The Stanford Prison Experiment And Jonestown

When put into the position of complete authority over others people will show their true colors. I think that most people would like to think that they would be fair, ethical superiors. I know I would, but learning about the Stanford Prison Experiment has made me question what would really happen if I was there. Would I be the submissive prisoner, the sadistic guard, or would I stay true to myself? As Phillip Zimbardo gave the guards their whistles and billy clubs they drastically changed without even realizing it. In order to further understand the Stanford Prison experiment I learned how the experiment was conducted, thought about the ethical quality of this experiment, and why I think it panned out how it did.

Groupthink can be defined as a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in irrational decision-making. In 1971, twenty-four psychologically stable men took part in a trial known as The Stanford Prison Experiment. The purpose of the experiment was to prove that an individual’s perception of their own power is heavily influenced by social context and societal expectations of their role. The men involved in the experiment were assigned either the role of a prisoner or a guard to represent positions in society, both with power and without. More specifically, the conductors of The Stanford Prison Experiment focused on analyzing the different behavioral

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

“That line between good and evil is permeable,” a psychologist from Stanford University by the name of Zimbardo once said. “Any of us can move across it… I argue that we all have the capacity for love and evil — to be Mother Theresa, to be Hitler or Saddam Hussein” (qtd. In Dittmann). Social psychologist Zimbardo implies that we can easily swap from side to side. What factors elicit darkness? What draws out the darkness, making us jump from good to bad? There are many views in the society that attempt to tackle this question. For instance, social psychology and philosophy. Social psychology tends to side with situation and or authority. On the other hand, philosopher John Locke is certain that the accumulation of experiences is the cause. What is the ultimate answer?

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).

When put into an authoritative position over others, is it possible to claim that with this new power individual(s) would be fair and ethical or could it be said that ones true colors would show? A group of researchers, headed by Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing either as prisoners or guards to test the power of the social situation to determine psychological effects and behavior (1971). The experiment simulated a real life scenario of William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies” showing a decay and failure of traditional rules and morals; distracting exactly how people should behave toward one another. This

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 Stanford Prison Experiment sought to recreate a prison experience to study behaviors of prisoners and guards. The authors were seeking answers to the question of dispositional hypothesis which states “that the state of the social institution of prison is due to the “nature” of the people who administer it, or the “nature” of the people who populate it, or both” (A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Stimulated Prison, 1971, pg. 2). In other words, they were studying whether the prisoners and guards behaviors changed due to their personalities or was it the prison environment that caused these changes. The authors considered the recidivism rate that was 75 percent at the time, conditions in prisons, and the belief that prisons

The compliance check involved investigating whether store owners or employers would sale tobacco products to teens. At the stores that I visited, I chaperoned a teen that was pretending to purchase tobacco. I also communicated with store owners regarding the dangers of selling tobacco products. After this experience, I gained an awareness of how easily teens could purchase tobacco. I also learned that there should be more institutions fighting for the rights of teens regarding safety against dangerous substances. This experience further taught me that I should advocate more for vulnerable populations. In addition, that it is essential to change social institutions to be more humane and responsive.

In the article Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: A Lesson in the Power of Situation Professor Philip Zimbardo claims that “the situation and the system creating it also must share in the responsibility for illegal and immoral behavior” when deciding an individual’s criminal accountability. Because the power of a situation has an enormous influencing effect on not only the subject, but the people around the situation and that dynamics in military detainment operations carry immediate risks of mistreatment and power abuse. Good people can do very bad things when in a bad situation. Zimbardo starts off his article for the Chronicle of Higher Education with several different social experiments that have been done. After explaining these studies he recalls his own experiment, the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo shares these studies as a cautionary tale and for the audience to reflect on our justice system in regards to imprisonment. Due to Zimbardo’s various appeals to pathos and logos and the methods he used, the argument that he makes about the justice system is effective and relevant.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was to determine how conformity and obedience could result in people behaving in ways that are counter to how they would at on their own. The main goal of the experiment was to see how social norms and social convections might influence the behavior of participants who are playing the roles of prisoners and prison guards. The study really elaborates on the relationship between the abuser and the abused. It is interesting to see how easily the human psyche gives repetitive abuse and is conditioned to receive it and accept it. This paper will discuss the motives, procedures, findings, ethical issues, and informed consent the Stanford Prison Experiment concluded on.

The movie, “Thank You for Smoking” is a comedy with a tobacco industry lobbyist, Nick Naylor as the lead. The movie has an eerie comic theme which tackles the serious issue of the addicting substance of tobacco, or to be more specific, nicotine. The idea which the movie was trying to portray was that this lobbyist was a great speaker who is able to manipulate many a feeble-mind. A lobbyist, to begin with, is one who is employed to persuade all-concerned of the employer’s concern(s), in this case, the marketing of tobacco products.

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

However our concern here is not only about the cigarette as a product but with the ethics of cigarettes as well, that affect the social process of marketing. This is because marketing process makes things worse and is also considered as unethical, and as a result has a significant negative impact on the societal welfare. Multinational tobacco companies apply sophisticated strategies ( such as putting flavor in the cigarettes and placing cigarettes in the shops near the sweets to make them more appealing) and invest huge amounts of money for marketing, in order to establish brand familiarity and future loyalty among young peoplem, to secure profits in the long run. 'The tobacco epidemic is a man-made international health crisis, created and sustained by multinational tobacco corporations.' (Yach, Brinchmann, Bellet page 2).

To illustrate, several studies have identified social controls whose absence has caused adolescents to experiment and initiate in tobacco use. Starting at home, the influence of parental attitude and behavior toward adolescent smoking has a major impact on adolescent smoking. Newman and Ward (1989) sampled 735 students from 12 schools in and around one moderately sized Midwestern city, 18.5% of the sample were smokers. In this study, Newman & Ward asked the students questions via a questionnaire in order to rate the parental attitudes. One question asked was, "With regards to my smoking cigarettes, my parents/guardian would: threaten to punish me if I smoked; haven't told me how they feel if I smoke? ; have told me they don't care if I smoke" (Newman and Ward, 1989, p. 150). Two-thirds of the students reported that both parents would be upset if they smoked. An interesting note was that about two-thirds of the nonsmoking adolescents reported parental disapproval versus one-half of the smoking adolescents. The analysis of the data revealed that when neither parent smoked and