The Discrimination Between Good And Evil In The Stanford Prison Experiment

“We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.” (Zimbardo 211) In 1971 in the basement of the phycology department of stanford university a mock prison was created. (The Stanford Prison Experiment 00:00-0:07) The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by a research group led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. The experiment consisted of 24 college students who had been …show more content…
The experiment was both degrading and dehumanising for the prisoners. They were stripped of their identities and forced to be called by numbers (Zimbardo 44) in likeness to the Jews during the Holocaust who were also given numbers to be identified by. Inmates were forced to clean out toilet bowls with their bare hands (Stanford Prison Experiment 9:03-9:10) and were then turned on each other purposefully. Prisoner 8-1-9 was the example to be made, he chose to disobey the guards and in return his fellow inmates were forced to chant “prisoner 8-1-9 did a bad thing, prisoner 8-1-9 did a bad thing, prisoner 8-1-9 did a bad thing” repeatedly (Stanford Prison Experiment 10:22-10:28) “Because of what prisoner 9-1-8 did my cell is a mess, because of what prisoner 9-1-8 did my cell is a mess” (Stanford Prison Experiment 10:34-10:44) that night prisoner 9-1-8 had a breakdown. The name a person is given is in many cases who they are, some names have cultural meaning or religions importance and pillaging those away from them is robbing them of themselves. The inmates were sleep deprived and the wardens understood the importance of sleep and what occurs to the body when it does not get enough of it. In effect of this, the prisoners began to refuse to take food as a way of protesting against the trial.There was one major reason for the conclusion of the Stanford Prison Experiment …show more content…
To be specific it brought to light that there is no clear line that distinguishes the good people from the evil. Before the Stanford Prison Experiment, no one knew the influence social roles had on a person's behavior. The results of the Stanford Prison Experiment have been used to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of seniority or authority. This was an important experiment on the grounds that it has proved that people can be changed by environmental situations. Philip Zimbardo states in his book The Lucifer Effect if you take good apples and put them in a bad situation you will get bad apples. The participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment went into the experiment not knowing the capabilities of the complex human mind and many are still shocked to date that they took the measures that they did. Specifically the guards who were testing out how far they could take their punishments. In a world without limits where one group has complete control over another, from this experiment we have learned that the person having power over the other if the circumstances are right would mistreat the person under them and would themselves eventually become a changed person. Many have been let to believe that when people do