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

The Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment has to be one of the cruelest and disturbing experiments I have witnessed since the Milgram experiment. This experiment was pushed far beyond its means and went extremely too far. I know experiments in 1971 weren’t as thorough and strategic as today's but I know today's rules and regulations never allow cruel and unusual punish just to test out one’s theory’s. I don’t believe criminologists should be permitted to conduct replications of Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. I also know that the ACJS and other organizations who set the rules and guidelines for experiments would not promote or condone an experiment that is dangerous and is unethical such as Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. There were no boundaries or a level

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 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.

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

The aim of this study was to find out the psychological effects when taking on a role as a prison guard or prisoner. It was hypothesised that those participants who were assigned the role of a guard would behave in a way that was consistent to the role and those who were assigned as a prisoner would behave in that role. Zimbardo placed an ad in the newspaper inviting male volunteers to take part in a study that would run for two weeks and get paid $15 a day. 70 uni students replied to the ad and were interviewed and given psychological tests. 24 were chosen and were randomly allocated to the experimental conditions decided by a coin toss.

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)

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.

It was ethical for the researchers to conduct this study. However, it was not right to trade the suffering experienced by the participants for the knowledge gained by the research. The intentions behind the experiment are ethical, but the researchers blind and selfish behavior throughout the experiment is unethical. The students, as well as the researchers, had no idea that the experiment would play out in such a disturbing manner. The researchers conducted this study to understand and evaluate the psychological effects of prison life.

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.

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 Zimbardo prison experiment was set up to investigate the problem of what the psychological effects for normal people result from being a guard or inmate, and in a broader sense are normal people capable of being ‘evil.’ The research question being asked was, “How would normal people react to being in a simulated prison environment? In Zimbardo’s own words, "Suppose you had only kids who were normally healthy, psychologically and physically, and they knew they would be going into a prison-like environment and that some of their civil rights would be sacrificed. Would those good people, (when) put in that bad, evil place (have) their goodness triumph?"