What Can We Learn from the Stanford Prison Experiment?

Dr Philip Zimbardo created the Stanford prison experiment in 1971, the aim of this experiment was to find out the psychological effects of prison life, and to what extent can moral people be seduced to act immorally. The study consisted of 24 students selected out of 75, the roles of these 24 men were randomly assigned, 12 to play prison guards and 12 to play prisoners. The prison set up was built inside the Stanford’s psychological department, doors where taken of laboratory rooms and replaced with steel bars in order to create cells. At the end of the corridor was the small opening which became the solitary confinement for the ‘bad prisoners’. Throughout the prison there were no windows or clocks to judge the passage in time, which resulted in time distorting experiences. After only a few hours, the participants adapted to their roles well beyond expectations, the officers starting

“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?

“In 2007, one percent of American adults were in prison, which is by far the highest incarceration rate in the world.”( Trachtenberg, B., 2009). Why? Trachtenberg believes it’s because prisons do not rehabilitate people. A violent criminal is sent to prison because he is a threat to society. He is supposed to serve a lengthy term so that he will learn his lesson and become a productive member of society. During his time there he is supposed to learn to appreciate work by cooking, doing laundry, or some other prison job. While he is there he can receive his GED so that he can get a job when he gets out. This plan has good intentions but it has been proven to be ineffective.

Prisons not only rehabilitate, but they also deter people from going to prison. The fear of going to prison is a great deterrence for a perspective criminal. Hard life styles along with loss of freedom tend to push the criminal away from the chance of being incarcerated. Numbers show that there are fewer rapes, and fewer murders, each year, all an obvious product of prison deterrence. After all, if a person has a friend who just got out of jail, and hears all of the war stories, that person would surely not want to go to prison and end up like his friend. By making life in prison hard, the prison is doing a great job in getting the word out. Prison is no joke! They are doing their job in deterring criminals from wanting to enter the gates of hell.

Those criminals need to be corrected and helped, and then brought back into their societies and Imprisonment is thus not meant to be an avenue for inhumane treatment for members of the community who err in their behavior.

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.

One of the purposes of prison is to rehabilitate offenders to go back into society. Meaning after serving prison time an offender should have learned their lesson and be able to become a productive member of society. it is

It was surreal feeling to see an experiment like this one.It seemed so easy in the being for them to take the money but they never really knew what they would endure ultimately.When they added the sunglasses the army uniforms they where setting them selfs a part by stating that we have power over you.When the guards stripped them and being demeaning them it had a negative impact on the prisoners.Taking into the consideration the fact they where being degraded yelled at and punished mentally and physically they rebelled as many of us would.This experiment basically turned normal human being into mentally tortured prisons.This Stanford Prison Experiment impact on the criminal justice corrections system I believe has set an example on how not

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a physiological study made to understand what affected the police brutality in prison environments. Zimbardo conducted this experiment in 1973. The goal was “To investigate how readily people would confirm to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that stimulated prison life. 24 male college students were tested for their psychological normality. The chosen ones were paid $15 a day to take part in the experiment.

Philip G. Zimbardo conducted an experiment called The Stanford Prison Experiment back in 1973. Zimbardo sets out to see the outcome if you create a false prison and get ordinary college students and make half of the students guards and the other half of the students prison inmates how will the volunteers react with their new roles. Zimbardo main points of the prison experiment were to see if the volunteers can handle their new positions. Also another main point of Zimbardo’s experiment was how much the volunteers will psychologically withhold in the new penitentiary environment by obeying order. After reading Zimbardo's experiment the volunteers did not only have short term trauma but also long term effects to their personality.

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

The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment to see if normal people would change their behavior in a role-play as a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was conducted by Dr.Philip Zimbardo in 1973 at Stanford University and caused numerous amount of trauma to both prisoners and prison guards in their role-playing position which forced Dr. Zimbardo to officially terminate the experiment six days after it was introduced. Due to the cruel aggressive behaviors from the guards, the experiment led to a question, "Do "normal" people have the capability of behaving badly?" The answer to that question is that most likely an individual who behaves normally will have the capability of expressing evil behavior due to the environment they are

Response to Stanford Experiment          The Stanford Prison Experiment happened because it was a breakdown of their rights,ways of thinking, and physical humiliation.         They sabotaged their way of thinking. The feeling and how the place was set up made it feel like it was real and that they were in a real prison. In the movie the guys really were in into the feel of their location and they were planning to escape it like a real prison ,and in the end when the guy told them that they were able to leave that the experiment and they shocked and just stood there.

In my opinion it is obvious that The Stanford Prison experiment was not ethical. The prisoners (actual students) were humiliated and were place in psychological distress. They demonstrated distress when they began to accept hopelessness and some even lost their true identity. The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was planned to last two weeks, and participants were screened for physical and psychological health, but the experiment produced unexpected results. Although Zimbardo did eventually make the ethical decision to end the study early, it’s not enough to justify or excuse him to have allowed unethical and immoral behavior during the length of his experiment.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was to study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by Psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University in August 1971. Twenty-four students were selected after tests and background checks deemed them mentally healthy, free of medical disabilities and history of crime or drug abuse. All 24 students selected were healthy, intelligent, middle-class males. Randomly ½ were assigned as prisoners and the other ½ prison guards. The ‘prison’ was set up to look just