Stanford Prison Experiment Cons

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a study that was supposed to be controlled and was supposed to create some elements of a prison setting to see how prison can affect people. This study or experiment went wrong, at least that is the way it seemed. The experiment may have actually gone the way it was supposed to, the experiment was, after-all, to see the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or a guard. Factors and rules for the experiment were a factor that were not adhered to and could have been a reason that the experiment went the way it did. The experiment certainly showed how prison life, or at least the mirage of prison life, can alter someone’s perception and be demoralizing. Psychologists Curtis Haney, Craig Banks, and Philip

This particular study, set out to explore a specific problem, that problem being the effects of prison on people. The experiment wanted to see if normal everyday men would fall victim to the prison mindset. You take normal people, strip their liberties away, put them in confinement, and treat them as if they were inhuman people, and see how they cope and adapt to these stimuli. In this particular case the psychologists were developing a preliminary understanding about the prison problem and how it affects people. Not only are you exploring the situation, but you are evaluating the people within the experiment. You evaluate the pros and cons of the situations at hand as they are developing. Take for instance in this study, the guards had specific instructions not to abuse the prisoners physically, yet there were instances where it did occur. The psychologists decided to allow it to see the reactions and to see how the prisoners would handle it. They also wanted to see if the guards would figure things out and self-correct. Right or wrong, they were evaluating the psyche of the people involved within the study and did not

If a study of the same magnitude was to be done in that time period, but using women, the results may differ. Women are different creatures than men and react differently to certain stimuli. Take also into consideration that, during this time, women were fighting for identity and equality, so as a prisoner, they may have not gone as quietly as some of the men did in the experiment. Now, we are talking about things going exactly the same as with the male experiment where force was used when it wasn’t supposed to, and the guards being allowed to change rules as they saw fit. The experiment may have been able to complete the two weeks as required or may have even ended early because it may have gotten more violent. The experiment could also be redone using men of privilege again, but following the actual agenda and creating certain measures to inhibit the possibility of recreating what happened in this experiment. If the parameters were fixed and things were modified based on what was learned from this experiment, then it would be a whole different