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Tuskegee Experiment Compare And Contrast Zimbardo And Abu Ghraib

Decent Essays

Did you know that for forty years the United States Public Health Services did an experiment that was conducted on hundreds of African American men that suffered from the late stages of syphilis? Well they did. This experiment is called the ‘Tuskegee Experiment’. The men they researched were mostly illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama. The U.S. Public Health Services never told the men what disease they suffered from, or its seriousness. The men were told they were being treated for “bad blood”. The researchers never had the motive to cure the infected men. The data was collected from the autopsies of the deceased men that were left to decay from the illness. The study was supposedly meant to discover how …show more content…

The ‘Stanford prison experiment’, or the ‘Zimbardo experiment’, influenced Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The Abu Ghraib is to toughen up prisoners who misbehaved. Nobody would’ve known about Abu Ghraib, if photos were not revealed. Zimbardo’s experiment showed how people respond to a cruel environment without clear rules. Dr. Zimbardo put an ad in the paper for healthy male volunteers. With the flip of a coin they decided who would imitate the guards and who would imitate the prisoners. The guards wore all khaki, with sunglasses. An imitation guard said, “If you mask your identity it can make you behave in ways you wouldn’t normally behave without a mask on.” The prisoners were given a smock with a number on it. The number was their new identity for the experiment. They also got a chain and lock around their one foot to remind them, that their freedom was “lost”. Each day the simulated guards would taunt the fake prisoners. Experimental prisoner number 8612, was the first to have an emotional breakdown. The fourth day in, things got very sexual, and the guards loved to humiliate the prisoners. Every day a prisoner had a mental breakdown. After 6 days, Dr. Zimbardo shut down the experiment. The power of the situation changed everyone in the experiment, including Dr.

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