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Stanford Prison Experiment By Philip Zimbardo

544 Words3 Pages

The Stanford prison experiment, was an attempt on investigating the psychological effects of perceived power. Mainly focusing on the struggles between the prisoners and the prison officers. It was conducted in Stanford University from August 14 to 20, 1971, by a research group led by Philip Zimbardo. He was very interested in knowing whether the brutality reported among the guards in most American prisoners was due to the cruelty of the personalities of the guards. As I was reading about the Stanford prison experiment I realized it was a very controversial issue. Many agree that it caused a lot of ethical issues. Overwhelming evidence proves that even by the second day things started to go down hill. The prisoners were beginning to feel very psychologically traumatized. Many have even admitted to serious physical beaten. Finally, riots started to break out due to severe psychological stress. Things started to go really unravel when people didn't know how to react to these physical violences. They knew they were volunteering for an experiment as a mock prison. Yet, at the same time they were treated in a way that isn't morally correct. …show more content…

Zimbardo and his fellow researchers failed to respect the rights of their participants by failing to tell them exactly what they were getting themselves into. Better safeguards should have been put in place to protect the participants from potential risks. Neutral observers should also have been present at all times to prevent the experiment from getting out of hand as it so clearly did do. However, despite the storm of criticism faced by Zimbardo in the wake of his controversial prison experiment, some of the lessons learned were later applied to real life prison situations. In the positive side the stanford prison experiment has some

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