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Stanford Prison Experiment Research Paper

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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who will guard the guards themselves?

On the quiet Sunday morning of August 17th, 1971, police officers arrested nine young men as their neighbors watched in disbelief. They were put in handcuffs and directed into police cars, charged with armed robbery and burglary, for which they were not guilty. They were willing participants in a psychological study into the abuse of power in a prison context, orchestrated by the Stanford University psychology department. The prisoners and guards were assigned their roles and given vague directions on how to act. The situation rapidly deteriorated as prisoners rioted, and guards resorted to excessive use of force in order to assert authority. The guards abused the prisoners, …show more content…

We all desire power, as it can make us feel confident, and is often seen as a measure of success. However, power is a double edged sword. Power has the ability to corrupt even the best of people. This phenomenon was explored by psychologists through the Stanford Prison Experiment, and its findings relate to issues in our society today such as police brutality. When the findings of the Stanford Prison Experiment went public, it was met with disgust and shock at the abuse of the prisoners and unethical practices during the study. 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 …show more content…

Those with power will continue to exploit and oppress those below them, leading to the breakdown of all decency between human beings, and the loss of all positive human interactions and relationships. This is important in our society today as it relates to issues prevalent in our society such as police brutality. According to the US Department of Justice, 52% of police officers agreed with the statement that it is not unusual for law enforcement officials to turn a blind eye to the improper conduct of other officers, showing how deep-rooted police misconduct is in our institutions. These issues remain to be prevalent in our society and the corrupting effect of power affects every facet of society. Police will continue to abuse their power, leading to civilians constantly fearing for their lives. But what can we do? What can we, the powerless, do to confront those who hold power over us? We are the ones who put these people in power. We train our police yet they continue to flout their ethics. Why does this

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842 Words | 4 Pages

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a social psychology study that aimed to investigate the effects of power and authority on human behavior. In the experiment, participants were randomly assigned roles as prisoners or guards in a simulated prison environment. The results of the experiment showed that the participants' behavior was heavily influenced by their role and the power dynamics at play. The guards became increasingly authoritarian and abusive, while the prisoners became submissive and

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1092 Words | 5 Pages

During the fall of 1973, Phillip Zimbardo conducted his famous Stanford Prison Study where he recruited 24 undergraduate students to either become prisoners or guards in his experimental prison: the “Stanford County Jail". The recreation of this prison was conducted to study how an individual’s status and/or label changed depending on the social role they had to fulfill. The participants included 12 guards and 12 prisoners, each given proper uniform to wear, such as providing the prisoners with a smock that contained ID numbers on both sides and a chain with a heavy ball around their ankle. Both groups were also given detailed instructions on the requirements they had to complete in order for the individual to assimilate to their character.

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751 Words | 4 Pages

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

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843 Words | 4 Pages

Over the course of the experiment, contradictive psychological relations were established between the prisoners and guards. The prisoners began to lose hope and realized that there was no way out. They felt that it is better to do exactly what the guards told them to do. On the other hand, guards had to be authoritative to keep the prisoners and the prison in order. A number of the guards were aggressive and brutal towards the prisoners while a few were more sympathetic, and occasionally did favors for the

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858 Words | 4 Pages

This connects to the idea of guards having the capability of turning evil through an atmosphere of the prison environment where they can turn evil and have no remorse feelings towards the prisoners. From the article, "Stanford Prison Experiment," by Saul McLeod, he explained that the evil tactics that were made by the guards were from the atmosphere of the prison environment because the norm for a prison guard is to act tough and have no remorse feelings towards the prisoners when assigning punishments. He also added that guards acted this way because they lost their sense of personal identity when they dressed up as a guard, which can show they may have believed that they were actual guards and the experiment was real, which might’ve triggered their dark side with harsh punishments. Therefore, losing their personal identity in a prison environment may have been the factor where they triggered their evil side during the prison

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869 Words | 4 Pages

Introductory Textbooks know that they don’t need the Stanford Prison Experiment to be awesome since the belief is that they’re already awesome. You and I might not share the same opinions but who knew textbooks could be all that. Which is ironic because The Stanford Prison Experiment is one of the most famous experiments in psychological history. Haslam and Reicher say the SPE website receives 7,000 visitors each day. Richard Griggs asks the question, is with the Stanford Prison having such prestige, why don’t some textbooks include this famous experiment and critiques?

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1572 Words | 7 Pages

In the six days that the experiment ran they saw the personalities that the prisoner and prison guards took.

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599 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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820 Words | 4 Pages

Major issues that had arisen because of the Stanford Experiment were also caused because of critical pieces of information that were left ignored following its termination. There is no overarching way to know whether the guards momentarily became evil or simply acted that way. If one person began to act in a cruel manner, other people may have followed their lead because it appeared they knew what to do and no one wanted to appear as an outcast. Either way, it still showed how people thought they should act when placed in a prison system. In many ways, Zimbardo failed to state how not all of the guards acted in such a crude manner.

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725 Words | 3 Pages

Sadly, during the last few years the relationship between the community and its police has significantly deteriorated. This has been due to the way some officers have handled certain situations in which the use of violence or deadly force could have been avoided. Because of this, some sectors of the community no longer trust their police; such distrust has gotten to the point that they rather take matters into their own hands than calling them for help. Although not all officers misbehave and abuse their power “it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch”. The media has also contributed in promoting the idea that most cops are bad by transmitting, over and over, videos of police officers abusing their power.

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2291 Words | 10 Pages

Police officers are sworn in with the responsibility of serving and protecting the public. Members of the public expect their local police departments to keep their community safe, and protect them from danger and harm. Lately, police-citizen relationships have been strained as a result of problematic police behaviors and citizen encounters. Police use-of-force has become a pressing issue in modern society and has caused distrust and a lack of confidence in law enforcement agencies. Tragedies such as the deaths of Michael Brown, Erick Garner, and Sandra Bland has fueled the public’s outrage and suspicion of local police officers.

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1129 Words | 5 Pages

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.

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1114 Words | 5 Pages

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

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729 Words | 3 Pages

It can be argued that one of the main reasons for conducting studies that may seem unethical are necessary to dispel idealistic beliefs such as the just-world phenomenon, we may have about the justice system in this case, as well as the influence psychologists may have in correctional facilities. As observed in the Stanford Prison Experiment - a mere simulation involving completely innocent civilians role playing as prisoners and guards, such an intense result prevailed that the experiment had to be prematurely shut down. Furthermore, the experimenter himself got so taken with the experiment that experimenters with a clear and objective view of the experiment realized the distressing effects the experiment was having on the participants. (Wagner, 2007) The concept of obedience to authority was revolutionized following Milgram’s 1963, 1965 and 1974 studies.

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746 Words | 3 Pages

Another thing that makes this experiment beautiful is that it can help the police and military offices to train their people in coping the stress of being imprisoned among the prisoners. It would help them to know how that prison environment has a great factor in creating brutal behavior among the

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