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The Lucifer Effect Analysis

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The Stanford Prison Experiment tells the compelling story of twenty-four young men who discover how easy it is for a good person to turn into a bad person in just a short period of time. The experiment was held at Stanford University in 1971. It was conducted by a group of researchers led by psychology professor, Philip Zimbardo, using students who attended the university at the time. The whole experiment itself was held in Jordan Hall in the basement of the school using two rooms as cells. Funding for the experiment was done by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and grasped the interest and curiosity of the U.S. Navy as well as the Marine Corps. In the film adaptation, Zimbardo and the researchers gather a group of paid students who applied, …show more content…

The film does a good job of showing how specific circumstances can alter a person’s character and bend their morals. Such as the guards finding what makes a person uncomfortable or go beyond beliefs, and then forcing them to do that for their own pleasure and power. As the time progresses in the prison it is made apparent that the guards get more comfortable demanding unimaginable things from their prisoners. It becomes clear that the guards start forming sadistic tendencies when is comes to creating …show more content…

I think this is used as a way to symbolize the feeling of timelessness while in the prison. Each minute feels like an hour, each hour a day and so on. Prisoners are withheld from any daylight or sense of time hence creating the feeling of being in an eternal hell. They way it is shot is very up close and personal so that the one watching can feel how clastuphopic that hallway really is when there is 12 people in it. It will undoubtedly leave whoever watches it talking about it. Almost as if it is an experiment itself. Humans are capable of horrible things and, given the right circumstances they will crumble and give into these capabilities. Although this experiment is only done on men and you cannot draw a complete conclusion on all people, watching the film undeniably leaves me with a different outlook on humans in

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