Experiment's Experiment: The Stanford Prison Experiment

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Abstract
In this assignment I will review a controversial study that took place in 1971. This is now called The Stanford Prison Experiment.
The author’s hypothesis was to observe the foundation of the brutal context of the correctional system, to explore how people will react to role of power and powerlessness controlled by prisoners and guards. He wanted to find out if there was a connection that a major contributing cause to these despicable conditions can be connected to innate characteristics of the correctional and inmate residents, and otherwise that the violence and brutality exist within prison because guards are heartless, uneducated and insensitive people, who convey a typical form of destructive behaviours into a situation that stimulates …show more content…

Secondly individual questionnaire, mood inventories, personality tests, daily guards shift reports and post experimental interviews. In this experiment guards were free within certain limits to implement regulatory techniques in order to maintain order in the prison system. Both groups were issued uniforms to promote anonymity. Prison guards were uniformed in khaki shirts and trousers, a whistle and a wooden baton to aid their status and prisoners, wore loose smocks with their prison number at the back and without underclothes, stocking caps, and chain was worn on their ankles as a reminder of their oppressiveness. Instead of their Christian names prisoners were identified by their numbers and guards were instructed to identify prisoners with their numbers. The prisoners’ cells was designed to hold 3 prisoners and they spend 24 hours a day in their prison cells whilst the guards worked a three man eight hour shifts and remained in the prison only on the duration of their shifts.
The subjects assigned to prisoners where unexpectedly arrested at their homes to initiate the experiment, charged with suspected burglary or armed robbery, searched, handcuffed and processed through the normal routine of finger printing, identification and placed in detention into cells at the police station. Each prisoner was blind folded and driven to their artificial prison where they expected to be under surveillance with little or no privacy and to have some of their basic civil rights overlooked during their imprisonment. Physical abuse was not permitted in this

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