Stanford Prison Experiment Bystander Effect

Another real-world example of social constructionism that also shows itself in the Stanford Prison Experiment is the bystander effect. The bystander effect is a psychological theory that refers to the tendency of individuals to not offer help or assistance to a victim in the presence of others. Psychologist believe that the probability of a victim receiving assistance decreases as the number of bystanders or witnesses increase. One classic explanation of this theory came from two social psychologists, Bibb Latane and John M. Darley, who decided that they needed to conduct a number of experiments to test the theory of bystander apathy after receiving inspiration from a very riveting court case at the time; The murder of Kitty Genovese. In 1964, …show more content…
Zimbardo on this experiment were indecisive on how they think the experiment should but ran. They obviously thought Dr. Zimbardo’s methods were becoming excessive yet they were hesitant to say so out of fear of challenging Zimbardo’s authority. The sociocultural perspective of this situation was that they refused to overstep their boundaries due to the societal understandings that we have towards authoritative figures. It is seen as a sign of disrespect in our society, especially during that time period, to challenge those who have power: parents, teachers, bosses, officers, etc. Virtually anyone who is seen to hold some level of authority over us. An example of bystander apathy from the film comes in one of the last scenes. Two of the guards were excessively harassing the inmates, making them do humiliating things and it is obvious that one of the other guards wasn’t amused by the antics of his coworkers. There was an instance where one of the guards, a young man known as John Wayne who is arguably the main antagonist of the film, tried to force one of the prisoners to say the word “ass” since he was morally opposed to saying curse words. The guard attempts to assist the inmate by telling him to say a different word to replace the profane word with. This was only the beginning of a series of dehumanizing treatment by the guards though. Once the other guards began their tirade, the hesitant guard proceeded to walk to the other side of the room and tried to avoid what was being done to the prisoners. Why was this? It was obvious that what they were doing was wrong and it was obvious, by his demeanor, that he wanted to help, yet he turned his head and tried to ignore it. This situation deals with a different aspect of bystander apathy. This guard seemed to be fearful; as though he knew that once he decided to intervene on behalf of the prisoners it would make him look weak in the eyes of the other guards so