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The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Social Construction Of Reality

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What is real? How do you define real? Is real being able to physically touch and/or being able to see it? Or do we make something real because we interact with it on a daily basis within our society? The world is revolved around Social Constructionism, every day human beings give meaning to worthless things that otherwise wouldn 't matter if humans didn 't give it meaning through social agreement. The nation is an example of social constructionism because if the human society did not exist Americans would not have the government and money system they have now. The film The Stanford Prison Experiment has social constructionism throughout the film and it shows the viewer that the social construction of prisons systems can cause mental trauma to individuals within the jail cells. Social Constructionism theory originated from Berge and Luckmann 's book The Social Construction of Reality in 1967. It observes how the interactions of individuals with their society and the world around them gives meaning to otherwise worthless things to create the reality of the society (Brown, Sydney). People grew up learning the difference between what is real and what is not real, but they …show more content…

Social construction is a form of social psychology and it is the study of how people 's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied the presence of others. According to sciencedaily.com, "social psychologist explains human behaviors as a result of the interaction of mental states and immediate, social situation." This tells the reader that The Stanford Prison Experiments was not just a psychology experiment but a social psychology experiment because the purpose of the experiment was to observe the effects of roles given to the male college students and how they would react in a new environment that they have never

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In Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment, 20 college aged boys are selected to play different roles in a simulated prison located within Stanford. This experiment was thought of and carried out by Philip Zimbardo, a professor of psychology. The boys, who were also students at Stanford, were randomly selected to be a guard or a prisoner. The prisoners were taken by real police officers to the Stanford jail. When the experiment started, most of the prisoners thought of the situation as it was intended to be, an experiment.

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In society, the people with more power are likely on a higher level than those who have less power. A person who is given orders has the right to decide whether to follow them or not, and this idea is clearly the situation from reading “The Perils of Obedience,” “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” and watching “A Few Good Men.” At the end of the film, why did the two marines not have to go back to jail, but were no longer allowed to be Marines? Why was their case pardoned from prison sentencing?

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In 1971, Philip Zimbardo set out to conduct an experiment to observe behavior as well as obedience. In Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment, many dispute whether it was obedience or merely conforming to their predesigned social roles of guards and prisoners that transpired throughout the experiment. Initially, the experiment was meant to test the roles people play in prison environment; Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards, disposition, or had more to do with the prison environment. This phenomenon has been arguably known to possibly influencing the catastrophic similarities which occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.The

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People have talked about how power can corrupt a person's mind. In the articles, that were written by Saul Mcleod, " The Stanford Prison Experiment" and "The Milgram Experiment," he writes about two studies that are able to prove the theories. In "The Stanford Prison Experiment," Mcleod writes about a professor named Zimbardo. In 1917 Zimabardo conducted a study to see if power would corrupt a person's mind if the gained authority over another. He had college kids act as prison guards and the others as prisoners.

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Since the beginning of the human existence, man has always dominated and ruled over one another be it empires, corporations, or small groups. Authority and obedience has always been a factor of who we are. This natural occurrence can be seen clearly through the psychological experiments known as The Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Both of these studies are based on how human beings react to authority figures and what their obedience is when faced with conflict.

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Normal People Behaving Evil 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 that caused numerous amount of trauma to prisoners by 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 behave normally will have the capability of expressing evil behavior due to the environment that they are surrounded.

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Even though there are people willing to risk it all to go back to the life they had, there are some that become submissive and stop fighting. In Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Stanford phycology department. They recruited college students to run a mock prison so they could study the effect of becoming a prisoner and a prison guard. In this experiment that was supposed to run for two weeks ended up being stopped by the researchers on the six day because it was getting out of control. This is stated by the heads of the experiment Philip Zimbardo, Craig Haney, W. Curtis Banks, and David Jaffe in their report of the experiment.

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Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo questioned, “What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?” (Zimbardo, 1971) In 1971 a psychologist named Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment on the effects prison has on young males with the help of his colleague Stanley Milgram. They wanted to find out if the reports of brutality from guards was due to the way guards treated prisoners or the prison environment.

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Unit 1 Written Assignment Literature Review of article on Standard Prison Experiment Introduction This article concerns the Stanford Prison experiment carried out in 1971 at Stanford University. The experiment commenced on August 14, and was stopped after only six days. It is one of the most noted psychological experiments on authority versus subordinates. The studies which emerged from this have been of interest to those in prison and military fields due to its focus on the psychology associated with authority.

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One of the most infamous experiments conducted in the history of psychology was the Stanford Prison Experiment. The main objective of this experiment was to see what effects would occur when a psychological experiment into human nature was performed. As I read through the material provided, I noticed that my thoughts on the matter were similar to many; that it was a complete failure as a scientific research project. However, his findings did provide us with something much more important that is still being talked about today; insight into human psychology and social behavior.

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Authority gives a person the chance to feel superior, and as seen throughout this film, those within the position of authority will only then abuse this opportunity. Given the chance for people to gain authority or rather the sense of authority is enough to awaken the evil within. Within the movie, The Stanford Prison Experiment the guards were enabled to set a line of difference between the prisoners and themselves. They were able to make the prisoners feel weak or emasculated, forcing the students to strip and wear the assigned prison clothes that barely covered their genitals (Alvarez). Forcing the prisoners to wear these feminine articles of clothing and assigning them a number, gives the opportunity to strip away their personality and

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Stanford Experiment: Unethical or Not Stanford Prison Experiment is a popular experiment among social science researchers. In 1973, a psychologist named Dr. Philip Zimbardo wants to find out what are the factors that cause reported brutalities among guards in American prisons. His aim was to know whether those reported brutalities were because of the personalities of the guards or the prison environment. However, during the experiment, things get muddled unexpectedly. The experiment became controversial since it violates some ethical standards while doing the research.

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Families are said to constitute realities in which most of one’s attributes are constructed, based on the family interactions, beliefs, values as well as the behaviours that are seen in the specific families one is brought up into (Archer & McCarthy, 2007). However, even though most of one’s personal characteristics may be heavily influenced by their families; people do have a sense of individuality that makes them unique from any other person in the family (Becvar & Becvar, 2013). Therefore, one may argue that it is these differences that may cause misunderstandings in families.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1971 illustrated the direct relationship between power of situations and circumstances to shape an individual’s behavior. During this study 24 undergraduates were grouped into roles of either a Prisoner or a Guard, the study was located in a mock correctional facility in the basement of Stanford University. Researchers then observed the prisoners and guards using hidden cameras. The study was meant to last two weeks. However, the brutality of the Guards and the suffering of the Prisoners was so intense that it had to be terminated after only six days.

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If you had an opportunity to prolong or even save your life, would you take it? For some, this might sound quite ludicrous as though a vivid scene from a fantasy. Whereas, it is just one possible example of how genetic engineering affects human development. Whether it is practiced to lengthen the lifespan of a living organism or make considerable improvements in agriculture, medicine or other fields, there are still lots of debates regarding its application in the real world landscape. Even so, prohibiting the successive evolution of genetic engineering is not a solution, and I do not agree that its further development should be banned.

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