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Zimbardo And The Stanford Prison Experiment

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The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1971, is one of the most infamous and controversial studies in the history of psychology. This study investigated the psychological effects of perceived power, specifically in the context of a simulated prison environment. However, the experiment quickly spiraled out of control and resulted in ethical concerns that continued to provoke discussions within the field of psychology. One of the primary ethical concerns surrounding the Stanford Prison Experiment is the lack of informed consent, the way participants were treated during the experiment, and how it continued. Participants were recruited for the study as it was advertised as a "psychological experiment" without being fully informed …show more content…

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. Jimbardo is a member of the AA. This essay critically examines the ethical dimensions of the Stanford Prison Experiment, exploring the aftermath of the experiment, participant mistreatment, and broader implications for research in psychology involving

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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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The Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) had a main goal to find out how much of an influence a specific setting location could have on how individuals behave. The experiment took place in 1971 and many psychologists used as a reference to analyze people’s mind under certain circumstance. Young individuals were given the roles of prisoner and guard in prison-like setting located at the Psychology department Stanford University. I strongly believe that this experiment was ethically wrong and did not surprise me at all, since the participant in the study were not fully aware of how dangerous the experiment could turn. Furthermore, the guards were acting like real inmate’s officers

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In summary, the purpose of the Stanford Prison Experiment was supposed to demonstrate that powerful situational forces, much like Abu Ghraib, could over-ride individual dispositions and choices, leading good people to do bad things simply because of the role they found themselves

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The Stanford Prison Experiment was a research study administered by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, which gathered twenty-four men to be put into a pseudo-jail to see the impacts of prison on the guards and inmates. Twelve of these volunteers were randomly selected to be inmates and the other twelve became guards. Not surprisingly, the inmates endured incredible torment and a few of them had psychological collapses due to severe emotional distress. The guards were consumed with their own power and felt little sympathy for the inmates that were under their care and stripped them, whipped them, dehumanized them. The research was expected to keep going for two weeks; however it went on for only six days due to the inmates encountering damaging levels

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Before the experiment began, all participants went through a psychological evaluation to make sure they were of sound mind (Onishi & Herbert, 2016). Once the experiment began the “prisoners” were arrested and taken to a simulated prison where they were stripped searched and demoralized. During the 6 days that the study lasted, conduct between both sides, prisoners and guards, was less than expectable. Both sides “acted as though a punishment was justified as an acceptable response to a breach of the rules” (Onishi & Herbert, 2016), rules that were vaguely explained.

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Joshua Arredondo Professor Bdaha Psych 001 18 April 2017 Zimbardo’s investigation: Stanford Prison Experiment Critiquing whether the experiments that Zimbardo imposed on the people that were involved was robust or not, it detailed much more information that was suddenly discovered to become a detriment to what his work was implying in doing. Zimbardo’s studies were measured in 1973, where his idea of American prisoners and guards had personalities that were damned to explain why the brutality levels started to increase in the jail institutions. Becoming inevitable with yourself is leading something to believe it’s true and the guards and prisoners were discovering it was certain and how it can conflict with them not respecting how the law

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In 1971 Phillip Zimbardo conducted a prison experiment to see how people will conform to the roles they were assigned in a prison environment. Zimbardo wanted to study how people reacted in this environment and what would happen when people were assigned to be put in power, while the others had no power at all. Very early on into this experiment many ethical issues arose. The first ethical issue was that participants were not given all of the information about what was going to happen when they were signing the consent forms. Another ethical issue was avoiding harm.

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This experiment fits into Kidder’s ethical dilemma paradigms of short-term vs long-term. In fact, Zimbardo choose the long term effects of his experiment over the short term effects of it. The Stanford prison experiment had a short-term effect on the university students that could not bear the prison life for long and the prison was ended after 6 days only. The long hours of imprisonment revealed that the students had become depressed while the guards had already become cruel at their maximum. The prisoners were humiliated and embarrassed by the guards.

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Specifically, Zimbardo should have either created rules prior to the experiment, or stepped in once the guards began to starve, isolate, and sleep deprive prisoners. While Zimbardo assigned prisoners with numbers, and used none of their names, he still broke the ethical guidelines of confidentiality. It is vital to keep all data and information gathered from participants anonymous, so as not to affect their lives outside of the study (Myers & DeWall 2019). While he did not reveal their names or identifying information, he still publicly arrested the prisoners for anyone to see, such as neighbors, family, or any passersby (Mourinho335, Youtube, 2023). He obtained real police officers to question, cuff, and drive to the Stanford Psychology Building with the participants.

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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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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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In 1971, a team of psychologists designed and implemented an experiment that used a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing prisoners and guards to test the power of social situations to determine behavior. The research, is known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. It was set up to study the psychological effects of prison life. This study was planned to last two weeks, yet had to be terminated by the sixth day.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment was a landmark psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular to the real word circumstances of prison life. It was conducted by in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University.

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The Stanford prison experiment is an article that describes an experiment conducted by Zimbardo (1973) aimed at investigating how readily people would conform to the roles given to them in a role-playing exercise in a simulated test. Zimbardo (1973) wanted to determine whether the brutality reported among the inmates in America prisons was because of the sadistic dispositional tendencies of the guards or was caused by the jail environment and situations. Thus, this experiment was directed at examining whether the aggressive and domineering behavior of the guards resulted from the disrespectful nature of the prisoners to law and order (McLeod, 2016). The alternative to this would be that the aggressive and hostile manner of the inmates and guards was due to the social environment and the power structure in these prisons. The hypothesis for the experiment was that,

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One of the most infamous experiments conducted in the history of psychology was the Stanford Prison Experiment. The main objective of this experiment was to see what effects would occur when a psychological experiment into human nature was performed. As I read through the material provided, I noticed that my thoughts on the matter were similar to many; that it was a complete failure as a scientific research project. However, his findings did provide us with something much more important that is still being talked about today; insight into human psychology and social behavior.

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