The Purpose Of The Stanford Prison Experiment

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The Stanford Prison Experiment took place forty years ago, led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo. Although the purpose of this experiment was to explore the impact of systems and situations on human’s behaviors, it resulted in severe harm in mental health and ethical concerns.

Harm caused by the study:

Since the participants are assigned into two groups as prisoners and prison wardens in the study, the prison wardens thought that they had to play in an authoritative role and did sadistic behaviors. It resulted in mental breakdowns and emotional harm to the prisoners. They used various tortures such as stripping naked and interrupting sleep to the prisoners. During six days, the prisoners suffered from anxiety and breakdowns and one even had