Stanford Prison Experiment By Philip G. Zimbardo

Philip G. Zimbardo was a well-known psychology; he originated and initiated the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). The SPE was an experimental mock prison. Those who were involved in the experiment were Zimbardo, three graduate-student colleagues: W. Curis Banks, David Jaffe, and Craiy Haney. Along with 21 male college age students who volunteered to be the research subjects. Zimbardo(1973) expressed “We sought to understated more about the process by which people called “prisoners” lose their liberty, civil rights, independence and privacy , while those called “guards” gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges.” (para.6). In other words these social psychologies wanted

The guards went from ordinary to barbarous human beings. Zimbardo (1971) shows us words of the guards, written in one of their diaries it shows just how much the guard transformed. A volunteer who was given the role of a guard expresses how he felt, before the experiment began “I don’t feel like I’m the type of person that would be a guard- I’m not a sadistic type of person that enjoys this kind of thing” (as cited in Zimbardo, 1971, para.36). Zimbardo informs that all the 21 volunteers were judged to be emotionally stable, physically healthy, mature, law abiding citizens. In one of the guard’s diary, prior to the start of the experiment he says “As I am a pacifist and nonaggressive individual I cannot see a time when I might guard and/or maltreat another living thing.” (as cited in Zimbardo, 1971, para.44) as the experiment goes on this same guard changes his way of thinking “they were fighting to keep their identity. But we were always there to how them who was boss.” (as cited in Zimbardo, 1971, para.21). Zimbardo (1971) clams the guard’s became ‘sadistic’. They amused and enjoyed themselves by harassing, punishing, insulting the weak prisoners “typically, the guards insulted the prisoners, threatened them, were physically aggressive, used instruments to keep the prisoners in line and referred to them in impersonal anonymous deprecating ways” (Zimbardo, 1971, para.34). The guards