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What Are The Similarities Between The Stanford Prison Experiment And Lord Of The Flies

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Many controversial events have occurred throughout time; for example, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the mid-20th century is one of many occasions where humans have failed to stay moral. The themes represented in both Lord of the Flies and the Stanford Prison Experiment reflect upon malicious intentions when given superiority. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of British boys being evacuated by plane from a war zone have their plane shot down, stranding them on an undiscovered island. Losing touch with society, the boys start showing primitive instincts, like bloodlust and amoral behavior. These ideas resemble the theme of the Stanford Prison Experiment, a movie based on a psychological experiment simulating a prison with randomly …show more content…

“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). The guards were given power by having a uniform, the ability to make their own rules for the prisoners, changing the way they saw themselves and behaved. “Prisons, they represent… a loss of freedom, literally and symbolically. We're trying to strip away their individuality… Take away all the things that make them them. You see, we're trying to understand how an institution affects an individual's behavior.” (Dr. Zimbardo). All the prisoners went through the weakening of their self-identity, the way they were dressed and called made them small compared to the guards. “You have no right! I'll smash this camera! I'll beat up your fucking guards! You're messing with my head, man. My head! You have no right to fuck with my head!” (Prisoner). Over the course of the experiment, the prisoners face humiliating situations and unreasonable physical punishments from the prison guards, leading to emotional breakdowns. “My problem is that the guards and the people running this experiment are not treating the prisoners like human beings. Mr. Correctional …show more content…

Situational influence impacted how they acted as well as physical appearance, “Jack planned his new face. He made one cheek and one eye-socket white, then he rubbed over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar of charcoal across from right ear to left jaw,” (63). Similarly, the college students also changed their physical appearance, they were forced to wear nylon hats and dress-like clothing. As their physical appearance change so do their personalities; Jack painted his face like tribes would do showing his savageness and the prison guards become aggressive due to the power they feel with the uniform on. “Well, since you had to look, I want you to step up here, I want you to do five push-ups, four jumping jacks, then eight push-ups, then six jumping jacks so you will remember the name of the man standing to your right and you won't have to look next time,” (Prison Guard). The prison guard thinks he can punish the prisoners any way he wants because of his superior position just like Jack assumes he does not have to help with building shelter or trying to get rescued because all he wants is to hunt. “At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore,” (Golding 153). Jack being the leader of everyone except

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523 Words | 3 Pages

There are uncanny similarities and differences between the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding's and the Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo. Two of the main subjects from LOTF were civilization and savagery. When put into isolation, would the boys on the island be civilized or fall into the trap of savagery. In the SPE, Zimbardo wanted to find out how humans would perform in a prison-like environment. He put 24 male students in a prison simulation, role-playing as prisoners and guards.

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751 Words | 4 Pages

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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In the novel, The Lord of The Flies, William Golding utilises how the boys interact with the pigs to exhibit that when man is given too much power and control, it can cause him to become savage and vicious in nature; this is proven by the data collected from the Stanford prison experiment and the psychological experiments performed by Professor Stanley Milgram at Yale University. When man is given power, he is held to a high standard, which is often upheld for a certain amount of time. This idea is shown by how Jack cannot kill the pig at the very beginning of the novel, it also shown by the prison experiment, how the guards start off as normal people, without a power hungry nature. In Mcruer’s article “Cops’ deadly identity problem: How ”

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The novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding was inspired by his time as a veteran in World War II. His goal was to portray the change in people’s morality that he witnessed because of the war. He reflected this situation-based change into his characters. The most evident of which was Jack, who, initially described as a proper, cultured choirboy, slowly transitioned into savagery. He conveyed Golding’s idea that civilization’s conditioning of right and wrong merely masks humans’ more primitive and barbaric nature.

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598 Words | 3 Pages

The ¨Stanford Prison Experiment¨ was a breakdown of the morals and rules on how people would act toward one another due to their environment, rather than how they should. The study had created more questions than answers, specifically about the darkness and lack of moral standards that inhabits the human soul. It showed that methodical abuse and denial of human rights is nothing new in prison facilities. The novel Lord of the Flies shows how easily people become dangerous depending on their situation, and how easily humans become savages when there are no definite rules. Lord of the Flies and ¨The Stanford Prison Experiment¨ have many similarities in the way they both show the effects that occur when you lose all moral standards, and lack of rules.

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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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This connects to the idea of guards having the capability of turning evil through an atmosphere of the prison environment where they can turn evil and have no remorse feelings towards the prisoners. From the article, "Stanford Prison Experiment," by Saul McLeod, he explained that the evil tactics that were made by the guards were from the atmosphere of the prison environment because the norm for a prison guard is to act tough and have no remorse feelings towards the prisoners when assigning punishments. He also added that guards acted this way because they lost their sense of personal identity when they dressed up as a guard, which can show they may have believed that they were actual guards and the experiment was real, which might’ve triggered their dark side with harsh punishments. Therefore, losing their personal identity in a prison environment may have been the factor where they triggered their evil side during the prison

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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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He started to behave in a way that was cruel and far harsher than the rest of the guards and at the end of the experiment claimed it was because he was conducting his own experiment to see how far they would let him go until they retaliated. The way he behaved portrayed that, even though he might not have come into the experiment with the intention to release that behavior from within, but his actions became a roll that he took too far. A sociocultural component shown in the film were the ways that the volunteer guards interpreted the stigmas around being a prison guard. That they should be cold, strict, and unnervingly verbally abusive. Time upon time in the film, the volunteer guards were verbally abusive of their power with the prisoners.

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The Environment Can Control In times of difficulty, individuals tend to change who they are. For example, when one tends to grow up and go through the stages of adulthood, they change their ways in which they act or think. Situations and environment are able to control and manipulate an individual. Situations can become so severe that they can lead to savagery in one’s individual environment.

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Stanford Prison Experiment Was this experiment ethical or unethical? “Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life. $15 per day for 1-2 weeks beginning Aug. 14. For further information & applications come to Room 248, Jordan Hall, Stanford U.” That was the ad in the newspaper that began the experiment. The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) was conducted by a man named Philip Zimbardo who was interested in the roles people play in prison situations.

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The Monitor on Psychology article “What makes good people do bad things?” by Melissa Dittmann analyzes the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Stanford psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 and discusses what the experiment can tell us about human nature and what causes humans to be evil. In the novel “Lord of the Flies” the author William Golding discusses the effects of the theories mentioned in the article by creating his own fictional experiment with children stranded on an island during a nuclear war. Throughout his novel Golding explores the focus of Dittmann’s article; that environments and situations can bring out the evil that is inside all of us. People can act good or bad depending on their environment, and these actions are not entirely their fault because when people are not held accountable for their actions their more violent natures are revealed.

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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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434 Words | 2 Pages

Rough Draft for Evil “In a perfect world, probably we’d never yell, we’d just be firm and dispassionate” (Waldman). Delusional thoughts and evil passions would be overcome with the influence of morals and reasoning which alludes to a coherent society. But returning to reality, people of all backgrounds face a universal threat causing pain and suffering; it is called torture. Torturers feed on the pleasure of inflicting pain, and this is triggered by the emotional passion that brings out the id in humans. This kind of evil exemplifies the uncontrollable passion that has a profound impact on governing behavior.

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They were stripped naked and had all their personal possessions removed. They were only given a prison dress and has a chain on their right foot. On the other hand, the guards wore identical khakis. They were instructed to do whatever they thought is right to maintain law and order in the prison. But they are not given a permission to abuse the prisoners physically.

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