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Response to the Stanford Prison Experiment
After watching the Stanford Prison Experiment video, it is clear that in spite of being randomly assigned to the role of prisoner or guard, the subject in this experiment readily accepted their respective roles as well as the corresponding expectations. For example, students playing prisoners in this experiment soon mirrored the social expectations of people who are incarcerated, including becoming passive and stressed. Likewise, students playing the role of guards assumed an officious, authoritarian mindset and exercise control methods resembling those used by actual prison guards. In addition, the experiments rule-following protocols and increasingly severe punishments for breaking them further reinforced these respective mindsets.
In other words, this experiment demonstrated the harsh reality that characterizes the human condition. Anyone who has witnessed a dozen or more drivers lined up in a single lane at an intersection while the adjacent lane is empty can readily confirm that people may act like cattle and follow others mindlessly. Indeed, a number of high-profile reports that have emerged from Guantanamo Bays prison facilities and the Abu Ghraib prison provide substantial support for the findings that emerged from the Stanford Prison Experiment, with guards becoming increasingly authoritative and even brutal in their exercise of authority. Likewise, members of some extremist political groups appear to have drunk deeply from the Kool-Aid vat by building on each others increasingly violent extremism in response to perceived injustices.
Stanford Prison Experiment Ethical issues are always first and foremost a subject of ambiguous grounds when it comes to experiments that are hinged on human behavior. Whether this is because of the short- and long-term consequences of psychological and physical harm, ethical questions are raised with regards to how much scientific benefit can be accrued from conducting such an experiment. This question remains heavily controversial especially in the Stanford Prison Experiment,
Stanford Prison Experiment The roles we take on in our everyday lives are dictated by several factors. Whether it's the role of mother, son, student, cashier, accountant, boyfriend, wife, or teacher, the roles that make up our identities are varied and we slip into and out of them without any conscious thought. These roles are adopted by us based on expectations and assumptions prescribed to us by ourselves and others. The
More importantly, they were not guaranteed the right to terminate the experiment at their will. When Prisoner 8621 asked to get out of the experiment he was summarily ridiculed and sent back. It was only when he screamed that Zimbardo was forced to let him quit. Guards were also given far too much leeway in their ability to mentally abuse and thoroughly humiliate the prisoners. There were no checks
Participants in the study did receive a psychological testing battery but in the study it is reported that scores were not known until the close of the experiment. This may mean that the aggressive behavior seen in the experiment was not due to the effect of the situation on the person, but rather the interaction of the person in the situation. Members of the study staff (minus Dr. Zimbardo,
Stanford Prison experiment was to examine the psychological and sociological effects of incarceration. In particular, researchers set out to examine how prisoners reacted to being bereft of power. Ultimately the experiment illustrated not just how prisoners reacted to being powerless, but also how simulated guards reacted to being bestowed with nearly unlimited power over others. The experiment was therefore exploratory in nature. Shuttleworth (2008) claims that the researcher Zimbardo
Among the dozen investigations of the Abu Ghraib abuses, one found that the landmark Stanford study provided a cautionary tale for all military detention operations. In differentiating the comparatively benign environment of the Stanford prison experiment, this report makes obvious that in military detention operations, soldiers work under demanding combat conditions that are far from benign. The insinuation is that those combat conditions might be anticipated to produce even