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Stanford prison experiment critique
Detailed analysis of stanford prison experiment
Detailed analysis of stanford prison experiment
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In society, the people with more power are likely on a higher level than those who have less power. A person who is given orders has the right to decide whether to follow them or not, and this idea is clearly the situation from reading “The Perils of Obedience,” “The Stanford Prison Experiment,” and watching “A Few Good Men.” At the end of the film, why did the two marines not have to go back to jail, but were no longer allowed to be Marines? Why was their case pardoned from prison sentencing?
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
The Stanford Prison Study The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by a team of researchers, led by Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University, from August 14th to August 20th, 1971 (“Stanford prison experiment,” n.d.). 24 individuals were selected to play the roles of either prisoners or guards from a substantial group of 70 volunteers. All participants lacked a criminal background, weren’t suffering from psychological implications, and weren’t experiencing adverse medical issues. The experiment took place in a mock prison located in the basement of the Stanford Psychology building briefly after each individual was randomly assigned their role in the study.
The study that I have chosen to speak about is the Stanford Prison Study. The reason being is that I felt this study led to the most harm that was documented. The Stanford Prison study was a barbaric study that caused the participants especially the acting prisoners to be subjected to humiliation, a disturbing psychological treatment, and severe verbal abuse. This study should have been and could have been better controlled and administered. A few ways this could have been done would have a set of predetermined controls in place in case a certain situation happened.
Stanford Prison Experiment: "Evil" by Nature vs. "Evil" by Circumstance? Overview of the Experiment The "Stanford Prison Experiment" was conducted by a psychologist at Stanford University known as Philip Zimbardo. The experiment itself was conducted in order to find out the effect of becoming a prison guard and being a prisoner from a psychological standpoint, and Zimbardo was interested in seeing how good people acted in an evil and oppressive regime. The test subjects voluntarily joined the experiment; the prison guards were paid a low sum of money for their participation, while the prisoners were undergraduates attending Stanford University.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Philip Zimbardo in an attempt to simulate and study just what happens, psychologically, to both prisoners and prison guards in a prison environment. Unlike many experiments, these researchers didn’t start out with a fully-formed hypothesis. They simply started with the premise that the students’ behavior would somehow be affected by the role they were given. 22 students were ultimately chosen from a pool of applicants, carefully screened to ensure there were no mental health issues, and from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. They were randomly separated into Prisoner and Guard groups and on a chosen day the prisoner students were ‘arrested’ by local authorities and put through the booking process, ending with placement in the jail setting.
Philip G. Zimbardo was a well-known psychology; he originated and initiated the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). The SPE was an experimental mock prison. Those who were involved in the experiment were Zimbardo, three graduate-student colleagues: W. Curis Banks, David Jaffe, and Craiy Haney. Along with 21 male college age students who volunteered to be the research subjects. Zimbardo(1973) expressed “We sought to understated more about the process by which people called “prisoners” lose their liberty, civil rights, independence and privacy , while those called “guards” gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges.”
Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo questioned, “What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?” (Zimbardo, 1971) In 1971 a psychologist named Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment on the effects prison has on young males with the help of his colleague Stanley Milgram. They wanted to find out if the reports of brutality from guards was due to the way guards treated prisoners or the prison environment.
The Stanford prison experiment is one of disturbing experiment in human history. It is planned by Philip Zimbardo to grasp causes of conflicts between military personnel and prisoner. In August, 1971, He builds mock prison under the Stanford University’s basement and constructs two weeks experiment. He recruits a sample from common people and allots participants into two groups, prisoners and prison officers, by random assignment. Surprisingly, both groups adapt to their assigned role, even none of them has a mental disorder or an idiosyncrasy:
Kantianism and Utilitarianism Versus the Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in aims to examine human behavior (Mcleod). The study took 24 college students and randomly assigned them to be prisoners or guards in a simulated prison environment: a basement in the Stanford Psychology building. While the experiment was supposed to last for two weeks, it was cut short after only six days due to the guards exhibiting brutal behavior and the prisoners suffering psychologically. While implicit Utilitarian calculations could attempt to justify the actions in the experiment, strict Kantians would have found the experiment morally unacceptable.
When I first read the experiment, I was surprised to see how researchers conducted the Sandford experiment. To begin with, the study, despite trying to be realistically done, had a poor population validity and reliability, not to mention the ethical issues against the volunteers. Especially, when I saw the documentary, I was shocked at the level of distress coming from both the prisoners and guards. Although, I was intrigued by the resulting scenario, I knew this experiment was harmful to the wellbeing of the volunteers. For that reason, I strongly believe the Stanford experiment was unethical because of its treatment against the human participants.
By far the most unethical experiment from all the 10 presented, I personally considered it to be The Stanford Prison Experiment. Not only lack of compliance with most of the characteristics that makes an experiment an Ethical Research Project using human participants listed in Module 2.3 (n.d), but it breaks the very human law of respect for each other and the right to being treated with respect. It totally fails in regards to the fact that the experimenter did not treat the participant with concern and respect and that research experience was not a pleasant and informative one whatsoever. I was shocked to learn that an experiment like this was at some point permitted even back in 1971. Regardless that this experiment took place prior to the National Research Act of 1974, it is hard to believe that social psychologists could plan and put in action an experiment that was obviously causing extraordinary psychological harm to all the participants without regard of their role as prisoner
Unit 1 Written Assignment Literature Review of article on Standard Prison Experiment Introduction This article concerns the Stanford Prison experiment carried out in 1971 at Stanford University. The experiment commenced on August 14, and was stopped after only six days. It is one of the most noted psychological experiments on authority versus subordinates. The studies which emerged from this have been of interest to those in prison and military fields due to its focus on the psychology associated with authority.
Authority gives a person the chance to feel superior, and as seen throughout this film, those within the position of authority will only then abuse this opportunity. Given the chance for people to gain authority or rather the sense of authority is enough to awaken the evil within. Within the movie, The Stanford Prison Experiment the guards were enabled to set a line of difference between the prisoners and themselves. They were able to make the prisoners feel weak or emasculated, forcing the students to strip and wear the assigned prison clothes that barely covered their genitals (Alvarez). Forcing the prisoners to wear these feminine articles of clothing and assigning them a number, gives the opportunity to strip away their personality and
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.
