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The Stanford Prison Experiment By Philip G Zimbardo

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Obedience in Humans In 1973 the article "The Stanford Prison Experiment" by Philip G. Zimbardo created an experiment to study the daily prison life. Without strict orders, a person would not act out in such a way. Following the rules and staying obedient the whole time is a question Zimbardo wanted to find out. Zimbardo was curious to see if people would conform to the specific role they are performing in order to show obedience. It was set up just like a prison as much as it could be so these students could meet the expectations of the prison life roles. Once students got the role of a prisoner or a guard, Zimbardo tried to keep it as realistic as it could be to get the full observations. For example, police cars pulled into the school in a mass arrest as each suspect got a charge of a felony (Zimbardo 621). The prisoners were viewed upon as real life criminals. Every process that would be done as if this were a real life experience, occurred with the students. When the suspects arrived in the basement it was set up realistically …show more content…

With the guards becoming crueler, it pushed the prisoners to pursue the role as a real-life prisoner. The prisoners began to feel humiliated by the guards and mentally harassed. One became so depressed that he had so much rage with uncontrollable crying, he was set free from the experiment (627). The guards would taunt the prisoners by singling them out because they would beg for it and they simply did not see eye to eye. As the hours passed, new emotions were being found within the prisoners and guards as this experiment was being conducted. Some guards felt disappointed in how they were acting, but the others were enjoying themselves with publically humiliating prisoners (629). The students were so caught up in the need to control people instead of realizing this was just a conduct

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How did Orlando 's mock psychiatric study support Zimbardos findings. Conformity: Yielding to group pressure The influence a group has over an individual Reffered to a majority influence Compliance is a form of social influence Following the majority even if views arnt shared to fit in Conformity is a unambiguous task Informational social influence Identification in conformity Comformity to assigned roles Individuals alternate their general behaviour and opinions both privately and publicly. Being a member of a group is highly desirable.

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In both Lord of the Flies and the stanford prison experiment, it is demonstrated that people’s more dark and savage side comes out when they are placed in a situation where they are isolated from civilization. In the stanford prison experiment, the college students’ dark sides came out only 36 hours into the experiment: “And finally, about were hostile, arbitrary, and intensive in their forms of prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able to predict this behavior,” (SPE 12). The experiment began with average middle class college students who were told to act like prison guards. For the time being, they were isolated to the prison and interacting with the “prisoners” all day.

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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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The Stanford Prison Experiment, carried out by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, revealed the significant influence of social structure on violence and brutality in prisons. This essay will look at how Zimbardo's study revealed a link between the way relationships are structured inside of prisons and the rise of aggressive and abusive conduct. It will also suggest adjustments to the social structure of jails that might lessen violence. It will also include any potential opposition to the reforms and the difficulties in putting them into practice. College students were given roles as guards or convicts at random in Zimbardo's experiment, which involves simulating a prison setting.

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When those who were classified as the prisoners were arrested it was done unexpectedly to help put them into the mindset psychologists were looking for during the experiment. Off the bat, the people were left clueless and fearful as to what was happening to them. The prisoners were

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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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The exchanges between the guards and the prisoners were unrestricted, yet they were hostile or even demeaning. While the prisoners were submissive and depressed, the guards started acting aggressively and abusively toward them. Five of the inmates had to be removed from the research early due to strong negative feelings, including crying and increased anxiety. When the guards made the rest of the prisoners chant, "Prisoner #819 did a bad thing," he refuted his claim of wanting to leave because he immediately began to believe he was a bad prisoner. Even the researchers themselves started to forget what was going on.

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He continues with observations of the first day of testing by quoting certain guard’s conversations with each other and prisoners. Proceeding, Zimbardo points out a riot initiated by the prisoners that was quickly snuffed out by the guards. He also emphasizes the point, “We were forced to release prisoner 8612 because of extreme depression…” Following the quote Zimbardo describes diary entries by one guard which explain a dramatic shift in mood in the guards. Zimbardo finishes his article with reasoning behind early termination of the experiment and expressed his regret of running the experiment.

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

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The participants were randomly selected by flipping a coin. They were either made a guard or an inmate; There were 10 inmates and 11 guards. Zimbardo wanted the “criminals” to feel like real criminals and treated like real criminals. He had the participants arrested at their own homes and taken to the police station to go through the whole process of

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The guards that did not agree personally to the torturing of prisoners, but obeyed anyway, were participating in the act of Submissive Obedience, because the conscience they obeyed was not their own. The guards actions can also be explained by Philip G. Zimbardo’s “Stanford Prison Experiment”. In Zimbardo’s experiment, many young men were given absolute power as guards over prisoners, much like the soldiers at Abu Ghraib. After given few directives and told to enforce the laws of the prison, the guards at the Stanford Prison took only 3 days to

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The second aspect that should be highlighted from the author’s hypothesis is that guards themselves, the authority was in a specific mind-set which comes with the role, and most significantly the uniform which played a major role. This enabled them, psychology to commit the negative acts against the prisoners in the experiment. What reinforces this idea the uniforms enabled this is the experiment encouraged negative as well as positive engagement with the prisoners. However most of those involved in the guard roles engaged almost entirely in negative behavior.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment began just like any other, with a general question: “Would someone who is put into a negative environment be able to control their behavior

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Stanford Experiment: Unethical or Not Stanford Prison Experiment is a popular experiment among social science researchers. In 1973, a psychologist named Dr. Philip Zimbardo wants to find out what are the factors that cause reported brutalities among guards in American prisons. His aim was to know whether those reported brutalities were because of the personalities of the guards or the prison environment. However, during the experiment, things get muddled unexpectedly. The experiment became controversial since it violates some ethical standards while doing the research.

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As stated in the name of the actual experiment, it was a simulation of how it was like to be imprisoned. The participants were 24 college students. The

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