly assigned by coin flips. The experiment began on August 14th, 1971 in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building. To create the prison cells for the prisoners, the doors were taken

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).

Those designated to enact the role of a prisoner, were arrested by the Palo Alto police department, obliged to wear chains and prison attire, and were transported to the basement of the Stanford psychology department, which was transformed into a makeshift prison. Furthermore, various guards became increasingly aggressive, resulting in the experiment becoming uncontrollable. Within six days, riots broke out, psychological distresses were showcased by certain prisoners, and unruly punishment was given to the prisoners. These irrational and disreputable incidents, caused the experiment to end abruptly.

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).

Philip Zimbardo ended the experiment on the grounds that the behavior of the guards was escalating to a point where it was ethically wrong to treat a person this way, as well as the way the guards broke so many of the initial rules (Zimbardo). The guards misused their power by using it to humiliate and abuse the prisoners. Because of the way this experiment was cut short, data was limited, but this does not mean that what was collected is not useful or helpful. The audio, video, and rating scales of the individuals’ moods were all collected and compiled as the experiment progressed. The data recorded showed that guards and prisoners adjusted easily to their given roles, treating the situation very seriously and realistically. One of the men, Dave Eshelman, who was placed as a guard was interviewed about his time in the prison. In this quote he talks about taking up the role of a guard, and how it affected his mind and the experiment personally:

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?

The Stanford Prison Experiment was very strange. When one of the prisoners said “they were out of control,” I thought about an authoritarian leader- someone that controls every aspect of a person’s life. I think Zimbardo, creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and the guards were being an authoritarian leader. I thought it was disturbing that some of the people that were given the guards position only said “yes” to participate in the experiment because they needed a job and thought that the Prison Experiment would be more entertaining. I think it was weird that being in this experiment changed the “prisoners” physically and mentally. In the Stanford Prison Experiment video, it mentioned the electric shock experiment that was done to people

Zimbardo was experienced in this type of transformation because of his Stanford Prison Experiment. It is possible that peer pressure, threats, and fear of retribution can cause someone to do something that they would normally not do. All aspects of a situation and extenuating circumstances should be considered before judgment is reached. The Stanford Prison Experiment showed the world this facet of human behavior.

Summary of the Stanford Prison Experiment. The stanford prison experiment is an investigation of how people will adhere to the cliché prisoner and guard roles in a simulated prison. According to Stanford Prison Experiment. Retrieved from https://www.dowellwebtools.com/tools/lp/Bo/psyched/17/Stanford_Prison_Experiment Philip Zimbardo the head researcher and acting prison warden says, "The purpose [of the experiment] was to understand the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels, and social expectations in a simulated prison environment. " What followed was an unimaginable series of events that appeared to bring out the worst in both the prisoners and the guards.

Evil exists in our environments. I believe that everyone is born with good intentions. I think the environments that we are put into make us either have a good or evil mindset. An example from the film was the Stanford Prison Experiment. Before the men were put into a prison environment, all of them were just normal college students.

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

The Stanford Prison Experiment was designed to allow 24 participants (college students) to be arrested in a mock police state scenario without any charges being brought against them. The participants were hooded and put into a prison cellblock with other mock prisoners. The purpose of the experiment was to see how non-criminals would be affected by the prison culture and the oversight of prison guards. Philip G. Zimbardo (2004)