Rachel Zeunik Mr. Fisher W131 4/20/17 Killer Obedience The American military prides itself on its devotion to loyalty, honor, brotherhood, and patriotism. Those in the military place the lives of their fellow men and country above all else. It is the most intense example of selflessness and self-sacrifice. This extended commitment to God and country is made possible through codes, vows, and unquestioned obedience. If a lieutenant is given an order, he will follow through with it because the lives of countless depend on his obedience. A soldier’s actions always contribute to the overall action of the military and work towards the greater good. If an order is questioned and not obeyed, the lives of those in his squadron will be endangered …show more content…
Instead of transferring him off the base, Santiago’s commanding officer ordered Dawson and Downey to follow through with a “code red” on Santiago in order to eliminate the straggler. This code red involved the death of Santiago late in the night. When word got out of a possible “code red” in Guantanamo Bay that led to the death of Santiago, a law suit ensued, accusing Dawson and Downey of the murder of Santiago. Their commanding officer denied ever ordering the code red and instead insisted that he had ordered for the release of Santiago from Guantanamo Bay as soon as he read Santiago’s letter. Dawson and Downey were going to be given a life sentence until their main lawyer, Kaffee, proved that they were just fulfilling their jobs and being obedient to orders. Therefore, they should not be blamed for the death of William Santiago because they were obeying an order, which is the main basis of the American military. 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
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a classic study conducted by Dr. Philip Zimbardo to test whether external factors in the environment can influence a person to behave contrary to their dispositional tendencies. Zimbardo wanted to know what happens to a person who is “good” in an evil place. More specifically, he wanted to see if institutions such as a prison has the power to control a persons behavior or if their good nature rises above the negative environment.
In the study of psychology the infamous Professor Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment is something anyone has taken a psychology course is familiar with. The experiment was done to show that “normal” people could in fact act in awful ways if under certain circumstances. This experiment required the study of young males. An ad was placed in the Palo Alto Times and soon 70 guys had responded to the ad. Of the 70, twelve were finally selected after going through a series of psychological tests. Nine of these individuals were arrested at their homes on the morning of August 17, 1971. The other three were assigned roles such as guards. After roles were assigned Zimbardo told the “officers” to keep the inmates under control without using
The surrounding environment is significantly influential, as it can alter an individual’ s perspective and behaviors. This concept is well demonstrated in Dr. Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, consisting of 24 male college students that were compensated with 15 dollars daily to assume the roles of either a prisoner or a guard. They responded to a local newspaper advertisement for Dr. Zimbardo’s experiment on discovering if the reasons for brutality displayed among American prison guards was a result of their aggressive personalities or a situational factor influenced by the reformatory environment (McLeod, 2008). The study was initially intended to last for two weeks but ended in six days due to the exceptionally aggressive behaviors of the guards treating the inmates inhumanely. Some prisoners became submissive to the authority of the guards, whereas others tested their power by refusing to eat, barricading themselves in their rooms, and one individual displayed a significant amount of psychological distress that allowed him to leave the study
Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment of August 1971 quickly became a classic. Using realistic methods, Zimbardo and others were able to create a prison atmosphere that transformed its participants. The young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how many circumstances can distort individual personalities
In 1971, Zimbardo conducted an experiment in order to determine how an environment can affect behavior. He converted the Stanford University psychology department into the so called Stanford County Prison. The participants flipped a coin to determine whether they would be a guard or a prisoner. The guards were restricted with little rules and immediately began to degrade and humiliate the prisoners. The experiment was intended to last for two weeks, but due to extreme and unforeseen outcomes, it was shut out after six days. This unethical experiment indicated that if normal people are given too much power, they can become ruthless oppressors. The heavily manipulated environment in which the participants lived for those six days encouraged extreme behavior; guards became tyrannical and prisoners became violent (Konnikova). From this experiment, Zimbardo was able to conclude that there are “specific situations so powerful
Zimbardo himself admitted that he was totally caught up in playing his role of prison warden and was so involved in the experiment that he begun to forget his sole purpose and what he truly needed to focus on. Miller (2004), stated the experiment concluded that ‘negative situational forces overwhelmed the positive dispositional tendencies.’ This concludes that the experiment had in fact proved that when good people were put into evil, negative situations and environments, the evil triumphed over the good people. Many coping mechanisms for the situation were also witnessed, including 5 of the young men being so traumatized they had to leave the experiment within the first week. Other prisoners experienced ‘emotional breakdowns’ and suffered with extreme amounts of stress from the prison guards and the environment they were surrounded by. Some participants who appeared to have adapted better than the others mindlessly followed orders and became unseeingly obedient to authority (Miller, 2004). The guards continued to dehumanize and degrade the prisoners more and more with every new day and night. The young men whom had taken on the role of prison guards were seen to be behaving sadistically and constantly inflicting humiliation on the prisoners whom have an inferior human status stigma surrounding them. Some guards reported that they were in fact enjoying inflicting the pain and mental games to these prisoners, which would usually be so out of character when not under the situational forces that they were (Miller,
The aim of this experiment was to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of a guard and a prisoner. In this role playing simulation, individual would experience prison life. Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was dispositional: due to the sadistic personalities of the guards, or Situational: having more to do with the prison environment. For example, prisoner and guards may have personalities which make conflict inevitable, with prisoners lacking respect for law, order, and any authoritative figure and guards having domineering and aggressive personalities. Alternatively, prisoners and guards may behave in a hostile manner due to the rigid power structure of the social environment in prisons. If the prisoners and guards were not aggressive towards one another this would support the dispositional hypothesis, or if their behavior was similar to those in real prisons this would support the situational explanation.
During the summer of 1973 an experiment of the psychology of imprisonment was conducted by psychologist Philip K. Zimbardo. Zimbardo created his own jail in the basement in the Stanford University psychology building. Every participant had to be mentally and physically fit in order to participate in this experiment. Participants were randomly split into two groups’, guards and prisoners. Participants who were selected to be prisoners were arrested, blindfolded and sent the Stanford prison. The prisoners had to strip down and put on a prisoner uniform. The guards had to have a uniform also. Their uniform was composed of silver reflective sunglasses, handcuffs, whistles, billy clubs, and keys to all the cells and main gate. Prisoners had no freedom, rights, independence and privacy. Guards had social power and the responsibility of managing the prisoner’s lives. The day of the experiment everyone fell into their roles of guards and prisoners. The next day the prisoners started to rebel which motivated the guards to take affirmative action against the prisoners and maintain law and order. By the last days of the experiment the guards became sadistically aggressive and the prisoners became and passive. To explain the behavior of the guards and prisoners of this experiment we must look at, “Obedience to Authority,” “The Roles of Guard and Prisoner,” and “Prison
Nonetheless, starting off with a widely known and controversial study is Zimbardo’s Stand Prison Study. With Zimbardo and several other associates of his wanting to test his belief that the environment around you, the situation, often determines how you behave than who you are that is your internal dispositional nature. Zimbardo took a step outside of his comfort zone and many others and created a simulated prison with randomly assigned, typical college students in the role of guards and prisoners in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building. However, this simulated prison was more than just a study but was foreseen as the real thing. While recording, observing, and analyzing behavior Zimbardo called off the 2 week study after 6 days due to the powerful atmosphere and behavioral change the mocked prison gave to those in it. Despite not concluding
Haney, Banks and Zimbardo (1973) were fascinated as to why people do bad things. Convinced the answer was attributed to bad environments corrupting good individuals, Haney et al. (1973) created a prison simulation to explore Zimbardo’s hypothesis that personality characteristics of guards and prisoners underlie aggressive behaviour in prisons. A newspaper advertisement asking for volunteers to participate in a two week study examining prison life, was used to recruit twenty-four participants, who were assigned randomly the role of prisoner or guard. Prisoners were arrested, referred to by identification numbers, dehumanised and made to wear identical clothing (nylon cap, a smock); whilst the guards wore khaki shirts and trousers and were given black sunglasses. Haney et al., (1973) told participants physical misconduct was prohibited; claiming this was the only direction participants were given regarding how they should behave.
Craig Haney, Curtis Banks and Philip Zimbardo are the authors of A Study of Prisoners and Guards in a Simulated Prison and published the article in September 1973. The purpose of the Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment was to grasp a greater knowledge of, “the basic psychological mechanisms of human aggression.” (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973, pg. 1) Creating a simulated prison environment did this. During this experiment, a greater understanding of the development in roles, labels, and social expectations was identified. The researchers thought this topic should be studied to help determine and isolate the processes, which induce aggressive and submissive nature within an
This experiment was first designed to investigate how people “would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life” (Mcleod 1). Zimbardo was interested in learning about whether the brutality in the prisons was because of the behavior of the guards towards the prisoners or if it was because of the prison environment. He beginned his experiment by placing an ad in the newspaper calling out for males that were willing to be part of the experiment, 70 individuals answered the ad. Every individual had to go through a background check to check for mental issues or past drug or alcohol use. In the end only 24 students were chosen (McLeod). The “prisoners’ were treated just like they would be treated at a your average prison. Half of the 24 students that were selected were prisoners and the other half were the guards. The guards had no specific direction as to how to treat the prisoners, “Guards were instructed to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the respect of the prisoners. No physical violence was permitted” Mcleod 11). As the days went on the prison began to seem and become more like a real life one was. The guards began to become more aggressive in order to maintain control over the inmates. Some of the prisoners began to show early signs of depression by the third day. Although the experiment was supposed to go on for a longer period of time, it had to be cancelled on the sixth day.This concluded that “People will readily conform to the social roles they are expected to play, especially if the roles are as strongly stereotyped as those of the prison guards” (Mcleod
The environment of a prison is affiliated as an aggressive and violent institution. Paul Zimbardo, a psychologist and Stanford University professor believed it was the nature of the roles that prisoners and guards were expected to portray that induced such violent behavior. He conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 to observe ordinary people when randomly assigned the roles of a “prisoner” or a “guard”. He gathered 24 young male students from the United States and Canada, converting the basement of the Stanford psychology building into a mock prison to conduct the experiment. Costumes were provided in an attempt to make the experiment more “realistic”. The participants who were to be guards were given uniforms, mirrored
The aim of the Stanford Prison experiment was to investigate how readily people would conform to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life. In 1971, Philip Zimbardo, the leader of the experiment, converted a basement of the Stanford University psychology building into a simulated prison. He advertised for students to play the roles of prisoners and guards for a fortnight. Subjects were randomly assigned to play the role of "prisoner" or "guard". Those assigned to play the role of guard were given batons and special sunglasses, making eye contact with prisoners impossible. However, we learnt that “The study created more new questions than it answered, about the amorality and darkness that inhabits the human psyche.”(Shuttleworth, no date).
Throughout history there have been hundreds upon hundreds of influential figures, although not all of them have devoted their career to understanding the human mind. Of the few who have devoted their time to this hugely important task, Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo’s theories and experiments have made him stand out, and differentiate himself from the rest in his profession. Zimbardo 's area of expertise in the field of psychology is social psychology, the branch that deals with social interactions, including their origins and their effects on the individual. Zimbardo may be most well known for his Stanford Prison experiment, an experiment that seems to address the definition of social psychology perfectly. In this experiment Zimbardo had clinically healthy and sane people volunteer for the position of a prison guard or a prisoner and see how they behaved, for fifteen dollars a day. The prison was actually the basement of the Stanford psychology building, where the experiment would take place for a planned 14 days. As said before, the prisoners and guards were all tested as mentally healthy, and for the sake of the experiment were arrested, and processed on a random morning, August 14th 1971. (Zimbardo, 2007, p. 23). The results of this experiment are outstanding, shocking, and somewhat disturbing, making this one of, if not, the most unethical psychological experiments. Although the experiment is considered wildly immoral, Zimbardo is one of the most influential psychologists