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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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The Stanford prison experiment was led by Philip Zimbardo with the purpose of studying the psychological effects of being a prisoner and a prison guard. The participants of the research study were male college students. Once selected, a coin toss determined which males would be prisoners and prison guards. The experiment took place at Stanford University, where a mock prison was crafted. Zimbardo acted as the warden or superintendent of the mock prison.

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Second, The Stanford Prison Experiment was a psychological study that was too inhumane to continue because of the behavior of the prison guards when handed with superiority and the mental breakdowns of the prisoners. E: “Now, you 'll all be given sunglasses and uniforms to give the prisoners a sense of a unified, singular authority… And from this point forward you should never refer to this as a study or experiment again,’’ (Dr. Phil Zimbardo).

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Stanford Prison Study: The Stanford prison study was created by Philip Zimbardo who wanted to know what happens if you put good people into bad situations. He created an experiment in which individuals were given a role as a prisoner or a guard. They were then placed in a mock prison and instructed to play their roles for two weeks. As the individuals accepted the roles more and more they started to lose reality. Prisoners started going crazy because they were being treated so terribly by the guards.

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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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The experiment was meant to last for two weeks, although in the end it lasted for around 6 days because of the chaos that took place in the prison. The chaos was initiated by a guard called Dave Eshelman. He had come to the conclusion that "this experiment must have been put together to prove a point about prisons being a cruel and inhumane place," and that he "would do his part" to help prove this point. He took the persona of a movie character, and whenever he interacted with the prisoners, he "made the decision that I [he] would be as intimidating, as cold, as cruel as possible"

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Writing Assignment What Zimbardo was trying to find out in the Stanford Prison Experiment was how prison inmates where acting towards the guards in the jails. The study was being done that Zimbardo converted a basement in Stanford University into a mock prison. As this was all coming together he was looking for volunteers to participate in a study to see the psychological effects of prison life. He was trying to see if you took good people and put them in an evil place how would they react to the “prison life.”

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The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 and led by Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor. The questions of the experiment were what happens when you put good people in an evil place; does the situation outside of you come to control your behavior, or do the things outside of you such as your attitude, values, and morality allow you to rise above a negative environment, and how do we respond to authority? It past psychology experiments it had already been shown that people have a respect for authoritative figures. People will listen to a person who is an authority even if it goes against their morality. This was the basis of the Stanford Experiment.

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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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According to Zimbardo, his reason for this experiment was so that “examining and understanding the causes of evil might we be able to change it, to contain it, to transform it through wise decisions and innovative communal action” (Zimbardo, 20). The experiment consisted of young men in college being appointed either a prisoner or guard position. Every man, prisoner or guard, started off normal- some more polite than others, some more aggressive, but overall normal. As time goes by, Zimardo states that “the Stanford prison would become the scene of abuses that eerily foreshadowed the abuses of Abu Ghraib by Army Reserve Military Police years later” (Zimbardo, 46). Within just days of the experiment, guards were transitioning from soft, easy going men, to forceful, demanding, and quite abusive.

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In the video “The Stanford Prison Experiment (Part 2)” Michale Steven concluded: “We brought in people who had very different personalities that those Zimbardo chose. We put them in a situation that did not demand things from them and they behaved accordingly to that personality” (30:00-30:10). This exhibited an experiment that is a development of the original “Stanford Prison Experiment” with improved techniques. It was an experiment in which Steve selected participants who scored high in morals from numerous personality tests and placed them in a dark room where they couldn't see the other participants. And had them attempt to complete a puzzle and give them the option to play an alarming sound for the other participants that didn’t exist which they had control of the volume.

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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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It showed how normal civilians acted when they were given authority over others. Even the most cordial, intelligent people can take on an evil, machiavellianistic nature when introduced to a dominant role in an individualized setting. This experiment taught psychologists so many things about human behavior and the prison system. It is an event that is taught in classrooms all over the world. While some people question the ethics of the experiment, it paved the way for more understanding as well as the reform of psychological practices

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