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Attica Prison Experiment Essay

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In 1971 Standford University held an experiment to see the psychological changes in people who are given higher authority and those who are not due to the way they act around one another. In this experiment a group of college students were split into two groups, one of which were to be prison guards and the others the prisoners.
Throughout the course of the study psychologists were able to study the change in atmosphere and development of people from each group.
When those who were classified as the prisoners were arrested it was done unexpectedly to help put them into the mindset psychologists were looking for during the experiment. Off the bat, the people were left clueless and fearful as to what was happening to them. The prisoners were …show more content…

This experiment individually effected each person involved and its unfathomable to imagine seeing someone who caused you pain/ you caused pain to after it was all over. I can only hope that this portraying the roles of the guards were mortified by what they’d let happen under their watch and that those playing the prisoners were able to mentally recover relatively quickly.
Although some institutions are designed to resist critical evaluation theres still a way to bring attention to these issues. For example, Attica Prison operates in relative secrecy using taxpayer money but with the right amount of public attention this can be put to an end. In addition to that there are more things that need to be changed within prison institutions. For example, solitary confinement should be one of the main things the people and government push to put an end to because of the emotional and physical stress it puts people through.Just by seeing the emotional toll spending 9 days in a prison did to these normal people we can now see that clearly there are things that need to be changed. Not only should this experiment not have been done, the people shouldve been told what they were getting themselves

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