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Similarities Between The Stanford Prison Experiment And Lord Of The Flies

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Recommended: Human nature in Lord of flies

Murder or Mercy: Morality in the Human Brain “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.” - Michio Kaku When reading such stimulating novels such as Lord of the Flies, the psychological mysteries of the human mind are often the first thing you notice, be it the ability to justify killing another human being or just the need to build a society in order to maintain humanity. The psychological deterioration in both Golding’s fictitious novel, Lord of the Flies, and Zimbardo’s in depth psychological study, the Stanford Prison Experiment, are similar in the character archetypes that emerge in the stressful situation and the results of a particular ethical code gaining authority. Though those who were put into power were initially impartial, once power was introduced into the equation, familiar character archetypes began to emerge. In Lord of the Flies, said recognizable models manifested in the form of the hero, Ralph, and the villain, Jack. As the story progressed we found the innocent being portrayed by Simon, whose tragic death was a key turning point in the mental stability of all of the boys. There was a similar incident to the death of Simon that occurred on the second day of Zimbardo's experiment, the mental breakdown of prisoner #819. After speaking with a priest and breaking into hysterics, he was encircled by other inmates and was forced to listen …show more content…

Though fictional, Golding’s magnum opus is a well though out and well substantiated piece of literature exploring the deterioration of the human mind in response to stressful stimuli, in just the same way as the great experiments of Phillip

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Compare And Contrast Stanford Prison Experiment And Philip Zimbardo

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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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Essay Comparing Lord Of The Flies And The Stanford Prison Experiment

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The ¨Stanford Prison Experiment¨ was a breakdown of the morals and rules on how people would act toward one another due to their environment, rather than how they should. The study had created more questions than answers, specifically about the darkness and lack of moral standards that inhabits the human soul. It showed that methodical abuse and denial of human rights is nothing new in prison facilities. The novel Lord of the Flies shows how easily people become dangerous depending on their situation, and how easily humans become savages when there are no definite rules. Lord of the Flies and ¨The Stanford Prison Experiment¨ have many similarities in the way they both show the effects that occur when you lose all moral standards, and lack of rules.

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