The Zimbardo Prison Experiment

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

1. The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment that was created to test the effect between prisoners and prison officers. The experiment took place in the basement of one of the buildings in Stanford University. The prisoners and guards in the experiment were college students. The college students were told that they would get $15 dollars a day and that the experiment would last two weeks. The guards and prisoners were decided by a flip of a coin. The experiment abruptly ended after six days because of the mental break downs and hunger strikes the inmates were having. The BoBo Doll Experiment was an experiment that studied aggression. The way that the experiment worked was that they had adults attack the BoBo doll and they made the children watch to see if they would mimic the adults actions. When presented with the BoBo doll the children acted the same way as they saw the adults act. They were able to learn the aggression and hostile language from the adults.

The Zimbardo prison experiment was a study of human responses to captivity, dehumanization and its effects on the behavior on authority figures and inmates in prison situations. Conducted in 1971 the experiment was led by Phlilip Zimbardo. Volunteer College students played the roles of both guards and prisoners living in a simulated prison setting in the basement of the Stanford psychology building.

In 1971, this experiment was initiated by Prof Philip Zimbardo, who is the psychology professor of the Stanford University. He designed this experiment was for the purpose of the study of human behavior when good people were put into an evil environment. He wanted to study what motivate the human behavior if the environment people stay controls their behaviors or their behavior are leaded by people’s insight capacity which are their moralities and values.

Phillip Zimbardo’s Standford Prison Experiment is one of the most amazing psychological experiments of all time. It showed that the human mind can be manipulated and changed if the amount of power one has is not under control. In this essay I am going to talk about variables that affected the experiment, ethics, personal relation and what I learned from it all.

Psychologists that create theories, usually through this objective viewpoint, seek to explain these aggressive behaviors displayed within Zimbardo’s prison environment often through biological explanations. Biological and social topics such as “gene by environment interactions”, as explained by Stoff and Susman (2005), aim to target particular genes within species of rat and monkey, and once having been able to target the suspected genes, place these animals within differing social environments to see how these animals develop socially. They found that the animals raised within poor social environments showed the predicted signs of aggression, even showing signs of psychopathy, while the animals in healthy social environments developed with

Adrien Brody (Travis) and Forest Whittaker (Michael) star in The Experiment, a film that features a group of men who have volunteered and been chosen for a psychological experiment. In the experiment the 26 men are split up into prison guards and inmates. Travis is selected as a prisoner while Michael is picked to be a guard. A set of strict rules are put into place and if at any time the rules are broken the "experiment" is over and the men will not receive their reward of $14,000 for participating. As the movie progresses things move rather quickly and as most people would probably assume, guards begin to feel like they're better than the prisoners and have all of the power. This leads to the humiliation of the prisoners at the hands of the guards. In the final act Travis leads a

The Stanford prison experiment overview and the variables involved The Stanford prison experiment was a research experiment conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. The experiment involved male college students and the goal was to be able to understand the behaviour between prisoners and guards within a prison setting. The mock prison was set up in the basement of Stanford University and an ad was created with information on the experiment offering the college students fifteen dollars a day to participate in the study. A total of seventy-five male applicants applied to be a part of the study but after conducting numerous psychological tests on the applicants only twenty-four proved to be successful.

For the prison experiment, Zimbardo picked random people that applied. People that applied were either going to be chosen to act as a prisoner or a guard for a set up fake prison. The people that got the position to act as the roles got paid. The point for this experiment was to see how long it would take for people to adjust to their role. Zimbardo wanted to find out if how they acted was affected by their surrounding environment or the roles that they had to fill.

The Stanford prison experiment was made and led by a psychological professor named Phillip Zimbardo. The purpose of this experiment was to understand personalities and people’s behavior, so it was a study for psychological conclusions of becoming a prisoner or a prison guard. The prison was made in the university basement of the psychological department. Zimbardo and his team selected 24 participants out of 75.

Watching this video and having it concentrate on the individual, I was shocked by the results of the Zimbardo Prison Experiment and the situation with Hitler. I felt like these people weren't bad people but were lead by the moment and the situation and the environment surrounding them. The Zimbardo experiment was quite interesting to me but also shocking, I believe that we all have some type of evil in ourselves some use it all the time and some don’t. Like in the case of all does students they became brutal and mean towards their classmates, watching the video when they got one of the students that acted like the officer and the other one as a prisoner he told him “I know that you’re a nice guy but I know what you can turn into and what

Philip Zimbardo, professor of psychology, wrote a very interesting article that kept me wondering how far these people could go throughout the whole experiment. It offers a truly raw insight on humans and what they do when given a role that they have to meet. It shows that even the most goodhearted people can be turned cruel and the most hardheaded people can become submissive if pushed.

This paper serves to summarize The Zimbardo Prison Experiment, better known as The Stanford Prison Experiment which was conducted by Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. The purpose of the study was to conduct research in order to better understand the psychological components of human aggression and submission to include conformity and obedience in a prison environment with a select group of subjects playing roles as either prison guards or inmates, however, I should note, according to McLeod, S. (2016), The Navy’s intent or purpose for the experiment was to better understand how to train members of the armed forces on how to cope with stress associated with captivity as opposed to making American Prison systems more humane. Another interesting point of note is that Zimbardo conducted this experiment shortly after World War II, and the Vietnam War where concern was raised as to some of the atrocities carried out in those wars where “ordinary” people conducted heinous acts per instruction from so-called authoritative figures. Experiments with similar objectives were carried out by Stanley Milgram and others. (Jones, A. D., & Milgram, S. 1974)

The speaker of this lecture was Philip Zimbardo. He made the experiment, Stanford Prison Experiment. I learned this experiment and had interested in him. Searching this experiment, I saw Philip Zimbardo’s lecture of time efficiency and time perspective. I wanted to learn more psychology knowledge which researched by him. So I was interested and I watched it.

The Lord of the Flies book is very similar to the movie, Stanford Prison Experiment. The book is about some kids surviving a plane crash and living on a stranded island. The boys find themselves without any parents or anyone in charge, so they find themselves a chief, leading to drama and many conflicts. Throughout the many conflicts, William Golding, author of the novel, shows how important power can be in desperate times and how it can change a person within time of being in command. Characters like Ralph, Jack, and Piggy represent the types of people when it comes to power. The film, The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), was a huge attempt to investigate the psychological effects of anticipated power, focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison officers. It was conducted at Stanford University between August 14–20, 1971, by a research group led by psychology professor, Philip Zimbardo. It is clear in both Golding’s novel and Zimbardo’s experiment that it is human nature to abuse one’s power.