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Stanford prison experiment impact
Stanford prison experiment impact
Zimbardo prison experiment summary
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Authority VS Freedom How would you act if you were locked up in a concentration camp and the guards made you suffer? If I were in there, I would listen to the guards because I want less suffered. In addition, I would not try to stand out in the crowed to receive punishment by the guards. In the Movie, The Stanford Prison Experiment, students were split to be two group, guards and prisoner. In the oppressive environment and authority to the guards, the guards were out of control, and they kept on punish prisoner until they broke down. The prisoners were treated as less than human, and they won’t get what they need. Furthermore, these guards will act more aggressive every day to try to force the prisoner to conform. In the film The Stanford Prisoner Experiment, the guards become immoral because they got …show more content…
Imagine that king have the power the control everything, and his man’s word can change his decision to treat his citizens. King will do everything to make himself satisfied, and people have no right than listen to what he say. Just as the King has the authority to control people; guards can do whatever they want to the prisoner, even though it will hurt them. In the movie, Zimbardo give power to the guards to use force to control prisoner, and wear sunglass and uniform to show their power against prisoner. Since the guard hide their feeling with the sunglasses, they keep on punish the prisoners, and take away their bed. Prisoners start to feel harsh to live in this place and want to protest, in order to get their right. It can clearly show that guards’ authority change their personality and they keep on torture these prisoners. In addition, living in a place which has no daylight and suffers every day, prisoners started to mental break down, and lose sense of time. Living without freedom and control by other will really affect prisoners’
There are unexpected aspects of life in the camp depicted in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlement” by Tadeusz Borowski. The prisoners were able to make very obvious improvements to their lived in the camp, without reaction by the SS officers; the market was even made with the support of the camp. The prisoners actually hoped for a transport of prisoners, so as to gain some supplies. The true nature of the camp is never forgotten, even in better moments at the camp.
As common knowledge, people normally recognize the term “concentration camp” and immediately refer to the prison camps the Jews were sent to during the Holocaust. In Corrie Tenboom’s famous collective story of her imprisonment, The Hiding Place, she writes in visual description of exactly how the Jews were treated in these camps. Women were forced to stand naked in front of Nazi guards for not much reason at all and made them feel less than human and animalistic. The people were beaten and killed on a regular day basis. One of the worst parts of these camps were the barbaric gas chambers. Men, women, and children would be fooled and dragged into chambers in groups to stand and be slaughtered by the dozen. Concentration camps are what can be known as the cruelest and most barbaric part of World War II history.
People will do some of the craziest things when any level of force is placed upon them. People will succumb to the pressure of doing things they had never imagined they could do. Just recently people can look at the events of the revolts in Northern Africa and the extremes the people did to over throw their governments, events at Abu Ghraib, and the recent riots in Missouri. When mass hysteria or force from others is involved people will succumb to the situation and may do things they would normally deem immoral.
In the Stanford Prison Experiment many of the prisoners obeyed the guards even though they were in such extreme discomfort mentally to not have to face the harsher treatments of not obeying them. However, not all of them followed their order and kept protesting their inhuman orders, even knowing with the harsh treatment that came afterwards. Like the Milligram Experiment, the teachers understood the harsh pain they were enlisting into the students, they continued the orders of the experiment to increase the shocks after every wrong answer. Then again, like the Stanford Experiment, not all of them followed the order of guards as did a few of the teachers in the Milligram experiment. Two prisoners left the Stanford experiment and presumably the same could be said for the Milligram
The Stanford Prison Experiment commenced in 1973 in pursuit of Zimbardo needed to study how if a person are given a certain role, will they change their whole personality in order to fit into that specific role that they were given to. Zambrano significantly believed that personality change was due to either dispositional, things that affect personal life and make them act differently. Or situational, when surrounded by prisoners, they can have the authority to do whatever they want without having to worry about the consequences. Furthermore, it created a group of twenty-four male participants, provided them their own social role. Twelve of them being a prisoners and the other twelve prison guards, all of which were in an examination to see if they will be able to handle the stress that can be caused based upon the experiment, as well as being analysis if their personality change due to the environment or their personal problems.
In the Stanford Prison Experiment, a study done with the participation of a group of college students with similar backgrounds and good health standing who were subjected to a simulated prison environment. The participants were exposed completely to the harsh environment of a real prison in a controlled environment with specific roles of authority and subordinates assigned to each individual. The study was formulated based on reports from Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky had spent four years in a Siberian prison and his view on how a man is able to withstand anything after experiencing the horrors of prison prompted Dr. Philip Zimbardo a Professor of Psychology at Stanford and his
Subjects became so entranced in these roles that the guards started to behave as if they really were the guards of a true prison. Zimbardo had told them to think of themselves in this way and it led to the guards mentally abusing the prisoners with their cruel and degrading ro...
Political prisoners and criminals alike were subject to brutal conditions in the Soviet gulags at Kolyma in the 20th century. In Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, the stories of many different prisoners are told and much is revealed about how humans react under these pressures, both naturally and socially. Being in an extreme environment not only takes a toll on one’s physical well-being, but on one’s mental and emotional state as well. The stories show that humans can be reduced to a fragile, animalistic state while in the Kolyma work camps because the extreme conditions force many men to focus solely on self-preservation.
I believe that if I were in a concentration camp I would not have held very much resistance in fear of death. I would have acted very selfishly only looking out for myself because there was no other way to survive, but I would have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life of not helping others. I would try to keep my hope in life. Seeing and knowing how people trying to escape were punished, I would most likely not try to escape. My faith in God would have been higher than my will to risk death to escape. Having knowledge that most people attempting to escape were killed on the spot would have kept me where I was.
Subjects became so entranced in these roles that the guards started to behave as if they really were the guards of a true prison. Zimbardo had told them to think of themselves in this way and it led to the guards mentally abusing the prisoners with their cruel and degrading routines. In Romesh Ra...
When put into the position of complete authority over others people will show their true colors. I think that most people would like to think that they would be fair, ethical superiors. I know I would, but learning about the Stanford Prison Experiment has made me question what would really happen if I was there. Would I be the submissive prisoner, the sadistic guard, or would I stay true to myself? As Phillip Zimbardo gave the guards their whistles and billy clubs they drastically changed without even realizing it. In order to further understand the Stanford Prison experiment I learned how the experiment was conducted, thought about the ethical quality of this experiment, and why I think it panned out how it did.
The mental inhumanity was so bad that most prisoners thought of suicide and some even committed it. Along with this was the pain and torture the prisoners felt from the physical inhumanity which resulted in deaths of over 50% of the inmates who stayed there. The total effect of both of the camps is shown throughout the inhumanity brought about there. The fact that inhumanity was able to cause the deaths of just about 6,000,000 people shows how easy it is for it to hurt other humans.
When put into an authoritative position over others, is it possible to claim that with this new power individual(s) would be fair and ethical or could it be said that ones true colors would show? A group of researchers, headed by Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo, designed and executed an unusual experiment that used a mock prison setting, with college students role-playing either as prisoners or guards to test the power of the social situation to determine psychological effects and behavior (1971). The experiment simulated a real life scenario of William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies” showing a decay and failure of traditional rules and morals; distracting exactly how people should behave toward one another. This research, known more commonly now as the Stanford prison experiment, has become a classic demonstration of situational power to influence individualistic perspectives, ethics, and behavior. Later it is discovered that the results presented from the research became so extreme, instantaneous and unanticipated were the transformations of character in many of the subjects that this study, planned originally to last two-weeks, had to be discontinued by the sixth day. The results of this experiment were far more cataclysmic and startling than anyone involved could have imagined. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the discoveries from Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment and of Burrhus Frederic “B.F.” Skinner’s study regarding the importance of environment.
The norms of the prison are held up by sanctions, both by the prisoners and by the violence of the guards. Some examples of these sanctions are the degradation ceremonies established new inmates as inferior, violence by the guards enforcing their power over the prisoners, prisoners act in such a way that these techniques fail, and being sent to solitary confinement. All of these enforce their isolation and works to break them as a human being, reminding them their role as a prisoner and their lack of power. By doing this, one would want to abide by the rules to veer away from any severe
The guards in the experiement readily “slipped into [their] roles, temporarily gave up [their] identities, and allowed… assigned roles and the social forces in the situation to guide, shape, and eventually to control [their] freedom of thought and action” (Zimbardo 111). Zimbardo further explains the behavior of the “good guards” was driven by the avoidance of rejection and not by the well-being of the inmates (Zimbardo 113). Jennifer L. Black, author of “Conformity, Obedience, and Influence in Social Psychology,” explains conformity focuses on altering oneself in order to belong with a group, while obedience is caused by pressure from a hierarchal power chain (Black). In both cases a person’s behavior deviates from “the normal,” but the causes are different. Milgram is more effective in presenting the teacher’s reasons for behavioral deviances because he is more definitive in his logic and reasoning. The combination of the two experiments effectively help to begin to uncover the mysteries behind the Holocaust. What should society think or do based on the results of the