Analysis Of The Stanford Prison Experiment

The men who played the role of prisoner, like the guards, were selected at random. The harassment they endured, while all voluntary, was by any means less than humane. They were treated with very little respect, and denied basic rights, such as use of the restroom, and were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors for many nights as a form of punishment. When they arrived to the prison, they were stripped down, and given a change of clothes, but the “change of clothes”, was anything but what they expected to receive. They were actually dresses. The dresses were meant to emasculate the men even more than what they had been already. Rendered powerless, with lack of control of their environment, what other choice did they have than to accept what

We know that people react differently than others, like the man who left early compared to all of the other men. Though the experiment only lasted less than a weeks’ time, it showed us that we cannot perform these kind of studies without someone on the outside looking in. It was a tough environment for all of the people involved. From Zimbardo right down to the prisoners, it was a tough time. They hadn’t even started to see the changes in themselves being so wrapped up in the study. People will react to certain situations how they seem fit, even when they don’t realize that they are hurting the people around them at the time. I don’t think that any of the guards made it their intention to hurt anyone, they just hadn’t realized it at the time that what they were doing was wrong. We cannot treat each other as less than human beings. Thanks to Christina Maslach, the project was ended early. Without her having seen what she had, who knows how much worse it would have been for everyone involved. We are all human, and no one deserves to be treated as anything less than so; prisoner or