Prison

In 1973, in an attempt to understand the conformity to roles of guards and prisoners, Zimbardo launched a role-playing experiment that modeled prison life and reflected the environment of an American prison. The experiment was to see if prison guards are brutal and cruel because that’s their sadistic personality types that cause conflicts with the prisoners or if its due to the prison setting itself. In other words, there is a dispositional hypothesis that states that prison guards act the way they do because their personalities cause

In Maria Konnikova’s “The Real Lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment” she reveals what she believes to be the reality of sociologist Philip Zimbardo’s controversial study: its participants were not “regular” people.

Philip Zimbardo and his team aimed to demonstrate the situational rather than the dispositional causes of negative behaviour and thought patters found in prison settings by conducting the simulation with average everyday participants playing the roles of guard and prisoner. From a total of seventy-five volunteers, twenty-two male participants

In 1971, psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues created the experiment known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo wanted to investigate further into human behavior, so he created this experiment that looked at the impact of taking the role of a prisoner or prison guard. These researchers examined how the participants would react when placed in an institutionalized prison environment. They set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology building. Twenty four undergraduate students were selected to play the roles of both prisoners and guards. These students were chosen because they were emotional, physically, and mentally stable. Though the experiment was expected to last two weeks, it only lasted six days after the researchers and participants became aware of the harm that was being done.

On the other hand, the guards were treated differently from the inmates as they were given identical guard-style uniforms, reflective sunglasses that aimed to provide them an authoritative, secretive appearance and the freedom to live their normal lives when they were not on their 8-hour shifts. The independent variable of the “Stanford Prison” study is the roles into the participants were randomly assigned to in the mock prison environment, while the dependent variable of this study is the behavior measures, he emotional measures of mood and pathology, attitudes toward self among these prisoners and guards. The findings of this experiment were absolutely mind-blowing. The mock prison environment turned into a reality and the roles assigned to these college students became their real identities (either prisoners or guards). The guards treated the prisoners with no mercy, coming up with creative ways of breaking the prisoners’ spirit. Meanwhile, all the prisoners seemed to forget that they do have the rights to quit the study anytime they intend to, instead they submissively accepted and conformed to the rules set by the guards, including the sadistic and degrading treatments from the

Zimbardo want to find out “whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards or had more to do with the prison environment” (McLeod 1).

In 1971, Stanford professor and psychologist Philip Zimbardo, arranged and conducted an experiment with the intention of gaining a better understanding of the development of norms and the effects of roles, labels, and social expectations in a simulated prison environment. However, what professor Zimbardo was not expecting, was just how much insight this study would provide into the psychology of individuals and social groups, as well as, the aggressiveness of human nature. Participants in the study had responded to newspaper advertisements in the Palo Alto Times and the Stanford Daily, which offered $15/day to male college students for a study on the psychology of imprisonment. It is important to note that all volunteers in the experiment were

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 Experiment”, an American film in 2010, was directed by Paul Scheuring, and starred by Adrian Brody, 2003 Academy Award’s Best Actor, and Forest Whitaker, a remarkable American actor and director. In the movie, an astounding experiment is conducted by a group of psychological researchers who recruit a group of volunteers to join a prison experiment for cash reward. For two weeks, twenty male participants are hired to play “prisoners” and “guards.” The “prisoners” are locked up and have to follow seemingly mild rules, and the “guards” are told to retain order without using physical violence. Everybody is free to quit at any time, but will forfeit the reward. In the beginning, the

Young men were divided into the roles of Prisoner and Guard and put in a prison-like environment in the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University. The study was meant to last two weeks. But the brutality of the guards and the suffering of the prisoners was so intense that it had to be terminated after only six days (Shake Creative, 2008).

In the summer of 1971 at Stanford University psychologist Phillip Zimbardo conducted a behavioral experiment meant to simulate a prison. This experiment was supposed to study the behaviors both guards and prisoners go through by using student volunteers to play the parts. This experiment, conducted in the basement of a Stanford University building, began to take on a life of its own and has since gone down in infamy. This paper will look into the person responsible for this experiment, how it was conducted and the outcome of the infamous study.

This paper serves to summarize The Zimbardo Prison Experiment, better known as The Stanford Prison Experiment which was conducted by Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. The purpose of the study was to conduct research in order to better understand the psychological components of human aggression and submission to include conformity and obedience in a prison environment with a select group of subjects playing roles as either prison guards or inmates, however, I should note, according to McLeod, S. (2016), The Navy’s intent or purpose for the experiment was to better understand how to train members of the armed forces on how to cope with stress associated with captivity as opposed to making American Prison systems more humane. Another interesting point of note is that Zimbardo conducted this experiment shortly after World War II, and the Vietnam War where concern was raised as to some of the atrocities carried out in those wars where “ordinary” people conducted heinous acts per instruction from so-called authoritative figures. Experiments with similar objectives were carried out by Stanley Milgram and others. (Jones, A. D., & Milgram, S. 1974)

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by a research group led by Dr. Philip Zimbardo using Stanford students during August 14 through the 20th of 1971. Dr. Zimbardo wanted to see how people reacted when they are either put in captivity or in charge of others. The study was funded by the US Office of Naval Research and grew interest to both the US Navy and the Marine Corps for an investigation to the purpose of conflict among military guards and prisoners. In the study, 24 male students were selected out of 75 applicants to take on randomly assigned roles. One of the surprises of the study was how participants quickly adapted to roles well beyond expectations. After the first eight hours, the experiment turned to be a joke and nobody was taking it seriously but then prisoners

Zimbardo’s (1973) aim was to analyze the aftermath of experiencing the life of an inmates. To do so, the latter recruited participants and the subjects were allocated to the position of prison guards and inmates randomly. Only a few hours after being exposed to the prison life, both prisoners and guards got overly impregnated with their respective roles causing psychological harm which lead to the experiment being dismissed after only five days. Zimbardo enquired afterwards and found that the participants started believing that they were really prison officers and inmates, hence showing that they had conformed to their roles. However, similar to Milgram’s study, ethical issues were raised whereby the harm caused psychologically by the study could not be foreseen by any of the experimenters (Zimbardo et al.,

In conclusion to his study, he found that people will willingly conform to the social roles that they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards. The “prison” environment was an important factor in creating the guards’ violent behaviour (however none of the participants who acted as guards showed cruel behaviour/ mentality before the study). Therefore, this means that the roles that people play can shape their behaviour and attitudes.