The purpose of Zimbardo’s study is to investigate how people would adapt to the roles of guard and prisoner in a role-playing exercise that simulated prison life. He wanted to investigate on whether brutality reported among guards in American prisons was because of sadistic personalities of the guards and determine if this caused problems within the prison environment. Prisoner and guards have different personalities that make conflict inevitable. Prisoners lacking respect for law and order, which doesnt help with the guards being domineering and aggressive. Prisoners and guards may behave in a hostile manner due to the rigid power structure of the social environment in prisons. Where anything said or done can and will be used against the
The inmates were treated so poorly that they felt they needed to retaliate against the guards. Working in a prison is a possible career choice for me, this book taught me issues that can arise while working in a prison. As a correctional officer, I want to be a productive and effective, I will be friendly with the inmates but not become friends. Treating them with respect will often times result in them giving respect back, which will make them trust and respect your authority. I will be attentive of my surroundings and inmate interactions.
To prohibit conduct that unjustifiably or inexcusably causes or threatens substantial harm to individuals as well as
Kerwin Pasia PSY-359 Social Psychology November 16, 2014 Dr. Tina Ayers Website Activity 4: Stanford Prison Experiment In the Stanford Prison Experiment, a test is done upon the morality of human beings to see how the behavior of people are like when they are given complete power and authority and how people react when they are imprisoned and expected to abide by the demands of complete authority. Society has become accustomed to police enforcement. Being a form of authority, people perceive it just or as expected actions in response to criminal activities.
Ponder this: should prisons be designed for rehabilitation, retribution, or both? Many people might say rehabilitation, as the goal of many prisoners is to make it out of prison alive and free. However, not all prisons are designed for rehabilitation, and not all officials attempt to prepare prisoners for the world outside the prison walls. According to many films, brute officers are often the cause for prisoner escape attempts. Rather than help the prisoners leave freely, they employ strict and harsh punishment and attempt to make good prisoners rather than good people out of inmates.
Obedience and individuality must have a balance in order for a society to function alls well. According to head researcher and acting warden, Philip G. Zimbardo, the main purpose of The Stanford Prison Experiment would be to study and to understand the roles people develop in prison. In order to discover the roles that humans take in prison environments, Zimbardo would convert the basement of Stanford University into a mock prison. Twenty-four healthy male college students would participate in this experiment; however, half would be acting as prisoners and the latter as guards. This experiment would go on for two weeks to fully analyze the ending result of the mock environment.
In 1971, Philip Zimbardo set out to conduct an experiment to observe behavior as well as obedience. In Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison experiment, many dispute whether it was obedience or merely conforming to their predesigned social roles of guards and prisoners that transpired throughout the experiment. Initially, the experiment was meant to test the roles people play in prison environment; Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards, disposition, or had more to do with the prison environment. This phenomenon has been arguably known to possibly influencing the catastrophic similarities which occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.The
This experiment was conducted in Stanford University by Dr. Zimbardo. During this two week long session, Dr. Zimbardo had several volunteers agree to act as prisoners and as prison guards. The prisoners were told to wait in their houses while the guards were to set up the mock prison, a tactic used by Dr. Zimbardo to make them fit into their roles more. The official police apprehended the students assigned to the role of prisoner from their homes, took mug shots, fingerprinted them, and gave them dirty prison uniforms. The guards were given clean guard uniforms, sunglasses, and billy clubs borrowed from the police.
According to Zimbardo, his reason for this experiment was so that “examining and understanding the causes of evil might we be able to change it, to contain it, to transform it through wise decisions and innovative communal action” (Zimbardo, 20). The experiment consisted of young men in college being appointed either a prisoner or guard position. Every man, prisoner or guard, started off normal- some more polite than others, some more aggressive, but overall normal. As time goes by, Zimardo states that “the Stanford prison would become the scene of abuses that eerily foreshadowed the abuses of Abu Ghraib by Army Reserve Military Police years later” (Zimbardo, 46). Within just days of the experiment, guards were transitioning from soft, easy going men, to forceful, demanding, and quite abusive.
Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo questioned, “What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?” (Zimbardo, 1971) In 1971 a psychologist named Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment on the effects prison has on young males with the help of his colleague Stanley Milgram. They wanted to find out if the reports of brutality from guards was due to the way guards treated prisoners or the prison environment.
During the fall of 1973, Phillip Zimbardo conducted his famous Stanford Prison Study where he recruited 24 undergraduate students to either become prisoners or guards in his experimental prison: the “Stanford County Jail". The recreation of this prison was conducted to study how an individual’s status and/or label changed depending on the social role they had to fulfill. The participants included 12 guards and 12 prisoners, each given proper uniform to wear, such as providing the prisoners with a smock that contained ID numbers on both sides and a chain with a heavy ball around their ankle. Both groups were also given detailed instructions on the requirements they had to complete in order for the individual to assimilate to their character.
The thorough analysis of text leaves no doubt that a prison is a model of a whole society, containing its own relations of subjugation and leadership. As well as in real life, the leadership can be either formal or informal. Prison guards and wardens represent the first one. They have formal legal appointment and
Another thing that makes this experiment beautiful is that it can help the police and military offices to train their people in coping the stress of being imprisoned among the prisoners. It would help them to know how that prison environment has a great factor in creating brutal behavior among the
The second aspect that should be highlighted from the author’s hypothesis is that guards themselves, the authority was in a specific mind-set which comes with the role, and most significantly the uniform which played a major role. This enabled them, psychology to commit the negative acts against the prisoners in the experiment. What reinforces this idea the uniforms enabled this is the experiment encouraged negative as well as positive engagement with the prisoners. However most of those involved in the guard roles engaged almost entirely in negative behavior.
Normal People Behaving Evil The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment to see if normal people would change their behavior in a role-play as a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was conducted by Dr.Philip Zimbardo in 1973 at Stanford University that caused numerous amount of trauma to prisoners by prison guards in their role-playing position which forced Dr. Zimbardo to officially terminate the experiment six days after it was introduced. Due to the cruel aggressive behaviors from the guards, the experiment led to a question, "Do "normal" people have the capability of behaving badly?" The answer to that question is that most likely an individual who behave normally will have the capability of expressing evil behavior due to the environment that they are surrounded.
The experiment mainly focused on the participants appearance, for example prisoners were dressed into prison clothes for feeling more demeaned and humiliated, however at the same time guards were dressed into like real guards with sunglasses for appearing more detached and less humane. The results were terrifying because the guards took the matter seriously and sometimes harassed the prisoners with the help pf physical punishment, or even