Six Days in Prison
Prisoner number 8612. You read this and think, alright, why do I care about some random prisoner? Maybe your thoughts even flash to some memory you have about someone you know who went to prison. Prisoner 8612 was the first prisoner to break and leave the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Whether he was just just faking his unstable state or if he was truly unable to handle the harsh treatment, we don 't know. 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 …show more content…
An experiment is suppose to have a hypothesis, test an unknown factor and have data of its findings. A simulation is a recreating a system or reenacting a physical place. Zimbardo is asked by one of his colleagues, "Say, what 's the independent variable in this study?" (10). His colleague is basically asking what is making this an experiment and not a simulation. He is studying in an unknown area, searching how his subjects react; however, I see no thesis in his work, he never tells what he expected to happen. And what is his independent variable? What is he inputting into his study to see how it may change the outcome? Zimbardo even says himself that he wanted to create a prison simulation and not a real prison. Though his work is new and interesting, I don 't see this as an experiment, rather a simulation to see how normal people react in the prison …show more content…
In the case of Abu Ghraib Prison, it was our U.S soldiers playing the part of the guards. And Iraqi people playing the part of the prisoner. In this situation the acts committed are worse than the ones that happened in the “Stanford County Jail”, in fact it makes what happened at Stanford seem trivial. What happened in Abu Ghraib, lead to death, there was no humanity there, no emotion other than hate and pain. I question how such terrible acts could come from human beings, the human beings we American people have so much pride and trust in. People say, those are our enemies, they deserve no mercy, but should they not deserve basic human respect? If you think you can stomach it search it up, and see the horrors that occurred there. According to Claudia Wallis, et al., from Time Magazine, “Zimbardo and other psychologists who have studied torture and sadism by prison guards and soldiers believe that most abuse can be traced to group dynamics and circumstances rather than to individual personalities.” (42). In other words, the terrible acts that people commit mostly come from group environments and not an individual 's behavior. That’s why the guards in both situations reacted the way they did when given the authority
Prisoner number 8612. You read this and think, alright, why do I care about some random prisoner? Maybe your thoughts even flash to some memory you have about someone you know who went to prison. Prisoner 8612 was the first prisoner to break and leave the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Whether he was just just faking his unstable state or if he was truly unable to handle the harsh treatment, we don 't know. 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 …show more content…
An experiment is suppose to have a hypothesis, test an unknown factor and have data of its findings. A simulation is a recreating a system or reenacting a physical place. Zimbardo is asked by one of his colleagues, "Say, what 's the independent variable in this study?" (10). His colleague is basically asking what is making this an experiment and not a simulation. He is studying in an unknown area, searching how his subjects react; however, I see no thesis in his work, he never tells what he expected to happen. And what is his independent variable? What is he inputting into his study to see how it may change the outcome? Zimbardo even says himself that he wanted to create a prison simulation and not a real prison. Though his work is new and interesting, I don 't see this as an experiment, rather a simulation to see how normal people react in the prison …show more content…
In the case of Abu Ghraib Prison, it was our U.S soldiers playing the part of the guards. And Iraqi people playing the part of the prisoner. In this situation the acts committed are worse than the ones that happened in the “Stanford County Jail”, in fact it makes what happened at Stanford seem trivial. What happened in Abu Ghraib, lead to death, there was no humanity there, no emotion other than hate and pain. I question how such terrible acts could come from human beings, the human beings we American people have so much pride and trust in. People say, those are our enemies, they deserve no mercy, but should they not deserve basic human respect? If you think you can stomach it search it up, and see the horrors that occurred there. According to Claudia Wallis, et al., from Time Magazine, “Zimbardo and other psychologists who have studied torture and sadism by prison guards and soldiers believe that most abuse can be traced to group dynamics and circumstances rather than to individual personalities.” (42). In other words, the terrible acts that people commit mostly come from group environments and not an individual 's behavior. That’s why the guards in both situations reacted the way they did when given the authority