Psychology And Social Constructionism In The Stanford Prison Experiment

On the morning of the second day the prisoners began to rebel against the guards by ripping off their ID numbers and barring the doors while taunting the guards. This event was the first step down the slippery slope that would follow. The guards took matters into their own hands and drove the prisoners out of their cells. The guards began to take on cruel and sadistic behaviors by humiliating the prisoners with menial tasks such as cleaning their latrines with their bare hands. After the sixth day the experiment was terminated because it was immoral to the prisoner group, of which lost three members due to mental breakdowns.

Some people disobey authority because they feel like they’re in a situation to where you’re not in charge of them or just because you do what someone says your this or that. People justify their behavior by assigning responsibility to the authority rather than themselves. So in conclusion the Milgram prison experience was to show the effects of perceived power of focusing on the struggle between prisoners and prison guards and how the students reaction on their experiment going in the prison and being disobeying and obeying authority well not all of them well never mind yes all of them. Till today there are still crimes like this that’s going on inside the prison cell and that they’re hiding what’s going on. They also have no chose but to obey authority or they would be beaten or put in a whole/box by the guards.

Etheridge Knight “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane” is about a man who stands against the workers of the jail. Hard Rock also represents how people struggle with police authority. The prisoner felt like Hard Rock saved them from a lot while in prison. The line “He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things” (504) talks about how Hard Rock destroyed the people for the prisoners. Hard Rock does things that the other prisoners would not imagine doing because of his reputation o f being violent.

In Elie Wiesel’s Night he and many of the other prisoners felt victimized by the guards and their use of power over them. One example of abuse and dehumanization is Franek, the foreman. He noticed that Elie had a gold crown in his mouth, Franek wanted it. When told to give it to him, Elie said no, so Franek started harassing and abusing Elie’s father. Elie’s father was unable to march in step, which caused a problem for him because everywhere they went it was in step, “This presented Franek with the opportunity to torment him and, on a daily basis, to thrash him savagely.

It discovered man’s inhumanity to man. The guards and prisoners were cruel to others, especially the new prisoners. The punishments were unreasonably harsh, even to tiny faults. Finally, men do not care how old, weak or strong someone is, resulting in the children picking up mean and harsh habits towards

I believe the prison study was unethical, clearly young men suffered physically, mentally. Verbally and same of the prisoners felt shame in their role. Studies like Zimbardo have raise

The other element being that the defendants have stated that they illegally left confinement was to escape from the violent beatings of the prison guards and the other inmates. Also, August, Bailey, Cogdell, Cooley, and Walker repeatedly told the court that there were terrible

However, the brutality of the Guards and the suffering of the Prisoners was so intense that it had to be terminated after only six days. During this period, Zimbardo observed the radical change in the personalities of the participants embodying the role of the prison guard, as they changed from ordinary young men to men with a vicious and sadistic character. Zimbardo stated that he was trying to portray what transpired when all of the individuality and dignity was stripped away from a human, and their life was completely controlled. He wanted to demonstrate the dehumanization and loosening of social and moral values that can happen to guards immersed in such a situation (“Stanford Prison Experiment”). This experiment has been used to exemplify the cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority.

The society in this book seemed to be the type that followed the rules or if you didn’t the worst things were going to happen to you. Everybody makes mistake and they try to learn and move on from them but killing someone intentionally would stick with that person forever and they would never be the same. Therefore, some people debate on whether he was completely out of place for killing Beatty or did the best thing for society. Although Montag killed Beatty, many people debate over whether it was the right thing to do or not. Montag did was he thought was right according to him because Montag thought that he was protecting himself and Faber, killing him to give society a chance to change, and because Beatty did not want to live anymore.

The main aims of the Stanford Prison Experiment were to study the roles that people play in a prison environment and to determine what psychological effects the role of prisoner and guard had on the young students. The study was carried out in a simulated prison in which researchers, led by Philip Zimbardo, observed and recorded the effects of the institution on the students. Zimbardo wanted to find out whether the atrocity reported among guards in American prisons was due to the deranged personalities of the guards or due to the prison environment. (McLeod, 2008) The prison setting in a basement of Stanford University was developed with the guidance of a consultant, it had solitary confinement, no clocks and secret recording operations. Once the prison setting was constructed the experiment was ready to be conducted.