Stanford Prison Experiment

Improved Essays
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a research developed by Philip zimbardo. The experimental prison was held at Stanford University in a basement where no sunlight Or contact to the outside world was available. This experiment went down in history as one of the most Best-known psychology experiments ever developed. The Psychologist selected 24 college students to undergo the experiment. 12 students were randomly chosen to be prisoners and the other 12 word guards. The 12 that were prisoners were forced to be confined in a makeshift jail cell. The guards were not allowed to physically harm to prisoners what could otherwise create feelings of fear powerlessness and boredom.This social experiment was able to turn levelheaded college students …show more content…
As time went on eventually the researchers themselves started to lose sight of the true goal of this experiment. Zimbardo Who was a prison warden overlook the abusive behavior the prison guards were having on the students. It took undergraduate at the time Christina Maslach To point out the errors of this experiment and put it to a stop. the Stanford Prison experiment is an example of how Power can play in a situation with human emotions. Because the guards were Given the control and power of the prison, they All of used their authority and acted in ways that they would normally act. The prisoners were placed at a position where they were powerless, Or stool follow what the guards say without their own free will most prisoners became obedient, passive, and depressed. Throughout the experiment I feel the ethical standard varied. I believe that some of the rules to the experiment varied between the students on somewhere not. For instance 24 students were picked out and half word to be separated from prisoners and guards at random. That part I can agree is fair because every student has an understanding of the situation before getting into …show more content…
The experiment also shows that good people can also be affected by authority. In the experiment, the teachers were given the list of questions to relay to the students behind a wall. The teacher is told that whenever the student gets a wrong answer he is supposed to apply electric voltage shocks to the student. Whenever the student gets a wrong answer higher the voltage Watts is increased. As the voltage got increasingly higher the student start to complain about how painful the electric shocks are getting. Most of the teachers were worried for the safety of the students and asked if they should stop the experiment, but was told to keep continuing by the professor. The teachers were also encouraged by the professor 's to keep continuing by informing them that whatever that happens in the experiment would be fault the professor even though the teachers are the ones that are inflicting the pain. Most of the teachers continued at first but as the voltage got higher and higher Got worried for the safety of the student. More than half of them stop at a certain point, but 65% of the teachers continued to the highest voltage. More than half of the school teachers conformed under the rules and regulations of the authority over them. Which shows how much power can make good people do things that they shouldn

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    In 1971, an experiment took place in Stanford, California. It was named the Stanford Prison Experiment, lasting what was meant to be two weeks, but due to the brutality of the trial, lasted a mere 6 days. Its purpose was to conduct a study on humanity and show just how evil a human can get when given a position of power. To summarize the experiment, a random 18 men were chosen, all innocent, good people who’d never committed a crime. They were divided into two groups erratically: 9 being “prisoners” and 9 being “guards.”…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Zimbardo’s account of the Stanford Prison experiment provides his intent to determine whether the power of the situation or another unknown variable sourced report of brutality in prisons. The Stanford prison experiment allowed Zimbardo to embark on a six-day prison experiment to determine the control a prison environment possesses over the human psyche. Zimbardo examines the power of situations to alter ordinary men into sadistic machines, and Szegedy-Maszak provides a logical explanation for heinous actions; however, Zimbardo and Szegedy-Maszak fail to factor in individual responsibility and the perils of dehumanization. Both Szegedy-Maszak and Zimbardo agree that certain situations maintain the power to turn ordinary people into monsters or sadists. Szegedy-Maszak states that the feelings and turmoil of the soldiers were “exacerbated by difficult living conditions and constant danger” (Szegedy-Maszak 76).…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Conducted in August 1971 by Professor Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford Prison Experiment was an experimental study using students to evaluate how an individual’s behavior can be shaped when put in certain situations involving power. The students chosen to participate were assigned randomly as either a prison guard or a prisoner and were placed in the basement of the Psychology Department at Stanford University to conduct the experiment. Despite being planned to run for two weeks, the experiment only lasted six days due to it becoming too brutal and raising the chance of endangering the students involved mentally. The students chosen to be the prison guards used a variety of methods to try to control the students that were acting as the prisoners.…

    • 1020 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    This is evident through The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Phil Zimbardo in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University in 1971. For the experiment, twelve individuals, in the role of a guard, were instructed…

    • 1571 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Milgram experiment was done by Stanley Milgram to see how people would respond when an authority figure told them to do something that went against their conscience. The subject was told to give shocks, which went up in voltage, to a learner who was in on the experiment, unknowingly to the subject. Psychologists estimated that 1% of the subjects would go to the end of the board; however, 65% of the subjects did. This proved that people are capable of doing anything, as long as it comes from a legitimate authority no matter how inhumane it could be. The Stanford prison experiment was done by Philip Zimbardo to see how good people respond when they are placed in a bad environment.…

    • 562 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It was under Philip Zimbardo’s leadership that the Stanford Prison Experiment took average, everyday boys, like Prisoner number 8612, and made them believe they were trapped in a real life prison. It was August 14th, 1971, a Sunday morning when the prisoners were arrested. Each of the nine boys were taken from…

    • 2175 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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…

    • 861 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved 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
  • 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
  • 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 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

    Milgram’s experiments created great controversy. They showed how vulnerable humans were to the will bending power of authority. This idea especially stuck around the time the experiment took place, the early 1960’s. America was still somewhat fresh off of World War II, and Americans were shocked to see that they were just as capable of being pushed to do things that went against their morals as Germans were under Nazi authorities. Milgram was thorough in his studies by including multiple permutations of the original where he tested subjects responses to different forms of authority.…

    • 1487 Words
    • 6 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
  • 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

    But the guards won’t let the prisoners tell their parents that they are being tortured and beaten. The guards had the prisoners write letters to their parents but they never shipped the letters out so none of the letters got to their parents. The guards got so mean and rude to the prisoners that they started to have mental breakdowns because they started to I believe that they were in prison. This caused The Stanford Prison Experiment to end after 6 days instead of lasting 2 weeks. This experiment affected the prisoners so much that those prisoners had to get a therapist to help them with their problem.…

    • 869 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays