Philip Zimbardo's Obedience To Authority Experiment

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Over the years, many controversial psychology experiments were lead by brilliant psychologists to study human behaviour in different situations. Many of them are known, like the “Obedience to Authority Experiment”, lead by psychologist Stanley Milgram. One of the most notorious experiments in the history of psychology is the “ Stanford Prison Experiment ” put together by psychologist Philip Zimbardo, whose intention was to study the psychological effect of human behaviour when good people are put in an evil place. Can the situation around an individual control his behaviour or can his values or morality allow him to rise above in a negative environment? The results can be very astonishing.

The study took place at the Stanford University,
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For him, a sad reality is one way to see the Stanford Prison Experiment. When good people are put in an evil place, the evil place, unfortunately, dominates over the good people. One way of explaining this is by the “good” other guards’ behaviour. Even though Dave Eshleman’s behavior (nicknamed John Wayne) tested the prisoners, the other guards had the choice to intervene or leave the things as they were, but no one decided to step up and put an end to the prisoners’ suffering. Instead, they accepted what their leader said and did, without questioning his authority in any way. They knew that he was getting abusive and profane, but they kept silent even though they hated to see the suffering around them. In this case, indeed, these guards were good people that could not do bad things, but sadly, they let the bad situation dominate over them, they allowed something they never would have allowed to happen, which is an unpleasant thing to know about human behaviour. The good guards are not the evil men here. The bad guards are, the ones who created the suffering and the cruelty around them. It was not a role that they were playing, but it really showed how mean and heartless they could be, and what they were willing to do just to make a point. Most of the guards found it difficult to believe that they could act like they did, and many of them never discovers

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