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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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