The Stanford Prison Experiment Addressed The Psychology Of Behavior Essay

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a clear example of how humans can adapt to specific social roles and behave differently under the pressure of control. The experiment illustrated the concepts of deviance and social control through participants behavior. Although the prisoners were not really prisoners, they believed that they were. The behavior of the prisoners began to morph along with the experiment. By day two, the prisoners were showing deviance by barricading themselves inside their cells. The environment and treatment of the prisoners were likely causes of the disobedience. Similarly, the guards showed signs of social control throughout the experiment. Guards were able to show control over the prisoners through various actions, such

Social psychology is an empirical science that studies how people think about, influence, and relate to one another. This field focuses on how individuals view and affect one another. Social psychology also produces the idea of construals which represent how a person perceives, comprehends or interprets the environment. Construals introduce the idea that people want to make themselves look good to others and they want to be seen as right. It is also said that the social setting in which people interact impacts behavior, which brings up the idea of behaviorism. Behaviorism is the idea that behavior is a function of the person and the environment.

Stanley Milgram's "The Perils of Obedience" and Philip G. Zimbardo's "The Stanford Prison Experiment" both effectively use experiments to discuss factors that effect one's obedience to authority. Milgram's experiment involves a test subject, also called the teacher, who is asked by an authority figure, or the "experimenter" to give out question to a learner. If the learner answers incorrectly, the teacher is asked to deliver shocks to the student that increase in voltage each time. Conflict arises when the learner begins to cry out in pain, and the teacher must decide to stop and listen to the learner's pleas, or obey the experimenter. Both the experimenter and the learner are actors, while the teacher remains oblivious to the experiment. The results show twenty-five out of forty learners obeying the authority to the end, administrating 450 volts (Milgram 80). Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment consists of twenty-one college aged males, ten of which are assigned as prisoners, and eleven of which are assigned as guards. The subjects are placed in a mock prison, where they acted in ways they did not know was possible, even though they are aware of being in an experiment: the guards frequently harass and torment the prisoners in various manners due to being deindividualized. Though Milgram explains the power of the situation causing obedience more fairly, Zimbardo more effectively explains the impact of wanting to please others. Though Milgram and Zimbardo both logical

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).

In Maria Konnikova’s “The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment” she reveals what she believes to be the reality of sociologist Philip Zimbardo’s controversial study: its participants were not “regular” people.

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

In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues created the experiment known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo wanted to investigate further into human behavior, so he created this experiment that looked at the impact of taking the role of a prisoner or prison guard. These researchers examined how the participants would react when placed in an institutionalized prison environment. They set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology building. Twenty four undergraduate students were selected to play the roles of both prisoners and guards. These students were chosen because they were emotional, physically, and mentally stable. Though the experiment was expected to last two weeks, it only lasted six days after the researchers and participants became aware of the harm that was being done.

What forms a person’s predisposition to act in a certain way in any given situation? Is our personality something that we are born with or does it develop over time, and furthermore once it is ‘developed’ can it be significantly influenced by our surroundings? It is something that each of us wonders as we go about our daily lives. We wish that our circumstances were different so that we could be different people. Most of the time this type of thinking, if verbalized, receives responses along the lines of ‘life is what you make it’ putting pressure back on our actions to change who we are. We are raised to believe that our circumstances are a result of our actions and not the other way around. The Stanford prison experiment results are in opposition to this mentality that life is what you make it. Perhaps our circumstances can change our behavior and personality completely, and if so this may mean that disobedience should appear as a virtue instead of a harmful habit of the arrogant. Erich Fromm was a distinguished psychologist and philosopher who wrote an essay entitled Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem ten years before Zimbardo’s experiment in 1973. Fromm writes that disobedience is an integral part of human nature that allows us to progress as a species and as individuals. The authoritarian and humanitarian principle also defines the different personalities that human beings have as depicted Zimbardo’s experiments.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by a research group led by Dr. Philip Zimbardo using Stanford students during August 14 through the 20th of 1971. Dr. Zimbardo wanted to see how people reacted when they are either put in captivity or in charge of others. The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research and grew interest to both the US Navy and the Marine Corps for an investigation to the purpose of conflict among military guards and prisoners. In the study, 24 male students were selected out of 75 applicants to take on randomly assigned roles. One of the surprises of the study was how participants quickly adapted to roles well beyond expectations. After the first eight hours, the experiment turned to be a joke and nobody was taking it seriously but then prisoners

Ethics in Experiments: The Stanford Prison Experiment Lyndsey Brady Brigham Young University I chose to read and research more about the Stanford Prison Experiment that was headed by Philip Zimbardo. He conducted this experiment as a way to “demonstrate the power of social situations to distort personal identities and long cherished values and morality as students internalized situated identities in their roles as prisoners and guards” (Zimbardo, Research, 2004). On one of his websites, prisonexp.org, Dr. Zimbardo explains that he gained his sample from placing “a local newspaper ad calling for volunteers in a study of the psychological effects of prison life.” He continues to explain that after receiving about 70 applicants

In the Stanford prison experiment, several young men were treated as if they were arrested and imprisoned; additionally, some of the men from the same age group were treated as correctional facility officers with full training because that somehow simulated a trained professional in the same setting. Additionally, “researchers” felt the need to prevent any movement whatsoever of the prisoners, something that does not happen in a prison environment as it is torture. In actuality, Phil Zambardo hired immature young adults to torture other young adults while he is so deprived of any mortal barometer that he failed to halt it. Psychologists have somehow concluded that his bemusing conclusions somehow reflect average human behavior in a prison environment. (McLeod, S. A. 2016)

I came to an denouement that the people that was in charge of this organization was setting the kids up not only failure but turning them into criminals slowly but surely. At first it was all fun & games until the guards started abusing their authority then that’s when the experiment quickly went left.

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

Zimbardo was concerned with social roles and the way in which ordinary people behaved under certain conditions. With that being said, it can be further stated that the ultimate objective of the study was to determine whether the guard’s aggressive behavior was dispositional by nature or situational which is indicative of

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)