Zimbardo And The Stanford Prison Experiment

The officers tend to create what is known as a “we/they syndrome”(Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). This relationship is mainly between the officers and the inmates. Also, it has been said that “when there is little interaction except in control situations, the adversarial nature of the relationship tends to be one of dominance and, in return, resistance is present on both sides”(Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). Last but not least, the officers tend to lose their capacity and become shocked by the things they see or witness in these type of prisons”(Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015). “Over time it destroys them psychologically and brings outrage and sadism and violence and brutality”(Schmalleger & Smykla, 2015).

Prisons in the 1971 were a truly horrific place. Not only were criminals being punished by incarceration but they were being day in and day out by cruelty of the prison staff. This corrupt system of retribution became evident to a man named Philip G. Zimbardo. Zimbardo’s initial aim of the Stanford Prison experiment was to determine if it was the environment or if it was the conflicting personalities between guards and criminals that brought about the brutality in prisons. The experiment developed into something more abstract.

The ¨Stanford Prison Experiment¨ was a breakdown of the morals and rules on how people would act toward one another due to their environment, rather than how they should. The study had created more questions than answers, specifically about the darkness and lack of moral standards that inhabits the human soul. It showed that methodical abuse and denial of human rights is nothing new in prison facilities. The novel Lord of the Flies shows how easily people become dangerous depending on their situation, and how easily humans become savages when there are no definite rules. Lord of the Flies and ¨The Stanford Prison Experiment¨ have many similarities in the way they both show the effects that occur when you lose all moral standards, and lack of rules.

It’s to keep him from using his intelligence. There’s rules in the society, and everyone has gotten used to them. Harrison Bergeron, their son, on the other hand, doesn’t respect the norms, and has been placed in jail for committing crimes. This story shows the struggle of society and how it tries to prevent people from standing apart from the crowd. The author shows this when he wrote

They are proud of doing a good job, obeying the experimenter under difficult circumstances. “(The Perils of Obedience by Stanley Milgram) Milgram did the experiment in 18 different settings to see if there was any change to the outcome. He changed the setting from the laboratory at Yale University and moved it to a bleak basement. The results showed that people were less inclined to obey if the setting of the experiment did not look professional. Another variation he tried was having the experimenter push the switch instead of the teacher, and the obedience rose from 65% to a notable 92.5%.

The Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by psychologist Philip Zimbardo in 1971 illustrated the direct relationship between power of situations and circumstances to shape an individual’s behavior. During this study 24 undergraduates were grouped into roles of either a Prisoner or a Guard, the study was located in a mock correctional facility in the basement of Stanford University. Researchers then observed the prisoners and guards using hidden cameras. The study was meant to last two weeks. 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.

The classification error led to numerous additional fault and oversights regarding the handling of Garrido by correctional officials and possible earlier emancipation of Dugard. In hindsight, this case brought to light what may occur when offenders are improperly assessed and classified. As a result, officials began to institute a field training program to pair veteran parole agents with rookies, restricting parole academy to train agents in classifying sex offenders and spotting deception, utilize instruments that agencies can use to assess the risk and special-needs offenders, and how to accurately and at what stages to assess risk and needs of offenders (Baynes,

Mark, age 17, is serving 13 years in the L.A. County Men’s Jail and when asked about how he felt about the situation he said, “little kid, he should be put in a program. When you send them to the pen all you making is a better criminal.” What Mark said is right criminal youth would be better off being placed in programs that help them get their life back on track, not placed into prison with a bunch of adults who have been criminals for years. A teen placed in a prison rather that a juvenile facility faces much more risk of repeating their criminal behavior and continuing down a dangerous path. When a youth is placed into an adult prison they are missing out on an important part of growing up, education.

In Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs narrative they show how the institution of slavery dehumanizes an individual both physically and emotionally. In Jacobs narrative she talks about how women had it worse than men did in slavery. While men suffered, women had it worse due to sexual abuse. The emotional, physical, and sexual abuse was dehumanizing for anyone.

The most notable study was done by Philip Zimbardo from Stanford University in 1971, where he created a mock trial prison with a homogenous group of students to show how the oppressors will treat the oppressed when given the power (Zimbardo). The way oppressors have treated the oppressed throughout history with the abuse of power has caused abhorrent agony for the oppressed, such as the Nazi Holocaust in World War Two. Zimbardo’s research

The reading “Facing the Demon Head On: Race and the Prison Industrial Complex” by Manning Marable is about race and the prison industrial complex in the U.S. Manning first talked about what he saw and experienced when he visit the prisons, and then he talked about the New York Theological seminary (NYTS) program in the prisons. He found out that there were number of people in the prisons who wanted to earn their bachelor’s degrees and learn more. Also, he discussed the racial discrimination in the U.S.

In some instances there are guards who feel like they have the power diven and let all that suppose "power" go to their head, and they feel as if they could do anything and everything without no repercussions happening to them. In an experiment conducted by Philip G. Zimbardo and a team of researchers called the Stanford Prison Experiment using college student they randomly selected those who were the guards and those who were the prisoners. During the experiment the guards took to a progressively sadistic personality especially at night when the cameras were turned off. As the experiment got more and more out of hand it led to a riot broke out within two days of the experiment.

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

Philip Zimbardo created the SPE during the year of 1971 (Zimbardo, 2007). Zimbardo was eager to find out why humans turned considerably evil in the face of power. In order to solve his question, he conceived an experiment to find out exactly why. This experiment was designed to simulate exactly what piqued Zimbardo's interest: prison military guards and prisoners. Zimbardo placed an advertisement in the newspaper asking for college students who were willing to play the role of these guards and prisoners for at most two weeks at the price of fifteen dollars a day (Zimbardo, 2007).

In Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment, 20 college aged boys are selected to play different roles in a simulated prison located within Stanford. This experiment was thought of and carried out by Philip Zimbardo, a professor of psychology. The boys, who were also students at Stanford, were randomly selected to be a guard or a prisoner. The prisoners were taken by real police officers to the Stanford jail. When the experiment started, most of the prisoners thought of the situation as it was intended to be, an experiment.