Zimbardo set up a fake prison in the basement of Stanford University’s psychology building, and along with 24 undergraduate students, who were chosen out of a larger group of 7o for their lack of criminal background, psychological issues, and no serious medical conditions agreed to a 1-2 week period experiment in exchange for $15.00 a day. (Insert bibliography) Randomly either assigned the guard or prisoner group, the experiment began. Prisoners were to stay in the prison 24 hrs. a day, while the guards were allowed to go home at night, when there shift was complete. A 14-day study quickly ended after just six days due to what was happening within the walls of this “prison.” Neither group had very thorough directions or instructions as that would more than likely ruin the purpose of the experiment, which was to see how
In 1973, Philip K. Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford University began researching how prisoners and guards internalize submissive and authoritarian roles. He placed an ad in the newspaper seeking male college students needed for a study of prison life. The experiment would last for only two weeks and they would get paid $15 per day. The ad attracted seventy-five responses, but only twenty-one were selected. The men were divided into two groups: Prisoners and Guards.
Zimbardo and his colleagues constructed the basement of Stanford University into an imitated prison. A newspaper ad was posted asking for male volunteers to play the role of prisoners and guards for two weeks in return getting compensated fifteen dollars a day. Twenty two Caucasian male Stanford University students were elected to take part of the experiment after each completing a questionnaire based on family history, and physical and mental health and followed by an interview. Participants were randomly assigned the role of prisoners or guards. Prisoners were arrested at their homes and were treated like criminals.
The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted at Stanford University from August 14 to August 20 of 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. The original purpose of the experiment was to observe the effect that being in a prison like institutional setting has upon people, and how they react to being placed in positions both with and without authority. As it developed however, the experiment quickly spiralled out of control, the “guards” abuse of the “prisoners” became excessive causing them far more trauma than the experiment justified. Whether the experiment went horribly wrong or horribly right is entirely a matter of opinion, although the “horrible” seems pretty clear cut.
Zimbardo wanted to find out how ‘ordinary’ people would behave in a prison environment when designated roles as prisoners and guards so he conducted a group study at Stanford University, USA, with some male student volunteers. The volunteers signed a contract agreeing to a minimal diet, clothing and medical care for fifteen dollars per day. It was to be a two week ‘prison life’ study where some students were ‘guards’ and others were ‘prisoners’. This is a minority influence; where there are established members (prisoners and guards).When the experiment started the students who were to be the prisoners were arrested and fingerprints were taken, they were treated like real criminals, they were degraded and humiliated from the word ‘go’ so as they knew that this is what they were to put up with for fourteen days. The volunteers were not allowed to wear any underwear and were not allowed to use their real names; they were instead referred to by the number on their ‘uniform’, the effects of this on the prisoners is that they would lose their personal identities and they would not mean anything as a person which is a process known as deidentification, they were also
Zimbardo and his piece “The Standford Prison Experiment” and Burger who wrote, “Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today?” are both famous for conducting experiments that tested obedience and authority. Although these experiments are very similar in ways there is also a big difference between them. When Zimbardo conducted his experiment he studied behavioral roles of prisoners and guards in prison. Specifically his main intention was to study the life of prisoners and guards in prison. The experiment was designed like this: Zimbardo offered fifteen dollars a day and only recruited twenty-one college students to take place in the procedure.
The group was composed of college-aged males; all of them were Caucasian except for one Asian student. These students were arbitrarily assigned the role of either prison guard or inmate. The students were paid $15 per day and the experiment was designed to last for two weeks. The mock prison was built in the basement of the Stanford Psychology building and consisted of generally austere conditions. Inmates were confined within their cells in groups of three, there were no bathroom facilities in the individual cells and none of the cells had windows to see the outside.
Critique on The Stafford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo put together a prison life experiment that was to last 2 weeks. He wanted to understand more about how prisoners lose privacy, civil rights, liberty, and how the guards gain more control and social power. The experimental prison was set up in the basement of Stafford University more than seventy-five people volunteered for this experiment. Ten prisoners and eleven guards were randomly selected from these applicants. The participants chosen were emotionally stable, mature, physically healthy and law abiding citizens.
The men believed that violence would get them nowhere in their protesting and it would not be effective. Civil disobedience was a main view for both of them men. They both wrote from jail for their civil disobedience. Thoreau wrote about his night in jail for not having paid a tax that was being used for unjust causes. He says in “Civil Disobedience” that he felt free staying that night in jail and everyone else was not.
(Amlin, 2008) Prison is less desirable because it serves no rehabilitative purpose for sexual offenders. Pedophiles that spend time fantasizing in a prison cell are given extensive downtime to imagine new sexual fantasies involving children. These horrific visions are translated into terrifying realities once the criminal comes back into contact with children following their release from prison. Even though chemical castration does not prevent males from having sex it does lower the urge. (Tsai, 2007) Chemical castration places a hormone in the male’s body that does not allow them to produce sperm.