Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo

1971 one of the most controversial social experiments took place in the basement of the Stanford psychology department. Psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted a social experiment to see how living in a prison environment affects the human behavior. In order to get people to volunteer for the experiment, Zimbardo placed an advertisement in the local newspaper stating that volunteers were needed for a social study and that they would get paid $15 a day for what was supposed to be a two week study (which eventually ended after 6 days after subjects displayed real signs of emotional distress). There were 75 people who volunteered, but after thorough interviewing only 24 subjects were chosen. The purpose of the interview was to rule out subjects

Or what if they were even “brainwashed” into doing bad things. When placed into a hostile, controlling group setting people can lose sight of their own morals and beliefs and adopt the beliefs of the group. During the Stanford Prison Experiment all of the prisoners, and even the guards, were deindividualized. Deindividualization is “the loss of a person's sense of individuality and personal responsibility” as stated on dictionary.com. When a person begins the process of deindividualization they lose all sense of who they were. When a person is placed into a group setting they usually set aside who they are and adopt the group mentality. During the experiment, both the guards and the prisoners were themselves for a very short period of time before taking on the persona of the role that they had taken. One of the prison guards was especially brutal. The prisoners had nicknamed him “John Wayne”. John Wayne was the ringleader so to speak. He encouraged the other guards to follow his lead and act as he did. But even under John Wayne’s reign there was a small group of prisoners that had not yet let go of who they were, and they decided to rebel. The group had decided to rip off the stockings that had adorned their heads, remove their numbers from their uniforms and barricade themselves inside their makeshift cells. The guards were livid, and punishments were handed out like candy. From that point on the guards started punishing the prisoners for every little thing. Now, that brutal prisoner guard John Wayne, his real name is Dave Eshelman, claims that he just got too caught up into his role and that he could no longer tell right from wrong, and that is why he abused the prisoners the way he did. I believe that what Eshelman was true. I think that if you give a person the ability to change who they are, even for six days, they will take advantage of that opportunity. Eshelman