Zimbardo And Asylum Analysis

Improved Essays
TOTAL INSTITUTIONS Umass Boston has similar characteristics as those seen in Zimbardo and Asylum. Goffman in his book, he talks of 'the Asylum ' as a mental institution which is like a prison and 'total ' in its aim to shape, define and repress their peoples’ self. It portrays some similarity with Boston where most people adopt behaviors that their peers have. People of different cultures converge there but end up having similar behaviors. Another similarity is that most higher learning institutions have one major purpose which is to educate. This indulges in mind of the students that the only purpose of going to such institutions is to learn, hence bringing a similar sense of thought in all those students. This is the same as those people …show more content…
Also, in Boston, it is a place where people with high intellectuals are brought to expand their intellectual capabilities while in the mental hospitals, the sick are brought to correct their ill behaviors. (Zimbardo 1998) Another difference is on the treatment of inmates by staff and students by teachers. The inmates are poorly treated by staff members while the students are treated with care and concern. There is a stereotype in the prison as seen in the Zimbardo Prison Experiment where the inmates are seen as less fortunate in the society while the students in higher learning institutions are seen as the most successful and containing high intellectual capacity. (Zimbardo 1998) The impact on staff as seen in Milgram experiment where a teacher and a learner are put under electric shock to determine who is more knowledgeable than the other, then the staff experiences some sort of similar behaviors with the inmates. This is due to the situations they are all subjected to. Continuous stay in enclosed environment with certain daily routine subjects ones behavior to a specific behavior. (Milgram …show more content…
This limits them from expanding their knowledge on new and emerging things. The staffs, in their whole life tend to perform one duty which is monotonous and tiresome. Also, some laxity is experienced due to continuous performance of a duty. The environment they are subjected to also affect their way of life especially those in mental hospitals and at some point adopting some characteristics of these inmates. (Haney & zimbardo 1998) While the impact on an inmate as seen in Asylum by Goffman shows how inmates can be affected when they stay in an enclosed environment and have people behave in a particular manner. They tend to adopt similar behaviors and end up confined in a certain way of thinking. Inmates could adopt bad behaviors that are harmful and ill to the community. It is these behaviors that over the years are adopted either knowingly or unknowingly due to continuous interaction of the inmates daily. (Goffman 1968)
A positive impact on inmates is that they have a common goal which they encourage each other to achieve. These include a change of character from a bad one to a good character or achieve an academic excellence in case of a student. The inmates also get exposure on certain issues which they may not have gained from their earlier lives. This expands their thinking capacities and a capability to tackle more challenging situations in life. (Gosmann

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    There is this question we all ask ourselves what is it or why is it that when a prisoner is released from prison they often reoffend and returns to prison? If an inmate has been in prison a long period of time they become immune, adapt, Stockholm syndrome, but the correct word in this case is institutionalization. " Institutionalized Personality Traits are caused by living in an oppressive environment that demands: passive compliance to the demands of authority figures, passive acceptance of severely restricted acts of daily living, the repression of personal lifestyle preferences, the elimination of critical thinking and individual decision making, and internalized acceptance of severe restrictions on the honest self-expression thoughts and…

    • 370 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The mental hospital is being fenced up, in the sense of preventing inmates from getting in touch with society. The inmates are being isolated from the outside world. The main reason is due to societal view of mental illness patients as individuals that could bring harm and danger to the others. Thus, all activities are conducted inside the enclosed area and only allowed interaction between inmates. For instance, fishing and watching baseball game are considered as normal events in society but not for inmates who are being locked up in the total…

    • 1592 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971 by researcher, Philip Zimbardo is one of the most eye-opening social studies done to this day. It’s purpose was to find out more about how the social principles of obedience and conformity can affect the behavior of a normal human being. Zimbardo wanted to discover how social customs and hierarchy affect the roles people play, in a prison setting (Lurgio, 2015, p.1866). Though their purpose seems praiseworthy, the experiment itself was not. It was filled with ethical violations and in just 6 days, spun out of control (Lurgio, 2015, p.1866).…

    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cohen, Andrew. " Creating Monsters: How Solitary Confinement Hurts the Rest of Us." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 18 Apr. 2014. Web.…

    • 1965 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Chapter 3 of the book The Art of the Con: Avoiding Offender Manipulation does a great job of describing the ways in which inmates spend their time during their prison sentences. Inmates use this time much differently. They adapt, cope, and meet their needs much differently as well. They are so accustomed to their lifestyles out of prison so they must do these things to stay sane. Inmates must quickly decide how they are going to spend their time in prison.…

    • 1078 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What happens when good people are put in an evil place? What about when innocent individuals are systematically punished and humiliated? Is human identity rooted in one 's situation? A 1971 endeavor, now known as Zimbardo 's Prison Experiment, attempted to explore these questions and others.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Zimbardo Evaluation

    • 1774 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Describe and evaluate one classical study. Outline how your chosen study has impacted the psychological field. In 1971, Zimbardo was interested in discovering the extent to which the external features of an institutional setting could override the internal dispositions of the actors in that environment (Zimbardo, 2007). He hypothesised that intrinsic traits within one’s personality are responsible for cruel and offensive behaviour displayed in prison environments.…

    • 1774 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The results of this experiment were situational rather than dispositional, meaning the situation the students were put in was the cause of their behavior, and not their actual personalities. The experiment also illustrated cognitive dissonance and used the power of authority. Every student’s behavior modified due to them being watched rather than the Hawthorne Effect, which is lurking. Even though they knew they were being observed, the students acted way different than they usually would. The guards felt like they needed to let everyone know that they had dominance even though it wasn’t necessary, and many of the guard’s brutal behavior had changed due to such horrible environments in the prison.…

    • 1009 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wrongdoers In The 1800s

    • 902 Words
    • 4 Pages

    This type of prison sought to teach wrongdoers through silence and isolation. In the 19th century, separate confinement was a strategy that was used to ensure the isolation of prisons. Through this theory, the Pennsylvania penitentiary system was thought to be able to fix criminals via the strict enforcement of silence, solitude, and hard work. The makers of this system also believed that wrongdoers knew that their criminal act was wrong at the time of the event, but did not allow their conscience to dictate their actions (which would have told them the right thing to do). Today, people know that there is more than a simple voice of reason in the back of one’s mind that goes into why a person commits a crime.…

    • 902 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    A total institution is a place where you are stripped of your prior identity in the effort to be resocialized and emerge as a transformed person, no longer engaging in deviant and illegal acts. To do this, every aspect of Litchfield Penitentiary is controlled. The inmates of Litchfield Prison are told when to eat, shower, and sleep, and rarely have any say so in their day to day activities. Inmates have no autonomy and when disobedient, they often face severe punishment and consequences because of the control in the total institution. Because of this tight control, the inmates begin to adapt to this new environment.…

    • 2094 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    WHY WAS STANFORD’S PRISON EXPERIMENT CONDUCTED? In order to study psychological effects of prison life a experiment was conducted called “Stanford Prison Experiment”. The psychologists wanted to study what were the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. To do this experiment, a team of researchers led by the famous psychology professor named, “Philip Zimbardo” finally decided to set up a replicated prison so that they can carefully note effects of the behavior of all those within the walls of prison.…

    • 2257 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Penal Reform Analysis

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “Assessing the Racial Climate in Women’s Institutions in the Context of Penal Reform” (2003) by Kristin Carbone-Lopez and Candace Kruttschnitt attempts to examine women’s perceptions of racial hostility in prison. The female prison population has exploded over the course of last 30 years. Our current knowledge of how women respond to imprisonment is sorely outdated. The dynamic of race relations has always played a key role in the social interactions in prison. While experts cannot agree on exactly how the penological landscape has changed over the past decade, they do agree on the occurrence of a new penal era.…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Abolitionist Reforms

    • 2013 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The conditions of which many of these people lived were inhumane as they live in what was essentially a concrete box and were commonly abused by the staff of the prison and were essentially treated as less than human. While some of the prison reforms could be implemented such as the Auburn System at Auburn State prison and Sing Sing prison. The Auburn system was deemed a failure due to the amount of money it would cost to maintain (Faragher, 349). Other problems such as overcrowding couldn’t be fixed due to the lack of money that prisons are given by both the state and federal governments, so in short the Prison Reforms were a failure compared to the other reform movements (“The Prison and Asylum Reforms”). While the ideal for the Prison reform was to improve the living condition and improving the mental health of prisoners it was to make us seem more humane from other countries as well as introducing prisoner rights.…

    • 2013 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Report on the Stanford Prison Experiment for PSYC 1111 The Office of Naval Research sponsored a study at Stanford University to "develop a better understanding of the basic psychological mechanisms underlying human aggression" and to identify which conditions can lead to aggression when men are living in close quarters for a long period of time (Haney, C., Banks, W.C. & Zimbardo, P.G. (1973)). This experiment took form within a model prison created in the basement at Stanford University to discover the variables found in prisons that can lead to aggression in people, i.e. guards and prisoners. The hypothesis explored was that ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ would react in different ways and their behavior and state of being would differ from each…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The inmate 's criminal actions are no longer a threat to society. Total institution begins on day 1 with the prison dictating the inmate 's every action and choice. His liberties and American freedoms have been taken away and today starts his "reform" via total institution (Taylor, 2000) Although as a society, we have a hollow sense of safety, what does this process do to the inmate psychologically?…

    • 1237 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays