Psychology Of Observation

In the experiment, people were picked randomly and one as a teacher and one as the student. They were told to take a quiz and give electric shocks of increasing intensity as punishment if the student can’t answer. During the experiment, many people were concerned as someone can be heard shouting but only a few people who decided to stop and stick to their morals. But the others kept on going because they were just following orders from a superior (Milgram 77). "The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip Zimbardo, is about an experiment that was made to understand the roles people play in prison situations. For the experiment, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. The participants were told to act as prisoners and guards. It was planned to be a two-week experiment but was forced to shut down in 6 days, all because of people quickly getting into their roles and started acting like the real prisoners and guards (Zimbardo 104). To compare both experiments, although they differed vastly in design and methodology, the point of both experiments was to observe how far an individual would go in inflicting increasing pain on a victim. Also how people obey under authoritative circumstances, when given power or different roles, however the writers differ in the seriousness of the fight for individuality and the use of reality.

To study the roles people play in prison situations, Zimbardo converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a mock prison. He advertised for students to play the roles of prisoners and guards for a fortnight. 21 male college

Some other preconditions were to make the experimental setting bear a resemblance as closely to a functional simulation of the psychology of imprisonment as humanly possible. He also wanted to make sure that there was the absence of any earlier indoctrination in how to play the randomly assigned roles; to leave that up to each participant’s prior societal teachings of the meaning of prisons and the behavioral scripts associated with the oppositional roles (Zambardo, 2005). Although he had a significantly large abundance

The characteristic changes that occurred in the inmates during the simulated prison was that they began to behave and think like actual inmates. They would talk about prisoner issues, told on each other to the guards, and started taking the prison rules very seriously (McLeod 1970).

The psychological experiment by Philip Zimbardo (1971) took the nature of 'roles' and 'scripts' into an arena of a simulated role play set in a staged prison organisation. Two groups were formed, one group acted out as prisoners and the other acted out prison guards. This interaction

The purpose of this experiment was to make a breakthrough study of the human response to imprisonment, in specific, to the real world condition of prison life. In social psychology, this is known as “mundane realism”; which refers to the ability to imitate the real world as much as possible, which is exactly what this study did. There were twenty-four people who were selected to do this experiment. These subjects were randomly assigned to play the role as “prisoner” or “guard” and they were made to perform to these roles. These subjects actually started to behave and act like the roles that they were assigned as; the guards started to act as if they really worked in the prison. This was something that Zimbardo had told these subjects to think this way and what it did was make the guards mistreat and abuse the prisoners cruelly

The Stanford Prison Experiment article addresses the psychology of power by studying a model of the prisoner and guard relationship as represented by the American penal system. The authors, through a unique experiment involving volunteers who would play the roles of guards and prisoners in a somewhat realistic prison setting, hoped to provide empirical scientific evidence and information proving that the American penal system is not only dysfunctional and inherently flawed, but causes real and lasting harm to the temperament, attitude and personality of both the prisoners and the guards in American prisons.

The overarching question in this research is to understand how people would conform to roles of a simulated prison experiment.

The Stanford Prison Study was conducted by a psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, at Stanford University. The experiment was conducting by selecting college students to be assigned into roles of guards and prisoners; the students which were assigned as guards were given roles and guard’s uniform, and the students which were assigned as prisoners were given roles, and prisoner’s cap.

I plan on obtaining my undergraduate degree in psychology, centered on the biopsychology aspect of psychology. My passion for psychology grew stronger from analyzing the behaviors of people. I have often wondered why some who are affected by mental disorders act dramatically different, while others act more subtly. There are students at my school with disorders. Some of them have the same disorder; some act aggressively when upset, while others demonstrate a calm demeanor. One day I observed a student who completed an assignment, but was unable to turn it in because of a computer issue. She immediately had a violent reaction. I became intrigued with her temperament and reactions to others. My observation was that she reacted calmly to those

This past weekend, my husband and I went to Universals Halloween horror nights. There is where I decided to observe the strangers around me to complete this assignment. When we entered the park as we walked through the first scare zone, I noticed a couple holding hands, which shows a form of communication called tie signs. Tie signs are used to confirm the level of the individual’s relationship. Furthermore, the female used illustrated gestures by turning her head to the right as if she was warning her spouse that someone was about to scare him. As the scary actor approached the couple the man had an affect display of surprise. His eyes and mouth opened wide. Then, they both laughed as they continued to walk through the scare zone.

Observing from the inside is an advantage for scientists because it is a more natural setting for the subjects. Ethnography is a situation in which scientists observe a group in an inside setting where they are not disturbing the subjects in any manner. This allows true actions to come out, then the scientists may get a better observation of the way the group interacts. In theory this shows ethnography because it is observing from the inside but not imposing any sort of disturbance to the subject’s daily life.

A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison was conducted by the United States Department of the Navy. The study took place in 1971 at Stanford University. The study examined the effects of the guard and prisoner roles on men who each had similar characteristics. They were an “average group of healthy, intelligent, middle-class college males.” (Haney, Banks, Zimbardo, & Jaffe, 1971) They single hypotheses of the author was “That the assignment to the treatment of guard or prisoner would result in significant different reactions on behavioral measures of interaction, emotional measures of mood state and pathology, attitudes towards self, as well as other indices of coping and adaptation to this novel situation.”(Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973)

The only treatment variable within the research design used was that of either being assigned to the group of guards or prisoners (Zimbardo, 1973). Dependent measures were taken in two different ways. The first method of measure was the audio and video surveillance within the prison which recorded day to day activity. The second method was "individual reactions on questionnaires, mood inventories, personality tests, daily guard shift reports, and post experimental interviews" (Zimbardo, 1973)

Zimbardo’s prison experiment at Stanford University was a study on what the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard was on the individual. Zimbardo wanted to investigate whether the cruelty reported among guards in American prisons was due to the aggressive personalities of the guards or the prison environment itself. Twenty-four well adjusted undergraduates were selected out of over 75 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners. The guards were permitted to devise most of the rules. A third of the guards exhibited “genuine sadistic tendencies,” and subjected the prisoners to torture. After the initial rebellion most of the prisoners stopped opposing the guards losing their personal identity and self-belief. Zimbardo’s research demonstrated that people can behave uncharacteristically when placed, in new social or physical roles and adopt the attitude and behaviour of their perceived roles, in some cases particularly zealously.