Social Psychology: The Stanford Prison Experiments

When put into the position of complete authority over others people will show their true colors. I think that most people would like to think that they would be fair, ethical superiors. I know I would, but learning about the Stanford Prison Experiment has made me question what would really happen if I was there. Would I be the submissive prisoner, the sadistic guard, or would I stay true to myself? As Phillip Zimbardo gave the guards their whistles and billy clubs they drastically changed without even realizing it. In order to further understand the Stanford Prison experiment I learned how the experiment was conducted, thought about the ethical quality of this experiment, and why I think it panned out how it did.

This study investigated the effects gender roles and the acceptance of dominant positions. Participants of the study were college-aged students. These students volunteered, and from there were chosen to participate in the reconstruction of the Stanford Prison Experiment, headed by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. In this experiment male students were arrested and then imprisoned in an underground make-shift prison at Stanford University. The participants were categorized into two sections, prisoners and guards. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of roles and the behaviors of the individuals engrossed in their positions. As expected, the men did comply to their occupying positions, surprisingly, their actions were stronger than predicted; the reality of the experiment altered the mindset of the participants forgetting their true roles in society. The guards became dominant, ruthless and controlling. Physical punishment and degrading actions were common with guards against inmate contact. The false reality of the experiment got so intense they were forced to shut down the experiment early to prevent any further emotional

In the Zimbardo’s The Stanford Prison Experiment; however, the ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ were placed in the same facility and were face to face on a daily basis unlike the Milgram experiment. The ‘guards’ would tell the ‘prisoners’ jokingly to do something, however the ‘prisoners’ would do what they were commanded to do to try to hang on to their identity. (Zimbardo 393) By the end of the experiment most ‘prisoners’ showed increased stress levels in the ‘prisoners’ within days, some ‘prisoners’ could not handle the stress induced and had to be released early. The ‘guards’ were equally changed do to the scenario they were put in. One journal of the ‘guards’ showed how a passive person became a person shoving food down another person’s mouth and locking them up in solitary confinement (Zimbardo 389-399).

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.

Did you know that for forty years the United States Public Health Services did an experiment that was conducted on hundreds of African American men that suffered from the late stages of syphilis? Well they did. This experiment is called the ‘Tuskegee Experiment’. The men they researched were mostly illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama. The U.S. Public Health Services never told the men what disease they suffered from, or its seriousness.

The prisoners were behaving in crazy ways and the guards were only getting harsher. The guards and prisoners took their roles very seriously, almost forgetting completely that this was an experiment. You could see the roles were taken so seriously because not once did a guard ever show up late, call in sick, or ask for a pay raise throughout the entire

A few hours after the commencement of the experiment, the guards who had received clear instructions to keep off physical abuse had devised monstrous ways of punishing the prisoners. One of the guards, referred to as John Wayne, had developed an increasingly brutal and dehumanizing way of reprimanding the prisoners. Regardless of the fact that Zimbardo and the other psychologists saw this clear transformation and the disastrous effects it had on the subjects, they were more driven by their need to study them than the well-being of the clients. Zimbardo and his colleagues studied the subjects through videos that provided live feeds. Even though they saw the humiliation and severe mental tortures that the participants were going through, the experimenters were not ready to stop the experiment (Haslam & Reicher, 2012).

This experiment (pg.23) brought out the worst in the authoritative group part of the research. The guards had no humanly regard for the prisoners and lost all morals and their code of ethics (pg.30), if they had any. They harassed, tortured and humiliated the prisoners as if they had just become the righteous group by using their power to make the prisoners turn on each other. On the other side, the prisoners took their roles too seriously as well. Most became to differential susceptible (pg.6) and vulnerable to the abuse.

This was the main reason why the experiment very quickly got out of hand. Prisoners suffered and accepted humiliating treatment by the guards, and by the end many showed severe emotional disturbance. For example, prisoners were made to repeatedly shout out their identification numbers. Initially this activity was used to help the prisoners get acclimated to their identity numbers, in which then became the guards way of tormenting the prisoners and

In 1971, a group of young men was psychologically tested in an experiment to see a human response to power and to captivity. Twenty-four participators with two backups and one that dropped out of the experiment were a part of The Stanford Prison Experiment, eleven participators were prison guards and ten were prisoners. This experiment was supposed to last a total of fourteen days but was discontinued after six days due to the mental health of the subjects. With this research being a success it is highly unethical and has proven that prison life does not treat inmates with the safety and concern for their mental health, which is proven at Stanford.

After reviewing a plethora of disorder, it is easy to say that obsessive-compulsive disorder has to be one of the most challenging disorders. Now, the reasoning behind this opinion is because people who suffer from this disorder no longer are in control of their lives as the routines and actions tend to take control. Additionally, the most disheartening part of this disorder has to be knowing that the need for the ritual is nonexistent. However, if the person does not complete their routine exactly as prescribed, they can have a mental breakdown because of the overwhelming anxiety. Now, the way society can help individuals who have this disorder is through buddy conditioning. For example, say a person has a problem with repeatedly checking locks a friend, family member, or coworker could stop them from giving into the impulse by ensuring

The participants were being humiliated and degraded as a form of conditioning their behavior that influenced the prisoner’s attitudes. Obedience played a role when the prison guards where the authority figures giving direct commands to the

Stanford Prison Experiment is the evil environment and this study is emotionally and painful. Because when I watch these videos it is horrific me, so badly harm and tortures them. I don’t know Professor Philip Zimbardo much realized how far the guards have to go to abuse the prisoners and this difficult situation to observant but “Zimbardo's primary reason for conducting the experiment was to focus on the power of roles, rules, symbols, group identity and situational validation of behavior that generally would repulse ordinary individuals.” This is unbelievable how the guards used their power it is aggression and tactic. I believe this study very interesting how we are human nature act inhuman away again to hard watching what was to these prisoners.

Q. What social psychology concept did Stanford Prison experiment demonstrate? Explain in detail. Be careful and give examples.

The famous Stanford Prison Experiment, of 1971, was a psychological experiment put together by Philip Zimbardo, who was a social psychologist. The main point of the experiment was to observe the social powers of a given role, the social norms, and the script of a person. However, not being able to go to an actual prison, Zimbardo created a mock prison in the basement of the Psychology building at Stanford University. An ad was placed in the local newspapers asking for male volunteers. All volunteers were male college students, of Stanford or the surrounding counties. Over seventy men volunteered to play a role in the experiment. Every single one of them was put through psychological testing. the psychological test was used to filter out