Stanford Prison Experiment

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 experiment’s 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 Bay’s 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 other’s increasingly violent extremism in response to perceived injustices.