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Stanford Prison Experiment Cons

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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 …show more content…

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 …show more content…

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

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406 Words | 2 Pages

Within 24 hours of the experiment, the prison guards began to humiliate and mentally abuse the prisoners. The prison guards were given little instructions about how to treat the prisoners, except that there was not to be any physical force used on the prisoners. The lack of instructions that

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The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) had a main goal to find out how much of an influence a specific setting location could have on how individuals behave. The experiment took place in 1971 and many psychologists used as a reference to analyze people’s mind under certain circumstance. Young individuals were given the roles of prisoner and guard in prison-like setting located at the Psychology department Stanford University. I strongly believe that this experiment was ethically wrong and did not surprise me at all, since the participant in the study were not fully aware of how dangerous the experiment could turn. Furthermore, the guards were acting like real inmate’s officers

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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 Stanford Prison Experiment was a research study administered by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, which gathered twenty-four men to be put into a pseudo-jail to see the impacts of prison on the guards and inmates. Twelve of these volunteers were randomly selected to be inmates and the other twelve became guards. Not surprisingly, the inmates endured incredible torment and a few of them had psychological collapses due to severe emotional distress. The guards were consumed with their own power and felt little sympathy for the inmates that were under their care and stripped them, whipped them, dehumanized them. The research was expected to keep going for two weeks; however it went on for only six days due to the inmates encountering damaging levels

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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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Before the experiment began, all participants went through a psychological evaluation to make sure they were of sound mind (Onishi & Herbert, 2016). Once the experiment began the “prisoners” were arrested and taken to a simulated prison where they were stripped searched and demoralized. During the 6 days that the study lasted, conduct between both sides, prisoners and guards, was less than expectable. Both sides “acted as though a punishment was justified as an acceptable response to a breach of the rules” (Onishi & Herbert, 2016), rules that were vaguely explained.

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2176 Words | 9 Pages

In August of 1971, psychology professor Philip Zimbardo conducted the Stanford prison experiment, which was funded by the U.S military to investigate the causes of dissension between military guards and prisoners. As the experiment commenced, the participating college students adapted to their roles as guards and detainees in the prison far beyond the expectations of Zimbardo. Authoritarian measures were enforced harshly upon those who were the prisoners, with some even subjected to psychological torture. However, many of the prisoners accepted this treatment passively, allowing psychological abuse and harassment to be inflicted. The experiment concluded that situation, rather than an individual's personality, affected the participants' behavior.

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1. This website’s main purpose is to provide insight in to the Stanford Prison experiment of 1971. It provides a quick overview of the experiment and it’s results; information about the movie, documentary, and book based on the experiment; images, and other information correlating to the prison study. This website explains that The Stanford Prison experiment consisted of 24 male college students who responded to an ad looking for volunteers for a two week long psychological experiment about the effect of prisons. A makeshift prison was made in the basement of Stanford's Psychology Department building including a ‘yard’ for prisoners to exercise in and a small closet that was meant to simulate solitary confinement.

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Prisoners were stripped of their identities, forced to wear uniforms, and referred to using assigned numbers rather than their names. This deindividuation (the perceived loss of personal individuality) led to a breakdown of social norms and ethical boundaries, with some participants experiencing severe emotional trauma. Another ethical issue with the Stanford Prison Experiment was the lack of proper oversight and intervention. Zimbardo, in his role as the lead researcher, became so immersed in the role of prison superintendent that he failed to recognize the unethical behavior unfolding within the experiment, even as a psychologist. It was only after a graduate student raised concerns about the treatment of the participants that the experiment was prematurely halted after just six days instead of the planned two weeks.

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On day six Zimbardo and Milgram decided to conclude the experiment. Zimbardo originally intended to explore how prisoners adapt to powerlessness, but he has contended that the experiment demonstrates how swiftly arbitrary assignment of power can lead to abuse. (Maher, The anatomy of obedience. P. 408) Once the experiment was completed Zimbardo and Milgram concluded that generally people will conform to the roles they are told to play.

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Throughout the experiment, the “prisoners” were treated inhumanely to the extent that several of them had breakdowns. The "prisoners'" sleep was disrupted, as directed by the researchers,

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Many believed that the participants should have been screened more thoroughly, and that allowing individuals with sadistic tendencies into the experiment was unethical. That being said, many believed that the results were due to the situation that the participants were put in, not their personal tendencies. The participants felt pressured to create situations that would be interesting to psychologists and so acted dramatically to create an interesting story and differently to how they would usually. They believed that it was external factors that were influencing the guards, not internal

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The Stanford prison experiment is an article that describes an experiment conducted by Zimbardo (1973) aimed at investigating how readily people would conform to the roles given to them in a role-playing exercise in a simulated test. Zimbardo (1973) wanted to determine whether the brutality reported among the inmates in America prisons was because of the sadistic dispositional tendencies of the guards or was caused by the jail environment and situations. Thus, this experiment was directed at examining whether the aggressive and domineering behavior of the guards resulted from the disrespectful nature of the prisoners to law and order (McLeod, 2016). The alternative to this would be that the aggressive and hostile manner of the inmates and guards was due to the social environment and the power structure in these prisons. The hypothesis for the experiment was that,

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The experiment was executed well. Yet, there are unethical practices happened during the experiment. First, the participants were not fully informed about the experiment. The researchers did not explain to the participants the processes in conducting the experiment. The participants were not informed that they would be arrested by cops in their homes.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Journey Into Authoritarian Leadership Over the years, scientists, psychologists, and doctors have used social experiments to further their understanding of our surroundings. Social experiments are studies of the human mind and psyche through various environments. In this case, a social experiment called the Stanford Prison Experiment is what opened new doors for the comprehension of human behavior, how we act when we are in power, as well as offered a glimpse into the flaws in our legal system. This experiment was conducted in 1971 in Palo Alto, California.

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