The Stanford Prison Experiment By Philip Zimbardo

Improved Essays
In the 1970’s ethics were significantly different from the ethics used today experiments. In the 70s people were more open on participating in experiments. Also during this time period it was easier to show the negative points of the subject’s behaviors. This also brings up the extreme power that the experimenter has over the subjects in the experiment. In The Stanford Prison Experiment the extreme unethical aspects of the experiment. This came at cost with the catastrophic effects the experiment brought on the participants. The Stanford prison Experiment is noted as a “classic experiment in the psychology of human behavior (Onishi & Herbert, 2016). In this experiment, Professor Phillip Zimbardo wanted to study the effects of labels and …show more content…
This could be compared to Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development. The participant’s ages could be compared to the intimacy vs. isolation, the sixth stage of Erikson’s stages. Erikson explains this to be a time in a person’s life that would be building long-term relationships. Along with not only finding love relationships, but also long lasting friendships. The intimacy part of this stage, answer the question, Am I able to care for others? This could be compared to Zimbardo’s experiment because once he separated the subjects to half guards and half prisoners relationships went out the window. The Guards had so much power they lost the will to care for …show more content…
Shortly after the experiment was concluded there was an irruption of prisons breaks. There was a prison break the day after the experiment concluded. Along with the prison breaks there was a significant increase in prison riots. There was one particular one that happened at the Attica prison in New York. In which prisoners held guards hostage because the prisoners wanted their rights. This experiment help prisoners receive their basic rights and shed a light on prison guards abusing

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    This piece is an outline of the Stanford Prison Experiment. To start the collection of resources, I decided to choose one that would most benefit someone unfamiliar with the Stanford Prison Experiment. It covers the general idea and procedure of the social experiment. I wanted my first source to be completely objective and to give anyone unfamiliar with the experiment an overview. This article would benefit a student writing a synthesis because it provides objective, straightforward facts.…

    • 1748 Words
    • 7 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
  • Superior Essays

    In 1971, Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment which tested the behaviors of both prisoners and guards in a simulated prison created by him and his colleagues at Stanford University. In the article written by Dr. Zimbardo, Pathology of Imprisonment, he discusses the process of the experiment and his findings. To begin, Dr. Zimbardo gathered a group of 24 male student volunteers. All of the students that participated in the study received compensation of $15 per day. Each student was evaluated emotionally and mentally to determine their stability, and if they were able to participate.…

    • 1205 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An ideal example of the emotional effect on prisoners is prisoner #8162. With less than 36 hours passing, #8162 began to suffer extreme emotional distress, sorrow, disorganized thinking, and anger. He became engulfed in the experiment and forgot that it was fake, telling other prisoners they cannot leave and then going on psychotic rages. Because of the severe effects he was suffering from, the researchers had not choice but to let him leave, making him understand that the prison was fabricated for an experiment that he volunteered for. Considering these findings, the conclusion for the Stanford Prison Experiment is that people will gladly conform to the social roles of their specific environment and take on the tendencies of their stereotyped roles (institutional power).…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This experiment went wrong and led to mental problems. These problems became so extreme that the experiment was discontinued after 6 days instead of 2 weeks. The Stanford Prison Experiment called into question the idea of Good vs Evil. The experiment showed how situational journey can cause an individual to “compromise” their beliefs. This change in behavior lead to psychological conflict among the “guards” and “prisoners.”…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Even though Zimbardo's prison experiment is 46 years old it, the findings were so punctual that it is still talked about today. Zimbardo lead the experiment in 1971 with Craig Haney and Curtis banks. The experiment was conducted in the basement of the psychology building, which they converted into a small prison block.. The Experiment was originally scheduled to be conducted for a 2 week period but due to the results Zimbardo was getting they cut the project at just 6 days. Somewhere of about 75 students had volunteered to be apart of the psychological study, and only 24 had been chosen to participate.…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    As a prisoner in the Stanford experiment I would have felt degraded and dehumanized. All hope for a life outside would be diminished. As a guard I would have been glad there was no hope outside because I could be in control for longer. Power is one of the best feelings for everyone, but the Stanford prison guards took it to extremes because it was not real; they were all students, they had never committed any known felonies. Though Zimbardo has said that the prison system is getting worse it does not change the fact that his experiment was wrong.…

    • 214 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent 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 Belmont Report

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Stanford prison experiment was done to see if it is the people that occupy it and run the prison that make it inhuman. Or if it is the conditions that the people are kept in that make it brutal for the inmates and the people that work there. When it comes to testing these types of experiments. Where the subjects are exposed to an environment that can be harmful to them. There is a set of ethical guidelines that must be followed.…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Stanford Prison Experiment Does giving one person more power than another really change the way that they will react in a certain situation? Do certain circumstances cause a different reaction in different people? That was the question for the Stanford Prison Experiment performed by Phil Zimbardo in 1971. In an attempt to show what life was like to be in prison, the inmates and guards of Stanford County Jail, were placed in an almost inhumane setting. The tyranny of the men in charge, along with the abuse of the inmates, goes to show how people that are placed in an environment and told to play roles that they are not necessarily familiar with, can go wrong.…

    • 885 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    On August 14, 1971 Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment called the Stanford Prison Experiment took off. Young men were offered $15 a day to take part in a mock prison experiment in the basement of the Stanford University Psychology Department. The men were divided into either prison guards or prisoners, this experiment was only to last two weeks. Upon the prisoners arrival at the make shifted prison they were stripped off their clothes and sprayed with disinfecting spray. Each prisoner was issued a dress as a uniform with their prison identification number on the back and front.…

    • 1406 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The guards harassed the prisoners to the point where they begged in order to be let free. The “solitary confinement” was used as a punishment for unruly inmates. The power the guards had over the prisoners was abused so much so that the felons could no longer tell that this was an experiment or that they would ever get out. Philip Zimbardo, the professor who ran the experiment, was so moved by the results that he began to become an advocate for inmate safety. When asked about the effects of solitary confinement has on the human mind, Dr. Zimbardo said, “Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government” (176).…

    • 997 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    They began tormenting the prisoners, subjecting them to humiliating tasks, as well as verbal and physical punishments. The abuse quickly became so severe that Zimbardo prematurely terminated the study after only six days. The Stanford Prison experiment exemplifies how, given unrestrained power and with the group dynamics of groupthink and group polarization at play, good men can be lead to commit evil actions very…

    • 1635 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Stanford Prison Experiment What prevented "good guards" from objecting or countermanding the orders from tough or bad guards? The good guards were unable to object or countermand the bad guards because of the fear of what it would do to the guards’ authoritative role in the eyes of the prisoners. If they showed disunity as guards the prisoners could take advantage of the unstructured and create chaos within the walls of the prison. By objecting to the bad guards, they take the risk of the prisoners not taking the guards orders seriously.…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Phillip Zimbardo (1972) gave us notable understandings into human behaviour, even though considered an unethical study. In the scandalous experiment, a group of participants completed a study in a mock prison environment. Some of the participants took on the role of prisoner, and others acted as the guards. The guards behaved in an inhumane and demeaning way towards the participants acting as prisoners. They were not given full details e.g. on what to expect and how to behave.…

    • 931 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays