Zimbardo Milgram Obedience Experiment

The participants settled into their roles very quickly. Only hours after the experiment started, the guards had set their own rule and treated prisoners with sadistic manner. On the first count at 1:18 A.M., the guards made the disobedient prisoners do push up, which was a common punishment in real prison. The supervisors also saw one guard put his feet on the prisoner’s back (Mc Leod). Zimbardo retold that in the second morning, to everyone’s surprise, the rebellion broke out.

The prisoners became dependent, helpless, and passive. On the other hand, the guards acted exactly opposite. “They became abusive and aggressive at the simulated prison, bulling and insulting the prisoners’. “After the experiment was completed, most of the guards said that they enjoyed the power. Some of the others said that they had no idea of what they were capable. Everyone in the experiment was surprised at the results as well as saying, It was degrading.

This experiment was put through to show how prisoners act within a prison environment while being isolated within the cell and being forbidden from contact with people outside the jail. The prisoners were arrested in their homes and taken to the police station. The normal procedures for a convicted criminal were given, and the prisoners were then transferred to the basement of the psychology department. The basement was designed to replicate an average prison. Standard rules such as forbidden prisoner to guard eye contact were given. Guards were not allowed to address the prisoners by anything besides their uniform number. Although just an experiment, the subjects were quickly adapting to their roles. Prison guards began to harass the inmates, and the inmates began to verbally abuse each other to extreme levels. Guards also started using major brutality. Due to the drastic escalation of the physical and verbal abuse, the experiment was terminated early (McLeod). This suggests that when isolated, people can start to act more cruel than they would in

Stanley Milgram experiment bought forth the ultimate question in social psychology. How far away is someone go to confirm with society and be obedient to an authority to figure? It has been discovered though such experiments that people will obey orders, even if it inflicts harm on another individual. However, the same individuals were unwilling to inflict harm if it involved personal contact with the individual being harmed or even the sounds of pain and please from the individual being harmed.

The researchers observed the behaviors and mentalities of both guards and prisoners by naturalistic observation.

Although no such experiment can be 100% conclusive, the Milgram experiments do shed considerable (and disturbing) light on the behavior of ordinary people in obedience of authority. They also explain, to a large extent, the seemingly perplexing behavior of many ordinary Germans during World War II and some American soldiers in Vietnam. (“Milgram,” Obedience to Authority..).

In the summer of 1971 at Stanford University psychologist Phillip Zimbardo conducted a behavioral experiment meant to simulate a prison. This experiment was supposed to study the behaviors both guards and prisoners go through by using student volunteers to play the parts. This experiment, conducted in the basement of a Stanford University building, began to take on a life of its own and has since gone down in infamy. This paper will look into the person responsible for this experiment, how it was conducted and the outcome of the infamous study.

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.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a study conducted in 1971 by Dr. Phillip Zimbardo. According to Dr. Steve Taylor (2007), “It’s probably the best known psychological study of all time.” (Classic Studies in Psychology, 2007). Zimbardo stated that the point was to see what would happen if he put “really good people in a bad place” (Dr. Zimbardo, 2007). He did this during a time were most college students were protesting for peace and were against anything authoritarian. The experiment contained both positive and negative aspects; which will be discussed further in this paper.

The experimentors proposed that these reactions were caused by a loss of personal identity, dependency, emasculation and acceptance sadistic treatment from the guards and the unpredictable and arbitrary control of the prison system.

Milgram's Obedience to Authority Experiment video shows an experiment that explores how authority, or someone in authority, can impact the actions of the individual. While the individual may know that their actions are not good, they can be swayed by an authority figure to carry out actions that the individual would not normally do. This is because the authority figure persuades them to alter their actions because it is necessary for the greater good of the cause at hand. This is possible because the individual's fear of non-conformity may override their concerns of others, and they feel they are able to defer the responsibility of their actions to the authority figure.

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

It could be argued that more strict action was required to control misbehaving inmates, but the abuse and dehumanizing treatment of the prisoners was nowhere near acceptable. Although both groups acted unjustly towards the other group it was expected that the guards would act more fairly and be more respectful to the prisoners even if prisoners had acted out of line in some way. After many prisoners suffered severe psychological trauma the experiment was abruptly ended

Stanley MIlgram is a Yale University social psychologist who wrote “Behavioral Study of Obedience”, an article which granted him many awards and is now considered a landmark. In this piece, he evaluates the extent to which a participant is willing to conform to an authority figure who commands him to execute acts that conflict with his moral beliefs. Milgram discovers that the majority of participants do obey to authority. In this research, the subjects are misled because they are part of a learning experience that is not about what they are told. This experiment was appropriate despite this. Throughout the process, subjects are exposed to various signs that show them

In 1971 Philip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) in the basement of Stanford University as a mock prison. Zimbardo’s aim was to examine the effect of roles, to see what happens when you put good people in an evil place and to see how this effects tyranny. He needed participants to be either ‘prisoners’ or ‘guards’ and recruited them through an advertisement, 75 male college students responded and 24 healthy males were chosen and were randomly allocated roles. Zimbardo wanted to encourage deindividuation by giving participants different uniforms and different living conditions (the guards had luxuries and the prisoners were living as real prisoners). The guards quickly began acting authoritarian, being aggressive towards the prisoners and giving them punishments causing physical and emotional breakdowns. Zimbardo’s intention was for his study to last for 2 weeks, however, it