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To Kill A Mockingbird Essays: The Stanford Prison Experiment

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Stanford Prison Experiment
Props were used to perpetuate the guards and inmate’s roles and behaviors by giving the guards uniforms, mirror-reflecting sunglasses, whistles, handcuffs, and big Billy clubs and when they had them they felt they had the power. The glasses were mirror-reflecting and made the guards appear less human. They were given the title prison guard and they had control over the prisoners. Prisoners were stripped of their clothes and dignities. They were dressed in cheap smocks and allowed no underwear. They were to be addressed by and answer to only their identity numbers. They also had a small chain around one ankle to remind them that they were inmates in a correctional facility. They felt they were dehumanized by the guard’s actions. In …show more content…

On the first day the guards felt awkward giving orders and the prisoners would laugh and mock the guards until a guard started to be more extreme. One guard kept quiet even though he disagreed with what the cruel guards were doing. Instead of stepping in and protesting the bad treatment of the prisoners, the guard simply left because he did not want to disturb or shatter the feeling of unison amongst the guards. Another example of group think was when prisoner 416 rebelled and went on a hunger strike, and the other prisoners pressured him to give up and eat instead of supporting him.
The leadership style of the guards would be authoritarian because one guard started to be more extreme and once the other guards noticed how the prisoners were obeying him, they started being like him and followed his lead.
No one really anticipated how the experiment would end. If they did, nobody would have signed up for it. The prisoners began to suffer a wide array of humiliations and punishments at the hands of the guards, and many began to show signs of mental and emotional

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However, during this experiment, the guards would use emptying the bucket toilet within the cells as a reward, not as health and safety standards. Fourth, the blindfold movement of the prisoners for even the most basic movements of the inmates. Now, this technique can be used to disorientate psychologically the prisoners to enforce the standard that the prisoner cannot accomplish anything without the help of a guard. Fifth, the last unethical action I discovered of this experiment is the lack of outside activity where sunlight is present. Now, some of the harshest of prison in other countries us this extreme tactic to enforce that prisoner do not want to return to jail.

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Some guards are more forceful than others and place prisoners in the Hole or revoke privileges to demand attention and respect. Some prisoners started to protest these demeaning actions that were unnecessary from the guards. Guards retaliated with their various forms of indirect of abuse. This was when the first signs of distress occurred among the prisoners. The prisoners started to barricade themselves in their cells as a way to protest against the guards and in response, a guard blew a fire extinguisher onto the inmates of Cell 2 (Zimbardo, 2007).

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The experiments became popular when trying to understand what having power (in this situation the role of the guards) would do to a normal person. The article The Stanford Prison Experiment explains the experiment and its process. After running for 6 days, it revealed there was real danger of someone being mentally or physically harmed if it continued. The experiment was said to have proved that people easily conform to the social roles they are given (McLeod 2-3). This, however, can be proven wrong in many ways.

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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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They also concluded that the environment of the prison played a vital role in the way the guards treated the prisoners. It is believed that this experiment changed the way some U.S. prisons are

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They may have also experienced a shift in their perception of their fellow guards, as the dynamics and roles that shaped their interactions were suddenly stripped away. The prisoners, upon seeing the reconversion of the prison into a hallway and the guards in civilian clothes, might have felt a sense of freedom and relief. They would likely recognize that the harsh and dehumanizing environment they were subjected to during the experiment was over. The prisoners might experience a range of emotions, such as resentment, anger, or confusion, as they process their treatment and the psychological impact of the role they were forced

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The Stanford Prison experiment was created by Psychologist / Professor Zimbardo to further educate himself about the social structure of life and how people adapt to their surroundings. He created this experiment in which he gathered students from the university, out of those students who applied to be apart of this experiment, ten students became prisoners and eleven became guards. This experiment started off well, zimbardo gather information and learned a few things. He then started to realize that the actors that took on the guard role took it to a whole other level, they became more into their roles. They took torturing to a whole other level causing numerous individuals with the prisoner roles to have psychological problems, emotional

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THE GUARDS At the beginning of the experiment the guards were told at orientation to do anything to maintain law and order, avoid physical violence, and prevent prisoner escapes (Sedacca 2017). They did not have adequate training on how to appropriately handle intense situations. The five psychological tactics the guards developed to keep control of the environment was to dehumanize the prisoners, took their name away, their masculinity, the way the prisoners wear their hair and took away all decision making. The guards dehumanized the prisoners by humiliating them. The guards would make the prisoners defecate in buckets in their cells, taking away their basic human rights, and demeaning them by calling them names.

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They were willing participants in a psychological study into the abuse of power in a prison context, orchestrated by the Stanford University psychology department. The prisoners and guards were assigned their roles and given vague directions on how to act. The situation rapidly deteriorated as prisoners rioted, and guards resorted to excessive use of force in order to assert authority. The guards abused the prisoners,

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They were divided into two groups; guards and prisoners. Over time some guards treated the prisoners brutally. They sought to 'humiliate the prisoners and deprive them of their rights' (Haslam and Reicher 2006a). As a result, the 14 day experiment was cut short to 6 days. Zimbardo gave instructions to the guards; don't let the

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The guards began teasing them and making them “sing” their numbers and assigning punishments as needed, such as pushups and jumping jacks. The guards took role almost all day everyday. The prisoners, tired from being woken up, broke out into a rebellion on just the second day. They put their bed springs against their cell doors the guards used force to get the prisoners back in their place. They threw prisoners in the pit for hours at a time, denying them food, water, and social contact.

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Some of the prisoners’ started acting irrationally and they started telling lies on each other and some even started siding with the guards. Witnessing this type of behavior was quite strange I couldn’t understand why the prisoners would tell lies on each other. Perhaps the prisoners felt by doing this they would no longer receive such harsh punishment but that wasn’t the case at all. The prisoners did whatever it took to please the guards. The more submissive the prisoners became the more hostile the guards’ behavior got.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment was a psychological experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo. Initially expected to last two weeks, it instead lasted a mere six days before coming to an end. The experiment successfully shows that all people, despicable or kind, are capable of truly terrifying things, and also reinforces an already well-known theory, the power of the situation. Thesis: Although the Stanford Prison Experiment had been planned to be a lengthy study to uncover what authority did to someone’s mindset, the two week experiment had been cut to six days by Philip Zimbardo and his team due the violent physiological state of the subjects caused by the environment surrounding them.

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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 experiment mainly focused on the participants appearance, for example prisoners were dressed into prison clothes for feeling more demeaned and humiliated, however at the same time guards were dressed into like real guards with sunglasses for appearing more detached and less humane. The results were terrifying because the guards took the matter seriously and sometimes harassed the prisoners with the help pf physical punishment, or even

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