Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 and led by Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor. The questions of the experiment were what happens when you put good people in an evil place; does the situation outside of you come to control your behavior, or do the things outside of you such as your attitude, values, and morality allow you to rise above a negative environment, and how do we respond to authority? It past psychology experiments it had already been shown that people have a respect for authoritative figures. People will listen to a person who is an authority even if it goes against their morality. This was the basis of the Stanford Experiment. Interestingly enough, this experiment was conducted during the peak of the civil rights movement and protesting the war in Vietnam. The subjects were college students who went through an application process to show that they were mentally stable, and they were to be paid $15 a day for two weeks. The “prison” was set up in the basement of the psychology building. Each subject would randomly select the role of either the guard or the prisoner. Guards wore military-like uniforms and reflective glasses while prisoners wore a short

Within the first day of the experiment, the guards were already degrading the prisoners. On the second day, the prisoners had used their beds to barricade the cells in order to rebel against their status. After this, the guards made them do menial jobs and woke up the prisoners multiple times a night to harass them. Since the prison was in a basement the prisoners had no concept of day or night and being woken up regularly caused them to become disoriented. The guards harassed the prisoners even more after the rebellion. The prisoners soon gave into authority and did not rebel anymore to avoid further