Stanford Prison Experiment

This experiment was held in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo, who was a psychologist. This experiment consists of undergraduate students who played roles of both guards and prisoners. Zimbardo wanted to test the impact to situational variables on human behavior. It lasted about one week, but it was supposed to last for two weeks. The students were treated so unfairly and they were losing their sense of identification and extreme stress. The guards became very aggressive and abusive. A prison like environment was placed in a basement and each cell contained three prisoners at which they stayed in all day. Guards worked eight hour shifts in groups of three and after shifts they were able to go to their homes until their next shifts. Zimbardo was head of the prison but overlooked the abusive behavior. It was hard for him to remain an observer because it was hard to keep scientific methods in place.

After watching and reading about the experiment it seems like it had more observational results with no scientific evaluation. It seemed like because of the situation the prisoners acted the way they did. This wasn’t due to their own individual personalities because before coming into this experiment they would have never acted the way they did. This experiment was criticized as being unethical. Role playing played a major role because the prisoners based their behavior on how they were expected to act. Zimbardo said it was false because no one was given instructions, which was left false due to the simple fact that of course the prisoners are going to obey the guards and feel overpowered especially knowing that the guards had more power and didn’t live like prisoners. The fact is that it is hard to mimic an actual prison cell because they weren’t real crimes and they knew it was for researching purposes. Philip feels the experiment demonstrates the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior. It is said that the study recently gained attention after reports of the Abu Ghraib, which prisoners were held in Iraq who were tortured. Philip believed that the two resembled each other.

I don’t feel that this experiment was helpful in any way. First off he just randomly picked the students and guards. The guards had no prior experience and could decide what to do with the prisoners, which in a real jail there are rules and guidelines. Another odd thing was what the guard had the prisoners do for punishment and sometimes the things were just to humiliate them. We don’t put prisoners in dresses or make them scrub the toilet with just their bare hands. Another thing is that prisoners are usually people that have committed crimes and are in there to serve time and think about what they did. The prisoners in this experiment were just brought in and they knew it would be for a short period time and knew it wasn’t real. This experiment didn’t grasp the necessary aspects to present reality in prison life.