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Study Of Stanford County Jail By Philip Zimbardo

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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. …show more content…

By providing the officers with almost unlimited authority to establish their own rules and do what they desired, except for being physically aggressive with the prisoners, the guards felt entitled to their power and believed that none of the participants, especially the prisoners, could intervene with their new status. Not only did the uniform and rules allow the officers to genuinely believe the high authority and influence they had, but the prisoners as well. By providing the guards with a similar uniform as an officer including a whistle, a club, and sunglasses, it allowed both groups to match their descriptions of their representative heuristics, or the idea of categorizing an individual based on our mental representations of that group, permitting both groups of participants to fulfill their roles more correspondingly. If the officers had not been provided with this drastic change of mannerism, it would have been harder for both groups to take the experiment as seriously. Additionally, cohesiveness allowed the officers to come together and form a larger force compared to working independently. In union, the officers were able to achieve their goal: demand obedience from the prisoners and further the power they had over them. This effect even caused a misperception of numerous officer’s height as many of the prisoners perceived them as being taller than them even though they were very similar in height. This mistaken perspective showed the prisoners illusory correlation, the idea that a relationship between two variables exist when in reality there is none, as the prisoners correlated two items that cannot be associated accurately: height and personality. In other words, the prisoners believed because the officers were more aggressive and a had a

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Another way the symbolic interactionism is used is the correctional officers are a symbol of dominance towards the inmates. They are supposed to be in charge of the inmates, but in the case of the riot the inmates overthrew them. Then they took over the dominant role themselves making them the dominant leaders of the

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In “The Standford Prison Experiment”, Philip G. Zimbardo, shows an example of how people who have power uses to abuse others to help show their dominance and power by using the prison experiment that was used at Stanford. Showing how people with power who are the guards are hurting the defenseless prisoners. This is shown in the article by the author when he said “I have singled him out for the special abuse both because he begs for it and because I simply don’t like him”( Philip 75). Showing how when guards were giving their power they demonstrated on the prisoners who in this experiment were seen as the victims or the prey of the violence that was used on them. To then show how they have power and quash the prisoner's moral of rebelling.

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In the article “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Saul Mcleod it takes the reader through the process of an experiment by the University of Stanford were they got a group of people and split them up into to groups one group of people were guards and the other group of people were the prisoners, now in the experiment the guards were in charge of the prisoners, the prisoners relied on the guards for everything whether it be food or water or even a new set of clothes but as the experiment went on the guard abused their power making prisoners do miniscule task such as clean toilets with toothbrushes re make their beds after they had just been made and other thing, is is an example of the guards having to much power and they abused it at their

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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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Some guards are more forceful than others and place prisoners in the Hole or revoke privileges to demand attention and respect. Some prisoners started to protest these demeaning actions that were unnecessary from the guards. Guards retaliated with their various forms of indirect of abuse. This was when the first signs of distress occurred among the prisoners. The prisoners started to barricade themselves in their cells as a way to protest against the guards and in response, a guard blew a fire extinguisher onto the inmates of Cell 2 (Zimbardo, 2007).

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Ultimately, the behaviours executed by the group of policemen is suggested to be replicable, as some aspects of the consequences of the behaviours of the policemen and the results of both Zimbardo’s and Milgram's experiments paralleled. The Stanford prison experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo yielded similarly chilling results: a nucleus of increasingly enthusiastic killers who volunteered for the firing squads and "Jew hunts"; a larger group of policemen who performed as shooters and ghetto clearers when assigned but who did not seek opportunities to kill (and in some cases refrained from killing, contrary to standing orders, when no one was monitoring their actions); and a small group (less than 20 percent) of refusers and evaders. (Browning 168) Likewise, just like some of the subjects from Stanley Milgram’s experiment on the topic of obedience to authority, the policemen “mitigated their behaviour when they could do so without personal risk but were unable to refuse participation in the battalion's killing operations openly” (Browning 176).

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This experiment was conducted in Stanford University by Dr. Zimbardo. During this two week long session, Dr. Zimbardo had several volunteers agree to act as prisoners and as prison guards. The prisoners were told to wait in their houses while the guards were to set up the mock prison, a tactic used by Dr. Zimbardo to make them fit into their roles more. The official police apprehended the students assigned to the role of prisoner from their homes, took mug shots, fingerprinted them, and gave them dirty prison uniforms. The guards were given clean guard uniforms, sunglasses, and billy clubs borrowed from the police.

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In 1971 Professor Phillip Zimbardo was interested in finding out what would happen if you put a good person in an evil place. Would the institution control their behavior or would a person attitude, values, morality raise about the negative environment? First, Zimbardo converted a basement of Stanford University into a mock prison, Next, Zimbardo recruiter 24 male college students who were paid $15 per day to take part in the experiment. Finally, the recruiters were randomly assigned to either prisoner or guard with Zimbardo being the make shift prison warden. I believe the prison study was unethical, clearly young men suffered physically, mentally.

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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.”

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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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“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is” was said by philosopher Albert Camus. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, man does not. The Stanford Prison Experiment aimed to reveal the result of creating a fake prison containing Stanford students who willingly offered to participate as prisoners and guards. They were fully aware that it was not an actual prison. In the experiment, the guards became violent and abusive toward the prisoners.

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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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The Stanford Prison Experiment was conceived by Phillip Zimbardo with the aim of the Experiment being to observe and analyse the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was funded by the United States Office of Naval Research who wanted to study anti-social behaviour 24 individuals were chosen for the experiment, all of them college age males (The story: An overview of the experiment, 1999). The individuals were assigned the role of prisoner or guard at random. With the aid of a consultant, the basement of Stanford University was converted into a realistic prison environment, with multiple cells, a solitary confinement chamber and a two way intercom, allowing guards to listen in on what the prisoners were saying.

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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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The Stanford Prison Experiment was an interesting movie. The way the experiment turned out versus the expectations was different and changed completely. The independent variable was the roles that the participants were assigned, which was determined by a coin flip. The dependent variable was the participants’ behaviors throughout the experiment. Some of the guards’ behaviors were cruel and immoral.

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