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The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Power Of Evil

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The Power of Evil Throughout history, evil has been portrayed as a characteristic flaw that one has been born with. Historic events, such as the holocaust, have lead many to wonder what goes on in the minds of the people who abuse power for the worst. Although many believe that some people are born with a capacity to inflict evil, studies have proven that under certain circumstances anyone could contain characteristic flaws to obtain the capability to extort their evil to cause pain and suffering. Others believe that most men and women in the world are not born with the capacity of inflict evil. Their main reason for this is that so few have committed crimes of such horror, that they believe the people who commit the crimes must have been …show more content…

Phillip Zimbardo sent out a newspaper add for volunteers to help conduct an experiment. The idea of this experiment was to get boys who would split up into prisoners and prison guards. Throughout the experiment the guards would humiliate and establish a feeling of powerlessness in the prisoners. This lead many of the volunteers into acting like they were in a real life prinson instead of an experiment. For example, many of the prisoners stopped referring to themselves as their birth name. Instead when they were asked who they were they simply answered with ID numbers that were assigned to them. As the experiment went on the guards beat the prisoners, sprayed them with fire extinguishers, and striped the prisoners naked and harassed them. They were not being told to do this, but within the seven days of the experiment they began to abuse their power and inflict evil upon the prisoners. A member of the experiment says, “It’s easy for you to say, 'Oh, I wouldn't have acted that way, but you don't know. That's - that's the truth. You don't know. And now, I know what I'm capable of, and it hurts” (Karl Vandy). Someone who never knew that he could hurt and humiliate another person says it is scary what people are capable of. He didn’t know until he was put in the situation. This supports the idea that anyone could obtain the power to inflict evil on another

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Within 24 hours of the experiment, the prison guards began to humiliate and mentally abuse the prisoners. The prison guards were given little instructions about how to treat the prisoners, except that there was not to be any physical force used on the prisoners. The lack of instructions that

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He then split them at random into two separate groups; guards and prisoners. The guards were given objects that represented power prison guards have like handcuffs, whistles and reflective sunglasses. The prisoners were mock arrested without warning, blindfolded, stripped of their clothes, and given a dress with a number that replaced their names. In short, the guards assumed their roles whole heartedly, and began to escalate their use of power with the intention to taunt and humiliate the prisoners.

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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.

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Within the first day of the experiment, the guards were already degrading the prisoners. On the second day, the prisoners had used their beds to barricade the cells in order to rebel against their status. After this, the guards made them do menial jobs and woke up the prisoners multiple times a night to harass them. Since the prison was in a basement the prisoners had no concept of day or night and being woken up regularly caused them to become disoriented. The guards harassed the prisoners even more after the rebellion.

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Prisoners were stripped of their identities, forced to wear uniforms, and referred to using assigned numbers rather than their names. This deindividuation (the perceived loss of personal individuality) led to a breakdown of social norms and ethical boundaries, with some participants experiencing severe emotional trauma. Another ethical issue with the Stanford Prison Experiment was the lack of proper oversight and intervention. Zimbardo, in his role as the lead researcher, became so immersed in the role of prison superintendent that he failed to recognize the unethical behavior unfolding within the experiment, even as a psychologist. It was only after a graduate student raised concerns about the treatment of the participants that the experiment was prematurely halted after just six days instead of the planned two weeks.

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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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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.

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In the same sense, the prisoners went from nervous, innocent men to rebellious and chaotic men. By the end of the experiment, it was obvious that the participants acted in a way that best represented who they were in terms of the prison. Because the guards had an overflow of pride and power, they became evil as they used it to their advantage and abused the prisoners. The prisoners became evil as they turned their lack of power into a form of protest, which caused a great amount of

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Therefore it can be said that power gives evil the need to feed off the fear of others, it drives them to suppress their emotions and mindset providing them the opportunity to commit such acts that would previously be considered “sins”. Mr. Zimbardo’s theory on the Lucifer effect can been seen in action through the entire movie. The lucifer effect begins to tell us a couple of reasons as to why sometimes good eggs can turn bad. One of those reasons being authority, while the other relies on dehumanization, or the process of stopping to see someone as fully human. The process of dehumanization can be said to eliminate guilt or human feelings toward a misdeed, it takes away need to be moral and do good evil and opens the dam for the evil lurking to lash out.

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