Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment Essay

Less than two days into the experiment, one of the prisoners began to experience rage, emotional disturbance, uncontrollable crying, began acting crazy, and screaming. The experiment leaders realized he was really suffering and they had to release him. The next day was visiting day for the parents and friends of the prisoners. In order to stop parents from taking their children home, the experimenters cleaned the prison and the prisoners to make them seem pleasant. After the parents visited, there were rumors going around that the prisoners were going to attempt to escape. After the rumor was proved to be untrue, guards acted harshly towards the prisoners and added punishments. A priest who visited the prison, talked with prisoners and offered to contact some of their families for legal help. By day five, there were three types of guards; tough but fair guards, good guards, and hostile guards.

She begins recounting the notorious details, how innocent college students labeled prisoners and guards displayed psychological abuse after only six days of confinement, and makes reference to Stanley Milgram’s obedience study and Abu Ghraib, where similar maltreatment, perceived or real, was conducted on civilians by civilians. She addresses and refutes the accepted belief that the Stanford Prison Experiment proved that anyone could become a tyrant when given or instructed by a source of authority. Instead, she suggests that Zimbardo’s inquiry points toward but does not land on one exact conclusion. She explains the influence of the setting, the presentation of the roles, Zimbardo’s participation, and perhaps a sense of expectation felt, all of which can be reflected in the shocking behavior of a few guards. She argues that it should not have been so shocking. Konnikova discredits the neutrality of Zimbardo’s experiment by insisting that people who would respond to an ad for a psychological study of prison life were not “normal” people. However, with her diction and choice of evidence she displaces the study's culpability in a way that ultimately blurs and undermines her claim.

In the documentary Quiet Rage, the story of Zimbardo’s prison experiment is retold. In the documentary, Zimbardo develops a hypothesis that the abusive behaviors in prison is either caused by pre-existing personality traits of the inmates and guards, or the prison environment itself is the cause. He tested his hypothesis by carefully selecting 24 physically healthy, and mentally stable, male college students to participate in a “mock prison” experiment. The basement of Stanford’s psychology department was used to recreate a prison environment, complete with cells, a prison yard, Warden and Superintendent’s offices, and solitary confinement. Half of the test subjects were randomly selected to be prisoner, and the other half to be guards. They were to be placed in the environment, and their roles, for two weeks, and to be carefully observed by Zimbardo who also acted as the prison superintendent. Zimbardo planned to observe the affects the prison environment had the subjects. Due to the extremely abusive characteristics guards developed, and the swift decline of

There they met the guards and prison warden, who was Zimbardo. The prisoners were stripped naked and humiliated by verbal abuse, the guards, however could never physically harm them. The prisoners were given identification numbers instead of names. The guards had no training prior to the experiment and were told to do whatever they thought was necessary to keep order.

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.

The university put out ads in the local newspaper asking for volunteers to help with an experiment focusing on the psychological effect of prison life. The ad promised the volunteers fifteen dollars per day to participate in the experiment. Seventy volunteers came forward and responded to the ad. Every single one of them were given diagnostic interviews to help rule out any forms of psychological problems, such as: anxiety, depression, medical disabilities, or a history of drug use or criminal behavior. This eliminated unfit volunteers for being apart of the experiment and future problems. After all the interviews only twenty four students were qualified to participate in the experiment. The group was randomly divided and by the flip of a coin the two groups were assigned to be either prisoners or guards. Zimbardo wanted to make it clear to the two groups that at the beginning there was nothing different about the boys. As the experiment went on, however, that would change. The students were taken into a room at the Palo Alto police station and former prisoners and former or current prison guards came to speak to the groups to give them an insight of the events that would occur to them the following days. They also gave them examples and explained what it was like to be an individual in their role. While this was occurring, professionals at the university were turning the basement of the psychology building into a

They wore them down by the antics I mentioned above and I think the prisoners also came to the realization that there is nothing that can do to change their situation they have no authority or control. Although his experiment was viewed as controversial and iconic. I cannot in any way, shape or form justify a research permissible within the current ACJS ethical standards. I don’t believe any experiments could top the Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. How could you replicate or create an experiment similar to this one if there was no rules or guidelines to adhere by? By having no rules or guidelines is what made this experiment one of a kind and unique. Even by the ACJS ethical standards applied in my eyes, I still view it as unjust and unethical. I don’t believe that these standards should be altered so as to permit this type of research. I believe experiments like this have no place in Psychology. Despite the punishment, the individuals

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

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.

Although Zimbardo was supposed to run the experiment for 2 weeks, he ended it after 6 days when Christina Maslach, a fellow psychologist and Zimbardo’s future wife, expressed outrage at how these college boys were being treated. "It's terrible what you are doing to these boys!” (Maslach) It wasn’t until another prisoner (prisoner 819) broke down that Zimbardo saw the error in the way he had approached the experiment. The guards had lined all of the other prisoners up and had them repeatedly chant “Prisoner 819 did a bad thing” over and over again, and when Zimbardo asked the prisoner if he wanted to go home, he responded with: “I can’t, I have to go back and show them that im not

The Stanford Prison Experiment The video about the Stanford prison experiment is an experiment that the social psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted. This experiment was a mock prison that he set up in the basement of the Stanford campus building, 24 males were selected to take part. Randomly chosen these men were split in half, 12 would take the roles of prisoners the other half would be the guards. Meanwhile, Zimbardo would take the role of the superintendent.

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted to see how people would react to a cruel environment without clear rules in social roles. The study focused on the relationship between prisoners and guards. College students were paid $15 per day for 1-2 weeks, the experiment ended after only 6 days. Dr. Zimbardo’s girlfriend, Dr. Christina Maslach, told him she felt the power had changed him too. She thought everyone that was involved got caught up in the experiment (Zimbardo, 2011).

Some other preconditions were to make the experimental setting bear a resemblance as closely to a functional simulation of the psychology of imprisonment as humanly possible. He also wanted to make sure that there was the absence of any earlier indoctrination in how to play the randomly assigned roles; to leave that up to each participant’s prior societal teachings of the meaning of prisons and the behavioral scripts associated with the oppositional roles (Zambardo, 2005). Although he had a significantly large abundance

The Stanford Prison experiment is probably one of the most known experiment in social psychology. The psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted this study by assigning the participants to roles. Those who were the guards were given the tools to play their role and the prisoners as well. The results from this experiment were shocking because those who played the guards began mistreating their peers and the prisoners were being psychologically abuse by being humiliated and experiencing traumatic events that led some to become blindly obedient to the guards. This experiment reveal some truth about the criminal justice system and the conditions of prisons.

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?"