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Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo

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In the end there were less than half of the original inmates left, and one of the stand-by inmates had gone on a full blown food strike, and was severely reprimanded for it. The guards posed the other inmates against him and made him look as if he was the bad guy. Guards started to make his cell mates force and mock him in order to get him to eat. This tactic was to no avail, so they ended up putting him “in the hole” for three hours, even though the established limit was only one hour. It is completely understandable why the men that played the inmates were so enraged, there were established rules that were by no means followed throughout the experiment. At the same time, it was also an excellent way of seeing how people would really react …show more content…

On the evening of August 19th 1971, he invited her and a few other of their colleagues to the “prison” to see what their opinion of the environment was. Christina was also a psychologist who felt that she was overreacting, yet her first response was disgust. As Christina described the experiment, “I was sick to my stomach.” (O’Toole). She was at first mocked by the fellow researchers, but as she went home with Philip and explained to him the ways that he had lost touch with reality, that he was not truly a warden of a prison, and that the men in those cells had truly done nothing wrong, Zimbardo listened to her. She was the reasoning that brought him back to reality. He called the experiment off the next day. It was initially supposed to be a two week experiment, but ended up only being six days long. This is such an amazing fact, that within such a minute amount of time, things can become so manipulated, and people can become so destructive or demolished depending on which end of the punishment they were …show more content…

Some of the guards that were interviewed later, straight up told the interviewer that they wished that they had never participated in the experiment, and if they could go back they would change what they had done. This does not matter in the end though does it? It happened and is it not a lesson that should have been taught to cope with the wrongs that you have done, and move on and try to better yourself. It is interesting that in most cases, the guards were more like the true inmates in actual prisons than they ever believed themselves to

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In summary, the purpose of the Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to demonstrate that powerful situational forces, much like Abu Ghraib, could over-ride individual dispositions and choices, leading good people to do bad things simply because of the role they found themselves

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The actions that took place in that experiment were recorded in Zimbardo’s “The Stanford Prison Experiment.” The men who participated in the experiment also found themselves losing track of time. Zimbardo describes prisons as “machines for playing tricks with the human conception of time. In [their] windowless prison, the prisoners often did not even know whether it was day or night” (p. 109).

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Given positions of control, the guards started to use their power in degrading ways. To establish power over the captives, they used a variety of strategies, including physical punishment, psychological blackmail, and verbal abuse. On the other hand, the inmates were stripped of their uniqueness, turned into dehumanized objects, humiliated, treated poorly, and made helpless. Another important point made by Zimbardo's experiment was the effect of deindividuation and responsibility dispersal on the onset of prison violence. The guards' feeling of personal responsibility was diminished by their uniforms and masks, allowing them to act aggressively and abusively in ways they otherwise might not have.

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This experiment was conducted in Stanford University by Dr. Zimbardo. During this two week long session, Dr. Zimbardo had several volunteers agree to act as prisoners and as prison guards. The prisoners were told to wait in their houses while the guards were to set up the mock prison, a tactic used by Dr. Zimbardo to make them fit into their roles more. The official police apprehended the students assigned to the role of prisoner from their homes, took mug shots, fingerprinted them, and gave them dirty prison uniforms. The guards were given clean guard uniforms, sunglasses, and billy clubs borrowed from the police.

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In this experiment, they would have prisoners only drink seawater. This would make the prisoners severely dehydrated. It got to the point where prisoners would lick recently mopped floors in order to be hydrated. Those who survived were brutally killed and thrown in the hole containing bodies. Secondly, there was a shot for Tuberculosis.

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He continues with observations of the first day of testing by quoting certain guard’s conversations with each other and prisoners. Proceeding, Zimbardo points out a riot initiated by the prisoners that was quickly snuffed out by the guards. He also emphasizes the point, “We were forced to release prisoner 8612 because of extreme depression…” Following the quote Zimbardo describes diary entries by one guard which explain a dramatic shift in mood in the guards. Zimbardo finishes his article with reasoning behind early termination of the experiment and expressed his regret of running the experiment.

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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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In the six days that the experiment ran they saw the personalities that the prisoner and prison guards took.

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They also concluded that the environment of the prison played a vital role in the way the guards treated the prisoners. It is believed that this experiment changed the way some U.S. prisons are

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While arguably one of the defining psychological studies of the 20th Century, the research was not without flaws. Almost immediately the study became a subject for debate amongst psychologists who argued that the research was both ethically flawed and its lack of diversity meant it could not be generalized. Ethically, a significant critique of the experiment is that the participants actually believed they were administering serious harm to a real person, completely unaware that the learner was in fact acting. Although Milgram argued that the illusion was a necessary part of the experiment to study the participants’ reaction, they were exposed to a highly stressful situation. Many were visibly distraught throughout the duration of the test

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During the Stanford prison experiment the actual boys who agreed to do the experiment had no idea what it was, they thought it would be a fun idea to help out with an experiment. The only reason why the experiment stopped after only a week was because a women who was one of the people behind it saw the prisoners walking to the bathroom and they had bags on their heads and they were in single file and she got upset. She was upset because they lost the purpose of the experiment and actually turned these boys into

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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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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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While the test subjects did in fact consent to the experiment via documents, they developed this false understanding through the experiment that they could not leave at any time, that “there was no way out”. During this time period, there were no existing laws that this experiment violated but it did pave the way for several to be introduced. For example, in the consent form it stated that the prisoners would not experience physical harm, but several days later they were brutally beaten by the guards. A few scenarios such as this one would be considered illegal with today’s legal system. One law that was created after this required federal prisons to separate minors awaiting trial from adults to avoid them suffering from abuse.

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