Stanford Prison Experiment

In the article “ stanford prison experiment” by saul mcleod, his purpose of issuing this experiment, was to simulate the reality of being in a prison, having to obey to guards, and guards having to be in order and command other prisoners. Within a very limited short time guards and prisoners started to settle in into their new roles with guards adopting very quickly and easily, which which gave them confidence. Just so in lord of the flies shortly after ralph is elected as the leader, there are two groups separated, one to keep the fire going to alert any passing ships or planes, than another group led by jack to keep the food coming to survive, for the meantime to get rescued, this is a sign of how comfortable they are getting until

The guard attempted to hide this situation from the people running the experiment because of them “being too soft on the prisoners.” Another guard, not aware he was being observed, paced around the “yard” while the prisoners slept, watching his “captives” and aggressively hitting them with his nightstick. A majority of the prisoners still involved in the experiment started to accept the loss of their identities and the abusive treatment they received, because of the belief that they “deserved it.” The guards formed a corrupt but unified team that used their power to inspire fear and complete control over the prisoners. The prisoners, in response, became mentally compromised and developed depression, feelings of helplessness, and feelings of psychosis.

What the researchers found during this study was that both the behaviors and mentalities of guards and prisoners changed. Guards became more aggressive and prisoners became passive. A group of five prisoners had to actually be released from the study because of physical and emotional changes they were experiencing. Those prisoners remaining actually began acting as if they were truly incarcerated. By the behaviors they exhibited they had all but forgotten that they were free to leave at any time and not forfeit the money they had already earned. Guards, on the other hand, actually stayed at the prison longer than they were scheduled and were actually disappointed when the study came to a close while prisoners were very happy and expressed their luck at getting released early. These results clearly demonstrate that it is the environment that contributes to the behaviors observed. Those who were given the role of guard expressed the power and control they had over the prisoners. The prisoners began to become hopeless and bend to the power of the guards.

Stanley Milgram writes about his shocking experiment in “Perils of Obedience.” Milgram writes on the behaviors that the people had during the experiment. Milgram had an experiment that involves two people. One person was a student and the other a teacher. The student was strapped into an electric chair and was required to answer certain questions. The teacher asked a certain word, and the student must know the pair that goes with it. If the student answered the question incorrectly, the teacher must shock the student. Each time the student answered a question incorrectly, the volts increase. Milgram was expecting the teachers to back out of the experiment once they saw the student in pain for the first time, but surprisingly enough, more than sixty percent of the teachers obeyed the experimenter and continued on with the experiment, reaching up to four-hundred-fifty volts. After three times of the four-hundred-fifty volt shock, the experiment was called to halt.

Each time the question asked was answered incorrectly the voltage of shock would be increased. The “student” had been an actor hired to react to each shock, as the shock was to increase so did their reactions to appeal to the “teacher’s” empathy. When the “teachers” had reached a dangerous high voltage and continued to do so it demonstrated a form of blind authority. Blind authority is obeying the law only because it is a law, convinced your actions are okay because one is obeying orders of an authority greater than man. It is apparent that this is blind authority due to the “teachers” questioning if they should continue the experiment and demonstrating feeling guilt or discomfort in their task given. Although the “teachers” may have felt their task given was wrong they continued to do so because a figure of authority assured them it was okay, they were following the rules

The Milgram Experiment is one of the most famous studies in psychology. It was carried out by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist from Yale University. The purpose of the experiment was to study how far people would go in obeying an instruction from an authority figure if it involved hurting another person. Milgram wanted to study whether Germans were more obedient to authority as this was what people believed was the main reason for Nazi killings in World War II. 40 males were chosen to participate in the study, and were paid $4.50 for attending. The experiment was carried out as follows:

On arriving for the experiment they were told that they would play he role of the teacher. They were to read a series of words pairs to an individual on the opposite side of a partition. They were to test the individuals' memory by giving him a word and asking him to select the correct matching word from four alternatives. Each time the learner made an error, they were to give him/her an electric shock at the touch of a lever. The individual was strapped into an electric chair while they watched. The teachers had levers in front of them labelled from 15 to 450 volts and switches labelled from slight shock to danger: severe shock to the final ‘XXX'. They were instructed to move one lever higher on the shock generator each time the learner made an error. There were not of course any shocks.

For every wrong answer the 'student' gives, the 'teacher' has to shock them. The student is a part of the test, so he is not actually being hurt, but the teacher thinks he is. Over time, as the shocks get stronger and stronger, the student screams, yells, begs for the shocks to stop and then goes quiet. The purpose of the experiment was to focus on the

In a visual judgment experiment, people who were asked which line was longer chose the wrong answer because it was the majority answer chosen. This showed how people chose conformity over wrong judgment. Other experiments mentioned to prove that social situation in fact control an individual’s behavior are Milgram’s experiment which showed people were obedient to authority. Finally, the Stanford prison experiment demonstrated the fundamental attribution error where situational conditions are under looked while attributed causes of behavior to personal factors are more focused on. In this experiment, there were two groups of random chosen people to fulfill the character as a “prisoner” or “guard” and taken to a simulated jail.

Review of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment The general topic of this study was to understand the roles that guards as authoritarian figures, and

Stanley Milgram’s shock experiment was of much controversy when it was carried out in the early 1960’s and many questioned its ethical design. Milgram wanted to study the relationship between obedience to authority and moral conscience. To do this, he randomly assigned his participants into two groups, one group being the “learners” and the other, the “teachers”. The teachers and learns were to wait together until they were called in for the experiment. Once called, the teacher would remain in a room with an electric shock generator (to administer shocks the learner) and the “experimenter”, who actually was an actor is a lab coat.

At this point, the Teacher and Learner were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. The Teacher was then given an electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample what the Learner would supposedly to receive during the experiment. After the Teacher was given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the Learner. The Teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. To respond the Learner would press a button to indicate their answer, if the answer was wrong the teacher would shock the Learner with the voltage increasing by 15-volts for each wrong answer, if correct the Teacher would read the next word pair. The subjects believed that for each wrong answer the Learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After a series of wrong answers the Learner would start complaining about their heart, afterwards there would be no response from the Learner at all. Many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner at this point in the experiment. Some paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment, while most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects even began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress when they heard the screams of the

Obedience and Disobedience has been a part of key moments in history. Many have studied forms of obedience to learn how it affects people and situations. For example, Stanley Milgram conducted a well-known experiment in which the subject, named the “teacher” must shock the “learner” every time he doesn’t remember a word pair from a memory test. The focus of this study is on the teacher, and whether they will administer killing shocks when told to by an authority figure. Another well-known experiment is the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo. A group of college boys were separated into two groups, prison guards and prisoners, and were put

This report on the Stanford Prison Experiment will define the ethical issues related to prisoner treatment and prison culture in a mock scenario created 1971. The findings of this study define the inclination towards corruption and riotous behavior within the overarching relationship between guard and the prisoners. In a short period of time,. The prisoners became hostile and sought to start a riot in order to free themselves from abuses of the prison guards. In some instances, the issue of role-playing limited to reality of the event, but the ethical issues related to issue of prison corruption became evident in the study. The Stanford Prison Experiment provided some important aspects on how good people can became violent lawbreakers within the orison system. In essence, the ethical and experimental conditions of the Stanford Prison experiment define the corrupting culture of prisons in American society during the early 1970s.

The purpose of Milgram’s experiment was to see how far people would go to obey authority. His scientific methods followed the scientific procedure and produced external validity. There were 20 variations of Stanley Milgram’s experiment some factors remained consistent throughout all variations, while some remained the same, while some changed. The four experimental conditions grew in intensity. In the first condition, also known as remote feedback, the learner was isolated from the subject and could not be seen or heard except at three hundred volts when he pounded on the wall. At three hundred and fifteen volts he was no longer heard from until the end of the experiment. The naive subject was required to keep administering shocks with an unresponsive human at the other end. Put yourself in the teacher’s shoes. In the second condition (voice feedback) the learner was placed in an adjacent room, when he started to shout and protest at lower shock levels he could be heard through the crack in the door. In the third