The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Psychological Experiment

The power given to prison guards over prisoners can puts prison guards in the position to become evil. A great example of prison guards turning evil is seen through the Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment was conducted using normal mentally stable volunteers and assigned them to be either a prisoner or a prison guard. The roles were selected at random. Once the people who were assigned as guards received the power in the prison, they began to perform humiliating acts towards the prisoners; humiliating acts such as striping the prisoners naked and other sexually graphic acts.

In Ted Talk I believe Zimbardo did a good job explaining the idea of evil. He believes that there is no line between good and evil. Good people can turn bad and bad people can be good ,depending on circumstance around them. When Zimbardo demonstrates sadistic photos of prisoners , I was shocked and sad about how far the soldiers are willing dehumanize because of power and control was involved and the environment. Then he explain the same situation happen in the Stanford prison experiment.

Warden Norton was a prime example of how authority figures can become power-hungry when put in an environment such as a prison. They become domineering and disassociated with the outside world because, in prison, they are at the top. The vulnerability of inmates allows prison authority figures to be even more ruthless; their criminal status does not give them the opportunity to expose the wrongs of prison. Once people, like Norton, become resocialized into a megalomaniac, they lose who they were before. Their sense of self is demolished, so they contradict their prior beliefs and motivations.

The Monitor on Psychology article “What makes good people do bad things?” by Melissa Dittmann analyzes the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Stanford psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo in 1971 and discusses what the experiment can tell us about human nature and what causes humans to be evil. In the novel “Lord of the Flies” the author William Golding discusses the effects of the theories mentioned in the article by creating his own fictional experiment with children stranded on an island during a nuclear war. Throughout his novel Golding explores the focus of Dittmann’s article; that environments and situations can bring out the evil that is inside all of us. People can act good or bad depending on their environment, and these actions are not entirely their fault because when people are not held accountable for their actions their more violent natures are revealed. The works of Dittmann and Golding imply that people will be more violent in a survival situations that are difficult to exit because they provide the person with an ideology to justify their actions so that they will not be held accountable.

Some of these famous men were Aristotle, Plato and T. Hobbes. Apart from just opinions, much research and several experiments were conducted to gain more knowledge on the topic and maybe even a definite answer. Since an uncivilized person is not groomed to know what is immoral, he naturally commits evil without any second thoughts. This supports the claim that humans are inherently evil. People are generally evil due to the desire to benefit themselves.

It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked upon us"(Rand, 21). This transgression exist because if there was superiority in this society the old ways the Councils and the elders strayed away from would try to overpower again.

He started to behave in a way that was cruel and far harsher than the rest of the guards and at the end of the experiment claimed it was because he was conducting his own experiment to see how far they would let him go until they retaliated. The way he behaved portrayed that, even though he might not have come into the experiment with the intention to release that behavior from within, but his actions became a roll that he took too far. A sociocultural component shown in the film were the ways that the volunteer guards interpreted the stigmas around being a prison guard. That they should be cold, strict, and unnervingly verbally abusive. Time upon time in the film, the volunteer guards were verbally abusive of their power with the prisoners.

The world is revolved around Social Constructionism, every day human beings give meaning to worthless things that otherwise wouldn 't matter if humans didn 't give it meaning through social agreement. The nation is an example of social constructionism because if the human society did not exist Americans would not have the government and money system they have now. The film The Stanford Prison Experiment has social constructionism throughout the film and it shows the viewer that the social construction of prisons systems can cause mental trauma to individuals within the jail cells. Social Constructionism theory originated from Berge and Luckmann 's book The Social Construction of Reality in 1967. It observes how the interactions of individuals with their society and the world around them gives meaning to otherwise worthless things to create the reality of the society (Brown, Sydney).

The brutality, racism and hopelessness are all underplayed. The prisoners don 't even look very underfed. But it 's all part of Benigni 's grand design. He has to soften the realities of the concentration camp slightly, or there could be no laughter. Sophisticated audiences will realize that Benigni - like his hero - is playing an elaborate game with us.

Plea bargaining is an unethical practice because it can force innocent men to plead guilty, defense lawyers often can't see the evidence in time to advise their client, and it lets criminals get away with a lighter sentence than they should. The innocent pleading guilty The concept of an innocent man pleading guilty was far fetched in 19941. Which is truly surprising. But not so much

According to social psychologists, there are primarily three specific ways people can, essentially, “turn to the dark side”: dispositional, situational, and Zimbardo’s discovery, systemic. Through this experiment, Zimbardo observed how the system of the jail affected the participants: for the “guards” there really wasn’t a system. Their power was unlimited; they had no boundaries. Because of this, they started doing small, evil acts, which quickly escalated to larger-scale acts of near malice. For the “prisoners”, the system was unsteadily and randomly created and reliant upon the “guards”, creating a very unhealthy system

But with the insanity plea, the accused have a chance in defending themselves. Stating that they are suffering from a mental disorder, and because of that, they have done things that are against the law. In conclusion people that are mentally ill should have the right to chose the insanity defense, it wouldn’t be fair to just throw them into a prison when they can get a much needed treatment, putting them into a prison can harm them and the prison. Just because the insanity testimony isn’t used a lot doesn’t mean it isn’t an actual issue, so we should keep

Most commonly these methods are used in unison good cop/bad cop, the good cop pretends to save the suspect from the bad cop saying things like just tell him what he wants before it gets worse. The suspect will hopefully find comfort from being saved and confess sometimes confessing to even more than he/she was questioned about. Although these interrogation methods seemed a little like trickery it still is far better than tactics once used such as torture of suspects to make them confess. These methods include psychological as well as physical torture. Some of the psychological methods included blackmailing, exploitation of phobias; e.g., mock execution, leaving suspects in a room full of spiders, interrogations that lasted for an unreasonable

As a felon, coming out of prison all you know is how to live in prison, many are unsure how to go back into a normal functioning society and move along productively. Restoring, but also limiting their rights is a small way to show them that they are equal to all the others in society and keeps them from feeling like outcasts and the social pariahs that this world makes them out to be. Felons and Ex felons are equal to any other american citizen, their only difference is the ex felons have made mistakes in their past that have negatively affected them and their lives. However, mistakes made from the past should not affect people 's later lives in such a way that it can keep people from the obtaining the most basic of rights, this includes voting. Restoring the voting rights of ex felons would help them learn the value of the justice system and the law to strengthen their participation in average life practices.

Near Misses and Wrongful Convictions Erroneous convictions are a terrible injustice to those convicted and have the potential to deteriorate the public’s trust in the criminal justice system. An in-depth study was conducted by the National Institute of Justice and discussed by Dr. Jon Gould and John R. Firman during the presentation, “Wrongful Convictions: The Latest Scientific Research and Implications for Law Enforcement”. This study attempts to discover why some cases arrive into the system are near misses—this is an innocent person cleared or acquitted of all charges based on factual evidence—and other cases arrive into the system a different way become wrongful convictions, which these people are also factually innocent, it was just