Stanford Prison Experiment Essay

In Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment, 20 college aged boys are selected to play different roles in a simulated prison located within Stanford. This experiment was thought of and carried out by Philip Zimbardo, a professor of psychology. The boys, who were also students at Stanford, were randomly selected to be a guard or a prisoner. The prisoners were taken by real police officers to the Stanford jail. When the experiment started, most of the prisoners thought of the situation as it was intended to be, an experiment.

From the video provided this week and doing some personal reading, the phenomenon behind the Stanford prison experiment was a social psychology experiment, this was a prison environment simulation that was supposed to last 2 weeks. The goal was to observe the effects of variables on participants' reactions and behaviors, this experiment was designed to determine if prison brutality is a result of malicious guards and evil prisoners, or whether institutional roles of guards and prisoners embitter and harden even compassionate individuals. Zimbardo wanted to put good people in an evil place and see what would happen. As the Social Psychology textbook says “Do the people make the place violent, or does the place make the people violent? Cristina

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

The participants in the trial were in such severe psychological discomfort that the experiment, which was supposed to last two weeks, was stopped after only six days. The results demonstrated how the establishment of jail brutality and violence was influenced by the established roles and power dynamics within the simulated prison environment.

Although they weren’t capable of causing physical harm to the inmates, the guards abused their power simply because the inmates had none. Soon, embarrassing and degrading the prisoners turned into serious emotional abuse. Instances in which they were depriving the inmates from sleep, putting bags over their heads to do simple things such as using the bathroom, and even making them repeat their inmate numbers over and over for hours on end are just a few examples of how the guards treated their prisoners. Being a prisoner was a completely different story. Having their bedding removed or even being put in solitary confinement for miniscule instances of insubordination were slowly causing them to lose their sanity.

Over the course of the experiment, contradictive psychological relations were established between the prisoners and guards. The prisoners began to lose hope and realized that there was no way out. They felt that it is better to do exactly what the guards told them to do. On the other hand, guards had to be authoritative to keep the prisoners and the prison in order. A number of the guards were aggressive and brutal towards the prisoners while a few were more sympathetic, and occasionally did favors for the

Obedience and individuality must have a balance in order for a society to function alls well. According to head researcher and acting warden, Philip G. Zimbardo, the main purpose of The Stanford Prison Experiment would be to study and to understand the roles people develop in prison. In order to discover the roles that humans take in prison environments, Zimbardo would convert the basement of Stanford University into a mock prison. Twenty-four healthy male college students would participate in this experiment; however, half would be acting as prisoners and the latter as guards. This experiment would go on for two weeks to fully analyze the ending result of the mock environment.

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

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.

In the same sense, the prisoners went from nervous, innocent men to rebellious and chaotic men. By the end of the experiment, it was obvious that the participants acted in a way that best represented who they were in terms of the prison. Because the guards had an overflow of pride and power, they became evil as they used it to their advantage and abused the prisoners. The prisoners became evil as they turned their lack of power into a form of protest, which caused a great amount of

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

Back in 1971 there was a prison experiment that took place in Stanford University and it explains clearly why these cases happen in the prison and jail environment. Philip Zimbardo, a psychologist did this study to show what kind of behavior happens when they people are given authority and it also shows how they use their power affecting the situation they are put into. In this research paper we are going to visit the case of Los Angeles Men’s central jail and find out what went wrong. We will also take a look into what happened in Abu Gharib prison and see if this is an ongoing trend in the correction facilities. We will then look back on the Stanford Prison study conducted by the psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1971 to see if this experiment truly proves that behavior does change resulting in the abuse of the inmates by the officers.

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.

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.

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.