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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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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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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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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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