Bob Henry Mrs. Patterson English 1123 p25 October 31, 2012 “Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: a Lesson in the Power of Situation,” is about a prison experiment designed to prove how good people can do bad things when face with a certain situation. In the experiment Philip G. Zimbardo brings 24 physically and mentally healthy college students with no criminal history to participate in his experiment. These participants were assigned to either play a prisoner or a guard and were paid 15 dollars a day just to be in the experiment for 2 weeks. Before the two weeks were even over Zimbardo had to call the experiment to an end, due to extreme street and zombielike attitude and posture in the prisoners. To some the experiment seemed like a complete failure but in reality Zimbardo proved his point within six days of his experiment.
3) After the study, how do you think the prisoners and guards felt when they saw each other in the same civilian clothes again and saw their prison reconverted to a basement laboratory hallway? After the experiment, the experimenter must have felt a lot of guilt, hate and embarrassment towards each other. Even though it was an experiment and they knew it wasn’t real, they had actual real emotions towards each other such as dictatorship and anxiety. They mot have felt any better, knowing that the basement was made into a prison facility and reconverted to a lab hallway. The only impression they may have had was that it was a horrible experience knowing it was a prison 4) If you were the experimenter in charge, would you have done this study?
The experiment quickly took on a very serious tone. With the guards acting like real guards and vice versa for the prisoners. The experiments relevance can be realized with situations such as Abu Ghraib , and the Attica and San Quentin riots. “In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.”-Philip Zimbardo. Its amazing that after a whole life of being a one person, in only a few days this experiment turned all the participants into stereotyped
Stanley Milgram a Yale University psychologist, who does a series of social psychology experiments to measure willingness, and study how participants obey under pressure. Milgram’s experiments showed the world that an ordinary citizen will inflict pain on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.
This piece of evidence talks about how Gabe, a baby boy who stays with Jonas’s family for a while and how he fails his maturity test. “Gabe is a sweet baby who failed his maturity test two times now, we can’t ask for an extension he has to be released” (Lowry 7). This shows that the government wants people in their society to live up to certain standards and if a person is not good enough they will “release” or kill them. Jonas’s family is talking to his mom during dinner at “feelings” time and she tells them about one of the people she judges and that person will get released if he makes one more transgression. She feels frightened for a man she had to punish because he commits an offence against the society for the second time and she knows that if he breaks the rules for a third time, he will be released.
My thoughts on “STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT” The Stanford Prison Experiment raises troubling questions about the ability of individuals to subsist suppressive or submissive roles, if the social setting requires these roles. Philip Zimbardo, professor of Psychology at Stanford University, began researching how prisoners and guards would assume obedient and authoritarian roles. His primary goal in this experiment was to find out the process when guard and prisoners become controlling and passive. He did this by setting up a mock prison in which all of the prisoners were assigned the same uniforms and cells, and used numbers instead of names. The guards were assigned uniforms and offices, somewhat similar to the prisoners except they were equipped with billy clubs, whistles, handcuffs, and keys, and had freedom.
Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: A Lesson in the Power of Situation In Philip Zimbardo’s article “Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment” he deals with change during a certain situations. In the article he goes into why he does the experiment and what inspired it. He does this experiment to prove that good people change when in authority. The exigence in the article is the power of anonymity that unleashes violent behavior. Zimbardo notes “In my own work, I wanted to explore the fictional notation from William Golding’s Lord of the Flies about the power of anonymity to unleash violent behavior” (302).
Being a Corrections Counselor January 04, 2012 Being a Corrections Counselor While becoming a Corrections Counselor can be rather challenging, the rewards and benefits that one should feel will be well worth the challenge. An opportunity to be a Corrections Counselor is very promising in today’s Criminal Justice System. A Corrections Counselor is one who can be called upon to testify in the court of law regarding an inmate’s progression or recession (Johnson, Mona, eHow contributor). A Corrections Counselor must treat each inmate as an individual offender and case. A Corrections Counselor will evaluate the psychosocial functions of an offender and evaluate how he/she needs treatment to transition back into society.
Zimbardo-Stanford Prison Experiment The Stanford Prison Experiment was made because Zimbardo was interested in finding out whether the brutality reported among guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic personalities of the guards or had more to do with the prison environment. Since Zimbardo wanted the experiment to feel real, he had the students, who were assigned as prisoners, to be arrested at their own homes, without any warnings. They were first taken to a real jail where they were fingerprinted, photographed and “booked” before being blindfolded and taken to the “prison” where the experiment would take place. Each prisoner had their personal possessions removed and locked away; they were given prison clothes and were referred to by their number on their uniform. The Stanford Prison Experiment was a mock prison experiment where they had chosen 24 Male Students selected from the 75 who volunteered to join the experiment.
In reference to this topic, Zimbardo discusses the Stanford Prison Experiment as well as the violent Abu Ghraib prison incident. Zimbardo discusses how rather than looking at the individual as an evil person, evil acts should also be looked at in relation to the situation the person is in. Zimbardo refers to power being in the “system”, the system refers to political, economic, or legal power. The system itself can corrupt an individual, different situations can affect the behavior of an individual. 2.