Stanford Prison Experiment Essay

440 Words2 Pages
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. These conditions allowed a setting similar to prisons; this also allowed everyone to be stripped of identifying characteristics, therefore “equal.” In the mock prison, inverse psychological relationships developed between prisoners and guards. There was only one riot in the beginning, but the guards quickly regained control. Afterwards, prisoners began to feel that there was no way to beat the system. They felt that it is better to do nothing, except what the guards told them. They didn’t want, act, or feel anything so they wouldn’t get in trouble. Guards, on the other hand, assumed authority roles to control the prisoners and keep the prison in order. With this loss of normal relationships entailing personal and social connections between everyone included in the experiment, they lost respect for one another. There are some reasons that people voluntarily become prisoners. Zimbardo stated that “some people choose to remain prisoners so that they do not have to be responsible for their own actions.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. Being
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