Research Paper On 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.

‘Prisoners’ were ridiculed and abused, causing them psychological and physical harm, demonstrated by the prisoner who had to leave the experiment after 36 hours. Another ethical question the experiment raises is the lack of prior knowledge of the outcome of the experiment, as Zimbardo could not accurately predict the experiment, making it unstable. At one point of the experiment, Zimbardo tried to convince the prisoner to continue to participate in the experiment, violating the participant’s withdrawal

Time upon time in the film, the volunteer guards were verbally abusive of their power with the prisoners. They often gave them punishments such as, physical exercise, sleep deprivation, as well as revoked their privileges, smoking, parole and comfort items like bedding. In one case they even as far as refusing to provide glasses to one of the

The right to withdraw was a major issue in this experiment as they were not authorised to leave the experiment at any time throughout the procedure of the experiment. Thankfully 3 of the prisoner participants left the experiment early who were mentally and physically distressed this was due to the fact that Philip Zimbardo’s wife came to observe the prisoners and guards act in their roles and saw the trauma and behaviour from the roles given to each of the participants, all of the remanding 21 male participants that took part in The Sandford Prison Experiment were let out within 6 days of the experiment taking place rather than the two weeks the experiment was meant to last for. Though the experiment was voluntary participation the participants did not know parts of the experiment were going to take place; they didn’t know that each prisoner would get arrested on site and taken to the prison in a cop car this caused embarrassment, stress and fear in each prisoner role this ethical issue is conformed consent. Lastly Confidentiality was a big part of this experiment which Philip Zimbardo did not keep, intercom system allowed Zimbardo and his group observing the experiment to secretly bug the cells to monitor what the prisoners discussed which breaches the prisoners

Official Stanford Prison Experiment website: http://www.prisonexp.org/ What makes good people do bad things? : http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct04/goodbad.aspx An interview with Philip Zimbardo: http://nautil.us/issue/45/power/the-man-who-played-with-absolute-power In the Stanford Prison Study, students were given roles as prison guards or inmates. The participants were chosen carefully, so that most of the participants would end up being "Average Joes". What started out as a seemingly innocent experiment began to further escalate with each day, up to the point where they had to shut the whole thing down. It lasted 6 days, less than half of the original end-point (2 weeks).

As a result of this, when there’s only one day left you panic and have to study everything in one day and sit up the whole night. So then it never goes as you planned? a In the Ted Talk “In the mind of a master procrastinator,” Tim Urban talks describes how your brain works if you are a procrastinator. A procrastinator is a person who always puts off doing something until it’s very very close to the deadline. He starts the speech with sharing a story about when he went to college.

With all of this fear, how could Maximilien Robespierre possibly have a downfall? As the last two months of the terror came, the tyrant started to blame himself for the thousands of deaths. He passed the Law of the Twenty Second Prairial, which stated that all rights of the accused victim were washed away, making the executions go even faster (Linton). After the Committee of Public Safety passed this, Robespierre never attended another meeting. In his last few weeks, he rarely left his assigned room.

The punishments that Frank Abagnale received made him think about what he did and regret for the decisions he took. He was arrested in Montpellier, France, and got a sentence of one year which he had to serve in Perpignan’s prison where he was stripped of all his belongings. His imprisonment in France was awful because he spent six months in total darkness, he wasn’t able to talk to someone; he was sleeping in the hard floor, and living in his own waste. Frank said that “[It] was not a term in prison, it was an ordeal designed to destroy the mind and the body” (Abagnale). These point of his live can be described as a rebirth.

The prisoners were humiliated and embarrassed by the guards. The guards were cruel and even made the prisoners do menial tasks. The prisoners also broke and could no longer control their emotions, some prisoners also went into depression. For example, one prisoner had to be released after 36 hours because of uncontrollable bursts of screaming, crying and anger. But, the experiment had long term effects that Zimbardo thought to be superior to the short-term effects, hence he decided to continue the experiment.

Another lie that Ericsson talked about was omission lie. Omission involves telling most of the truth minus one or two key facts whose absence changes the story completely. Sometimes telling an omission can hurt you or hurt the person your telling it too. A couple years ago, I was getting bullied because I was the smallest out of all the people in my class. It went on for months but I never had the courage to speak up about it because, I felt that no one could help me.