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Zimbardo Dramaturgical Analysis Essay

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In the research of Zimbardo’s prison experiment, lays an abundance of information regarding social structure and interaction. Philip G. Zimbardo, a psychologist and professor at Stanford University, conducted a dramaturgical analysis consisting of student volunteers within a prison simulation (zimbardo.socialpsychology.org). According to Kendall, a dramaturgical analysis is “the study of social interaction that compares everyday life to a theatrical presentation” (Kendall 145). Through this experiment, Zimbardo hypothesized that both prisoners and guards have inherent traits through their roles. The independent variables in the experiment were the ascribed roles given to the subjects. The dependent variables were the subjects’ behaviors in response to …show more content…

In the process, the guards used ridicule and profanity towards the prisoners in attempts to meet their own role expectations. Among the prisoners rose leaders, one at a time, who stood in opposition to their newly given status and outgroup. In response rebellions, the guards would single out the leaders and punish the whole group (TheAnswerto1984is). This led to a decrease of solidarity between the prisoners and an increase of anomie as well as group conformity. Similar to Zimbardo, Stanley Milgram’s research is relevant to the Stanford prison experiment. According to Kendall, his study “provides evidence that obedience to authority may be more common than most of us like to believe” and the prisoners in the experiment further support this statement. (168). Ultimately, Zimbardo’s hypothesis may be backed up seeing that the prisoners and the guards took on their new roles which either gave them authority or impotence. How each group behaved was solely derived solely on the statuses based on the statuses that were assigned to

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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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642 Words | 3 Pages

The participants of the Stanford Prison experiment were healthy young men who were promised a nominal fee for their services. These participants were blindfolded and assumed the role of prisoner or guard in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford University. Prisoners were stripped, chained, belittled and humiliated by the guards.

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The inner moral compulsion to obey is what drives most social organizations. Sykes (2007) described several structural defects that occurred in the New Jersey State prison. Sykes (2007) argues that power in prison is not based on authority therefore prison officials have to find other means to get prisoners to abide by the rules and regulations. The ability to use force to maintain order on a large scale in the prison is an illusion. According to Sykes (2007), Certain privileges such mailing and visiting, personal possessions, time-off for good behavior etc. are given to the inmate all at once upon his or her arrival to the prison.

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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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Society and government require people to be obedient towards authority, but is it always the best thing to do? During the aftermath of World War II many of the major leaders of the Nazi regime were put on trial for crimes against humanity (History.com). These trials were known as the Nuremburg war trials, were most of the convicted proclaimed that they were “just following orders” (McLeod 584). Being an accomplice to a crime is also against the law. In the Nuremburg trials, those accused were not breaking the law that their government had created, they were actually following it.

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Situational effects and personality come into conflict when discussing behavior. Personality is someone’s “usual pattern of behavior, feelings, and thoughts” (Twenge, 2017, p.20). It remains constant throughout different situations, but some situations can be stressful enough to make a person act out of character. The transition between a person’s normal personality and behavior to a more evil, sinister behavior fascinates a man named Philip Zimbardo, who conducted the infamous Zimbardo Prison Experiment, or Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE). Zimbardo is an American psychologist at Stanford University and the mastermind behind the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (The Story).

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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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Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo questioned, “What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?” (Zimbardo, 1971) In 1971 a psychologist named Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment on the effects prison has on young males with the help of his colleague Stanley Milgram. They wanted to find out if the reports of brutality from guards was due to the way guards treated prisoners or the prison environment.

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The thorough analysis of text leaves no doubt that a prison is a model of a whole society, containing its own relations of subjugation and leadership. As well as in real life, the leadership can be either formal or informal. Prison guards and wardens represent the first one. They have formal legal appointment and

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Unit 1 Written Assignment Literature Review of article on Standard Prison Experiment Introduction This article concerns the Stanford Prison experiment carried out in 1971 at Stanford University. The experiment commenced on August 14, and was stopped after only six days. It is one of the most noted psychological experiments on authority versus subordinates. The studies which emerged from this have been of interest to those in prison and military fields due to its focus on the psychology associated with authority.

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For example, one study testing the situational role in affecting behavior was done by Philip Zimbardo (1971) in the Stanford Prison Experiment where 22 males were selected depending on their social skills and mental

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Authority gives a person the chance to feel superior, and as seen throughout this film, those within the position of authority will only then abuse this opportunity. Given the chance for people to gain authority or rather the sense of authority is enough to awaken the evil within. Within the movie, The Stanford Prison Experiment the guards were enabled to set a line of difference between the prisoners and themselves. They were able to make the prisoners feel weak or emasculated, forcing the students to strip and wear the assigned prison clothes that barely covered their genitals (Alvarez). Forcing the prisoners to wear these feminine articles of clothing and assigning them a number, gives the opportunity to strip away their personality and

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981 Words | 4 Pages

The Milgram experiment was conducted to analyze obedience to authority figures. The experiment was conducted on men from varying ages and varying levels of education. The participants were told that they would be teaching other participants to memorize a pair of words. They believed that this was an experiment that was being conducted to measure the effect that punishment has on learning, because of this they were told they had to electric shock the learner every time that they answered a question wrong. The experiment then sought out to measure with what willingness the participants obeyed the authority figure, even when they were instructed to commit actions which they seemed uncomfortable with.

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746 Words | 3 Pages

Stanford Experiment: Unethical or Not Stanford Prison Experiment is a popular experiment among social science researchers. In 1973, a psychologist named Dr. Philip Zimbardo wants to find out what are the factors that cause reported brutalities among guards in American prisons. His aim was to know whether those reported brutalities were because of the personalities of the guards or the prison environment. However, during the experiment, things get muddled unexpectedly. The experiment became controversial since it violates some ethical standards while doing the research.

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1231 Words | 5 Pages

During this period, Zimbardo observed the radical change in the personalities of the participants embodying the role of the prison guard, as they changed from ordinary young men to men with a vicious and sadistic character. Zimbardo stated that he was trying to portray what transpired when all of the individuality and dignity was stripped away from a human, and their life was completely controlled. He wanted to demonstrate the dehumanization and loosening of social and moral values that can happen to guards immersed in such a situation (“Stanford Prison Experiment”). This experiment has been used to exemplify the cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority. In addition, the findings advocate the situational explanation of behavior rather than the dispositional one.

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