Absolute Power In Phillip Zimbardo's Work

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Through Phillip Zimbardo 's work, nearly 45 years ago, it was discovered what a person could do to another human being when they have near absolute power. A vast majority of people believe that they would never be able to do all the harmful things that were conducted during the prison experiment; yet I feel, after reading about this experiment and other similar experiments, that everyone is susceptible to the tantalizing taste of power. As an example, just recently I had a spat with my older brother. He exhibited sings of trying to impose absolute authority on matters he did not have any authority to make a decision on. His actions, maybe without realizing it, caused me to not eat enough food and lose a good amount of weight as a result. Slowly, he realized he wasn 't able to have complete 100% control of me or the handling of family matters so only recently is he willing to compromise now that he realizes he does not have free reign to impose authoritarian rule. In this essay, by illustrating different points of views from the people involved in Zimbardo 's work, I will show what absolute power can do to someone, how it will never work, and what we can do to ensure that no one takes away our liberties just because they think they know "what 's best". One immediate …show more content…
For those unfamiliar, it was uncovered in 2003 that the one division of the U.S. military, abused and generally mistreated prisoners to the extent that they would rather try to escape and die than go through what those soldiers did to them. This is my first of several points as to why beuracracy and oversight is needed without violating our personal liberties and making us feel like prisoners in addition to other valuable information and research that stemmed from this

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