“The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip G. Zimbardo was written to explain the results of the Stanford prison experiment. Zimbardo while trying to gain support for his conclusions of the experiment, demonstrated many errors in his writing, and in his own experiment. The errors that Zimbardo commits call into question the validity of his argument, and the experiment. The goal explained by Zimbardo was “to understand more about the process by such people called “prisoners” lose their liberty, civil rights, independence, and privacy, while those called “guards” gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges” (Zimbardo 733).
Zimbardo starts his paper with a storybook intro “The quiet of a summer morning” he then goes into the process by which the subjects were taken into the prison (732). This is an odd way to start a scientific paper, even if it was published in the New York Journal. He then switches between scientific, and novelistic language. In one sentence Zimbardo compares real prisons to “machines for playing tricks with the human conception of time” how does relating a prison to a machine validate his point? It seems as if Zimbardo is using his language to draw the reader into his paper so that they will sympathize with him.
While Zimbardo was careful to select his prisoners from anyone who had previously been to jail, he did not select a diverse group of subjects; he states that the group consisted of all Caucasians and one Oriental student, and were all of college age. He does not defend why he chose this uniform group of subjects, and it only makes one wonder how the experiment would have carried out if there was a more diverse grouping of both a...
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...idelines were followed, was it really ethical to allow his subjects to be treated in such a way. His conclusions and writing methods also take away from his purpose, making the reader question his scientific findings.
Works Cited
APA. American Psychological Association, February 23, 2010.
Lurigio, Arthur J. "The Rotten Barrel Spoils the Apples: How Situational Factors Contribute to Detention Officer Abuse Toward Inmates." The Prison Journal. Mar. 2009. Web
Mertens, Donna M. Research and Evaluation in Education and Psychology: Integrating Diversity with Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods. Los Angeles: Sage, 2010. Print. Research and Evaluation in Education and Psychology Donna M. Mertens c 2010 Sage
Zimbardo, Philip G. "The Stanford Prison Experiment." Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. 11th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 732-43. Print.
Things have gotten too out of hand, and situations will get much worse. Ethically speaking, Zimbardo made the right call because if the experiment continues, it would have been detrimental to the prisoner’s psyche. Zimbardo explains the event that occurred by stating, “The power of this situation ran swiftly and deeply through most of those on this exploratory ship of human nature. Only a few were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency. Obviously, I was not among the noble class (171).” By saying this, Zimbardo is fully aware that he let things get out of hand too
The Implications of the Stanford Prison Experiment In 1971 Dr Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment in the basement of Stanford University. This involved imprisoning nine volunteers in a mock up of Stanford prison, which was policed by nine guards (more volunteers). These guards had complete control over the prisoners. They could do anything to the prisoners, but use physical violence.
Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). Revisiting the Sanford Prison Experiment: A lesson in the power of
In this study Zimbardo chose 21 participants from a pool of 75, all male college students, screened prior for mental illness, and paid $15 per day. He then gave roles. One being a prisoner and the other being a prison guard, there were 3 guards per 8 hour shift, and 9 total prisoners. Shortly after the prisoners were arrested from their homes they were taken to the local police station, booked, processed, given proper prison attire and issued numbers for identification. Before the study, Zimbardo concocted a prison setting in the basement of a Stanford building. It was as authentic as possible to the barred doors and plain white walls. The guards were also given proper guard attire minus guns. Shortly after starting the experiment the guards and prisoners starting naturally assuming their roles, Zimbardo had intended on the experiment lasting a fortnight. Within 36 hours one prisoner had to be released due to erratic behavior. This may have stemmed from the sadistic nature the guards had adopted rather quickly, dehumanizing the prisoners through verbal, physical, and mental abuse. The prisoners also assumed their own roles rather efficiently as well. They started to rat on the other prisoners, told stories to each other about the guards, and placated the orders from the guards. After deindividuaiton occurred from the prisoners it was not long the experiment completely broke down ethically. Zimbardo, who watched through cameras in an observation type room (warden), had to put an end to the experiment long before then he intended
Now sure, the Stanford prison guards didn’t go that far as the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib but the torture and abuse towards the prisoners became worse by the day indicating they could have gone as far as Abu Ghraib. However, in both cases there are unusual punishments and cruelty. This was due to the authority allowing it, ordering it, just didn’t care or didn’t know. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo didn’t do anything to stop the abuses at the mock prison but allowed it.
In this article two experiments were mentioned; the Milgram's Experiment and the Stanford Experiment supporting that “people conform passively and unthinkingly to both the instructions and the roles that authorities provide, however malevolent these may be”. However, recently, the consensus of the two experiments had been challenged by the work of social identity theorizing. The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by Zimbardo. This experiment included a group of students who were “randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners”. It was conducted in a mock prison at the Stanford Psychology Department. Prisoners were abused, humiliated, and undergone psychological torture. In the experiment the guards played a very authoritarian
Stanley Milgram conducted the experiment to put participants into immoral situations to obey an authority figure of some measure, and he tested their performance and willingness, to participate in acts that strayed away from their belief of right and wrong. Zimbardo conducted an experiment in some ways similar. He conducted an experiment to see if people would assume the expected normal roles of what a prisoner is expected to do and what an authority figure like a prisoner guard is supposed to do. So both Zimbardo and Milgram at this point are trying to prove that authority and the social norm of how authorities should act generates psychological effects on their performance, as well as people who are expected to be below and obey an upper hand.
The Stanford Prison Experiment commenced in 1973 in pursuit of Zimbardo needed to study how if a person are given a certain role, will they change their whole personality in order to fit into that specific role that they were given to. Zambrano significantly believed that personality change was due to either dispositional, things that affect personal life and make them act differently. Or situational, when surrounded by prisoners, they can have the authority to do whatever they want without having to worry about the consequences. Furthermore, it created a group of twenty-four male participants, provided them their own social role. Twelve of them being a prisoners and the other twelve prison guards, all of which were in an examination to see if they will be able to handle the stress that can be caused based upon the experiment, as well as being analysis if their personality change due to the environment or their personal problems.
In the Stanford Prison Experiment, a study done with the participation of a group of college students with similar backgrounds and good health standing who were subjected to a simulated prison environment. The participants were exposed completely to the harsh environment of a real prison in a controlled environment with specific roles of authority and subordinates assigned to each individual. The study was formulated based on reports from Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky had spent four years in a Siberian prison and his view on how a man is able to withstand anything after experiencing the horrors of prison prompted Dr. Philip Zimbardo a Professor of Psychology at Stanford and his
After only six days the Stanford Prison Experiment was stopped, after they originally planned it to last for two weeks. This was not because Zimbardo thought it should be, of the guards out of line behavior, or because outsiders thought so. The experiment finally stopped because of a graduate student was helping Zimbardo told him that it was out of control. I am very surprised from the results of the experiment. The power of situations was shown to be much more powerful than I ever would have thought. Because of the way the prisoners were treated, I do not think there will ever be another experiment like this ever again, even though a lot of valuable information was attained for conducting it.
In August of 1971, Philip G. Zimbardo placed a simple advertisement in the local city paper requesting for: “Male college students needed for psychological study of prison life: $15 per day for one-to-two weeks. Beginning A...
The number of individuals that are incarcerated in the United States on a daily basis has surpassed 2.2 million (Gibbons & Katzenbach, 2011). Annually, 13.5 million people at some point and time spend time in prison or jail with approximately 95 percent of them ultimately returning to society (Gibbons et al., 2011). Taking the aforementioned statement into considerations the author believes that it is safe to say that what goes on behind prison walls effects all members of society. When correctional facilities are unsafe, unhealthy, unproductive, or inhumane it affects both the people who work in them as well as the people that are living there at some point and time.
Henningsen, R., Johnson, W., Wells, T. (2011). Supermax prisons. In Latessa, E., & Holsinger, A. (Ed.), Correctional contexts: Contemporary and classical readings (pp. 78-85). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
We see that the author’s purpose is to allow the readers to understand that the prisoners were not treated humanly, and allows us to see the negative attitudes the authority had towards the prisoners.
The Prison Simulation, studied by Haney, Banks & Zimbardo is quite impressive as to how extensive the study actually is. Due to lack of length in this paper the synopsis dealing with this study will be brief. The experiment consisted of 24 voluntary men who were divided into two groups: Guards and Inmates. Both groups were given uniforms to encourage their roles in the prison scenario. The subjects immediately began to take on rolls as to how they thought they should act. The prison had a much greater impact on all persons than could have been anticipated. The study was supposed to last 14 days, but due to extreme emotional depression the study ended after 6 days. In the spring of 1998, my Law a...