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.
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
After the experiment, the students who played the guards were interviewed and found to still be shocked by their behavior within the fake prison environment, unrecognising that side of them or that they were even capable of doing such evil and abusive
After Zimbardo sifted through plenty of applicants, he found a group of students that were mentally able to take part in the experiment. He divided them into two groups:
Official Stanford Prison Experiment website: http://www.prisonexp.org/ What makes good people do bad things?: http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct04/goodbad.aspx An interview with Philip Zimbardo: http://nautil.us/issue/45/power/the-man-who-played-with-absolute-power In the Stanford Prison Study, students were given roles as prison guards or inmates. The participants were chosen carefully, so that most of the participants would end up being "Average Joes".
The experiment took place at Stanford University in August of 1971 in the basement of the psychology department. The Stanford prison experiment wanted to explore the adverse effects that oppression from prison guards would have on
The guards were instructed to maintain order anyway they wanted without using physical violence. Zimbardo wanted the guards to seem intimidating while the prisoners were made to look inferior and were to be referred to with their ID number only. After the prisoners were assigned their roles and the guards took their post was the effect of the experiment finally setting in. On the morning of the second day the prisoners began to rebel against the guards by ripping off their ID numbers and barring the doors while taunting the guards. This event was the first step down the slippery slope that would follow.
I found the Stanford Prison experiment to be very disturbing, especially in the context of the recent events involving police misconduct and brutality. I think the Stanford experiment demonstrates that people in positions of power that abuse that power are not necessarily predestined to abuse the power, but the position that they are in can encourage it. For example, nearly all police officers are required to go through an intense background and psychological exams to becomes police officers. However, as recent and past events have shown, police misconduct is a major issue. I think that this evidence demonstrates the need for more continuing education and monitoring to ensure that those who experience high stress situations (without proper
In the six days that the experiment ran they saw the personalities that the prisoner and prison guards took.
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.
Zimbardo would then go out of his way to have kind,intelligent, and compassionate individuals try out for his experiment, when all participants were accounted for, he appointed half the participants as prisoners and half as guards, appointing himself as the warden (The Stanford Prison Experiment). He then allowed these guards to do whatever they pleased, except for physically abuse the participants. To his shock he found that all his once kind, compassionate participants were becoming into ravenous monsters that had no idea of the true damage they were causing to the other participants, Zimbardo himself began to feel these effects. Zimbardo ended the experiment early due to these effects and the mental well being of the participants being in jeopardy . When interviewing the participants he found, that these guards did truly feel remorse, but knew they had to please the higher officials in order to feel accomplished (The Stanford Prison Experiment).
After The Stanford Prison Experiment was over they interviewed some people. The author states what one guard says about the interview “One guard said, ‘I was surprised
Everyone who was arrested was a volunteer who saw a newspaper ad and wanted to participate in the experiment (Zimbardo, 2015). Zimbardo wanted to use these people to see the psychological effects of prisoners and prison guards (Zimbardo, 2015). A large number of applicants were given interviews and evaluations to eliminate several people who were not capable of participating in the experiment (Zimbardo, 2015). Once the boys were chosen, they were randomly assigned to be a prisoner or a prison guard by the flip of a coin (Zimbardo, 2015). They used the basement of the Stanford Psychology department as a make shift prison (Zimbardo, 2015).
The experiment was designed to understand why and how people will do anything a person says because of their level of authority or the amount of influence they hold. The test was monitored to see how many times, and how long an individual will intentionally put a stranger in agonizing pain. Surprisingly, many people did, one of the reasons being because they believed they would not be held responsible for any harm done to the other person. Since the proctor wore a lab coat it is important to note that perhaps the volunteers truly believed they could not stop. The Zimbardo Prison Experiment tested influence in a different way in that, participants were given certain “roles” in the prisons.
He is a selfish psychologist who just wanted to get a result. He did not realize that he is starting to act like a prison superintendent than a researcher. He only realizes it when Christina Maslach, objected the experiment after she saw that the prisoners were being harassed by the guards. Even if the study has received a lot of ethical criticism, the result still helps Zimbardo to make a conclusion that is helpful for his future endeavor in research.
