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 extent to which we take on a role indicates how thoroughly this component of our experience has been integrated into out identities.
The Stanford Experiment sought to explore exactly how social roles are assumed and executed among groups of people. The context for this study was a simulated prison environment set-up in the basement of the psychology department at Stanford. Male student volunteers were randomly assigned to be either a "prisoner" or a "guard." The researchers then observed how the two…...
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Reference
Zimbardo, P.G. (2009) . Stanford prison experiment: A simulation study of the psychology of imprisonment conducted at Stanford University. Retrieved March 9, 2011 from http://www.prisonexp.org/index.html.
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, conducted in 1971 at Stanford University. The idea in question was whether the social and physical behaviors in prison life was conducted because of the people in the environment or whether the situation in itself applies a general stress of how to react to such an environment.
"What happens when you put good people in an evil place?" (Zimbardo, 1999) and "Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?" (Zimbardo, 1999) are only the starting points of this rather famous…...
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Resources
Maxfield, Michael G. (2010). "Chapter 2: Ethics and Criminal Justice Research." Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Thomson Learning. Print.
Zimbardo, Philip (1999). "The Stanford Prison Experiment." Web site. Retrieved 17 July 2011.
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 on their behavior.
Interestingly, Zimbardo and the other directors seemed to be aware of their ethical transgressions. On visiting day, they purposefully cleaned up the prison to sterilize its appearance and make the parents feel appeased. Their actions clearly show they were aware of the sadism inherent in the prison experiment and were covering it up. Oddly, Zimbardo seems less than remorseful even in retrospect. The Stanford prison experiment left as much of a legacy on creating ethical standards in psychology…...
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, who has made a closet enterprise of his study) have attempted either to distance themselves from the experiment. The chief consultant on the project, Carlo Prescott, recently wrote to the Stanford Daily describing the shame he felt over his participation in the project, describing it as a "theatrical exercise." Other elements of concern in the study include the method of experimentation on human subjects. As we have previously noted, informed consent was inadequate for the degree of abuse and harassment…...
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Reference:
Haney, C., Banks, W.C., & Zimbardo, P.G. (1973). Study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Reviews, 9, 1-17. Washington, DC: Office of Naval Research
Haney, C., Banks, W.C., & Zimbardo, P.G. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69-97.
Carnahan T, McFarland S. (2007) Revisting the Stanford prison experiment: could participant self-selection have led to the cruelty? Pers Soc Psychol Bull, 6; 911.
Response to the Stanford Prison ExperimentAfter 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…...
Stafford Prison Experiment is a study and film based on the study detailing the psychological effects people undergo when becoming a prison guard or prisoner. Stanford University held the conduction of the experiment from August 14-20 in 1971. Psychology professor Philip Zimbardo led a team of researchers for the study and funding came from the U.S. Office of Naval esearch. The Marin Corps and the U.S. Navy had interest in investigating the causes of conflict among prisoners and military guards. The study offers class examination on the psychology of imprisonment allowing students taking introductory psychology to learn.
The value of the study in relation to social psychology
In 1971 America, college students began protesting against the government. They had enough of the way the government acted on behalf of the country and decided to take action. The protest seemed anti-authority and pro-peace. It marked a significant period in the United States…...
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References
(2015). Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Retrieved 27 April 2015, from http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/http://www.apa.org,.
Richeson, J., & Ambady, N. (2003). Effects of situational power on automatic racial prejudice. Journal Of Experimental Social Psychology, 39(2), 177-183. doi:10.1016/s0022-1031(02)00521-8
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 "wanted show the dehumanization and loosening of social and moral values that can happen to guards immersed in such a situation." The object of the experiment was "to create an experiment that looked at the impact of becoming a prisoner or prison guard," (Cherry, n.d.). The research had a focus, but its focus was relatively open-ended in terms of specific hypothesized relationships between dependent and independent variables. Zimbardo (2012) reflects on the experiment and claims it was a "dramatic demonstration…...
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 more severe abuses of power than were observed in the mock prison experiment (Zimbardo, 2007).
Discussion
The Stanford prison experiment is but one of a host of studies in psychology that reveal the extent to which peoples behavior can be transformed from its usual set point to deviate in unimaginable ways. If the goals of the criminal system are simply to blame and punish individual perpetrators then focusing almost exclusively on the individual defendant makes sense. if, however, the goal is actually…...
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References
Zimbardo, P.G. (2007). Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: a Lesson in the Power of Situation. Chronicle of Higher Education, B6-B7.
Human Aggression and the Stanford Prison Experiments
Studies of human aggression tend toward myriad and often competing conclusions about that which drives us to behave ethically or unethically, about the forces that incline us toward altruism as opposed to those which incline us toward aggression, about the impulses to behave according to internal values and the pressures to bend to contextual authority. Perhaps few studies on the subject have penetrated the question with more troubling results than the Stanford Prison Experiment. Overseen by human psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo in 1971, the experiment would see Zimbardo assuming the role of Prison arden, converting a basement space in an academic hall into a prison and casting young college students as prisoners and guards. The resulting events are nothing short of revelatory, illustrating a tendency for both prisoners and guards, and even Zimbardo himself, to be consumed with the appointed experimental roles. It would…...
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Works Cited:
Cohen, D., Nisbett, R.E., Bowdle, B.F., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor: An "experimental ethnography." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 945-960. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.945
Conover, T. (2000). New Jack: Guarding Sing. Random House.
Himelson, A. (2008). Prison Programs That Produce. World and Home School.
Manes, M.G. (2005). History of Prison Programming in America. Precious Heart.
Human Experimentation
The Stanford Prison Experiment
The concept of a human's dual nature and the presence of a darker side of morality has always been a fascinating study throughout history. While obert Louis Stevenson attributes this Jekyll-Hyde phenomenon to a more repressed desire within the minds of the people, Philip G. Zimbardo takes it to a further step. Both talk about the evils within a person that comes out via prompting (for Stevenson, this is through the use of a mere potion, for Zimbardo, it is because of environmental constraints). Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment is a prime example of such experimentation on duality, a human experiment that -- akin to Jekyll's testing upon himself -- went dreadfully wrong.
The Stanford Prison Experiment sought to explore two types of problems: one was the creation and development of a psychological state within the constructs of a provided physical environment; the other was to observe the…...
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Resources
Haney, C. & Zimbardo, P.G., "The past and future of the U.S. prison policy: Twenty-five years after the Stanford Prison Experiment," 1998. American Psychologist, 53, 709-727. http://www.prisonexp.org/pdf/ap1998.pdf
Lucifer Effect," which describes the circumstances in which good people are capable of performing evil actions. Through mounting pressure and situations that push them into levels of stress that they are unused to experiencing (and therefore dealing with), otherwise normal individuals can commit some of the most horrific crimes. This paper will discuss how this change occurs in the human personality, what can be learned from Zimbardo's prison experiment, what correlations can be drawn from conditions in Abu Ghraib, and whether I personally could follow commands received by an authority figure.
Hong's (2012) article begins with a description of a twenty-year, seemingly ordinary Army veteran (Sergeant ussell) suddenly experiencing severe mental stress, going to the mental health clinic on four occasions before finally shooting five of his colleagues in Bagdad. From this introduction into a concrete example of a normal individual acting evilly, Hong segues into Zimbardo's book via a…...
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References
Hong, J. K. (2012). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. Army Lawyer, 55-58. Retrieved from Academic OneFile database.
Perils of Obedience" and the "Stanford Prison Experiment"
Both "The Perils of Obedience" and the "Stanford Prison Experiment" essentially demonstrate the potential for 'evil' in ordinary citizens when placed in situations where stark authority is pitted against the individual's own moral imperatives (Milgram) or when deindividuated potential perpetrators are given total power over powerless victims (Zimbardo). Though the experiments differed vastly in design and methodology, the point of both experiments was to observe how far an individual would go in inflicting increasing pain on a victim.
There were several common ethical issues thrown up by both experiments. As Zimbardo says, "The line between Good and Evil lies in the center of every human heart...not in some abstract moral, celestial space..." (Sonoma State University eb site) Similarly, Milgram observes, "Conservative philosophers argue that the very fabric of society is threatened by disobedience, while humanists stress the primacy of the individual conscience." (Vanguard…...
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Works Cited
Milgram, Stanley. "The Perils of Obedience." Amoeba Web. Vanguard University Web site. URL:
Social Psychology Studies: Explaining Irrational Individual Behavior by Understanding Group Dynamics
Social psychology is, as its name suggests, a science that blends the fields of psychology, which is the study of the individual, and sociology, which is the study of groups. Social psychology examines how the individual is influenced by the group. It looks at the influence of group or cultural norms on individual behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. However, because group norms are believed to change behavior, social psychology can be very difficult to document; the presence of the observer is believed to change behavior. As a result, social psychologists have developed a number of different studies aimed at investigating the interaction between group expectations and individual behavior. These studies offer insight into human social behavior, particularly into those social behaviors that seem to defy expectations and well-established social norms.
While there have been numerous social psychology studies since the field developed,…...
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References
Abrams, D. & Hogg, M. (1988). Comments on the motivational status of self-esteem in social identity and intergroup discrimination. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 317-334.
Bond, R., & Smith, P. (1996). Culture and conformity: A meta-analysis of studies using Asch's
(1952b, 1956) line judgment task. Psychological Bulletin, 119(1), 111-137.
Darley, J. & Latane, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377-383.
In fact, during the study, the guards became more sadistic when they thought no one was watching them. Zimbardo notes, "Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners" (Zimbardo). This may be the same reason guards at Abu Ghraib tortured and humiliated their charges, and the study seems to indicate this could happen in just about any prison anywhere, if the guards have enough power. The world should pay more attention to this study and its implications. As another writer notes, "The young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how much circumstances can distort individual personalities -- and how anyone, when given complete control over others, can act like a monster" (Alexander). This is what happened at Abu Ghraib, and chances are it is happening all around the world as well. In an interview about Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo notes the prison…...
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References
Alexander, Meredith. "Thirty Years Later, Stanford Prison Experiment Lives On." Prisonexp.org. 22 Aug. 2001. 9 Jan. 2007. http://www.prisonexp.org/30years.htm
Bronstein, Phyllis A., and Kathryn Quina, eds. Teaching a Psychology of People: Resources for Gender and Sociocultural Awareness. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1988.
Giles, David. Media Psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003.
ole and Evolution of the American Prison System
Explain the Primary ole and Evolution of the American Prison System and Determine if Incarceration educes Crime
The United States constitution is the fundamental foundation of the American criminal justice system. Given that the document is now over two hundred years old, it constantly experiences numerous amendments and interpretations. As a result, the criminal justice system over the years experienced alterations in order to reflect the needs and beliefs of each subsequent generation. The configuration of the modern prison system has its basis in the late 1700's and early 1800s. The development of the modern prison system aims at protecting innocent members of the society from criminals. The prison systems also deter criminals from committing more crimes through detaining and rehabilitating them. However, more and more deluge of white-collar crimes and other crimes, burdens the American criminal justice system and the prison system.…...
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References
Barnes E. Harry. (1921). The Historical of the Prison System in America. Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. Vol. 12, No. 1, May, 1921
Craig Haney. (1998). The Past & Future of U.S. Prison Policy Twenty-Five Years after the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychological Association July 1998 Vol. 53, No. 7, 709-727
Dina R. Rose & Todd R. Clear (2006). Incarceration, Social, Capital, & Crime: Implications for Social Disorganization Theory. Volume 36, Issue 3, pages 441-480.
Escresa - Guillermo, Laarni (2011) Reexamining the Role of Incarceration and Stigma in Criminal Law. Law and economics, criminal law, stigma, social norms, behavioral economics.
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