Stanford Prison Experiment

I will be summarizing Phillip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. When the experiment first started Zimbardo wanted to recreate a prison to look at the impact of becoming a prisoner and a guard. The deeper idea was to see how people would react to a simulated prison environment and how certain situational variables would impact their behavior. Zimbardo recreated a prison in the basement of Stanford’s psychology building to include solitary confinement, where he chose 24 students to ply the roles. Participant’s roles were chosen completely at random and each were briefed on their responsibilities. If one was chosen to be a prisoner, they were forced to spend 24 hours a day in the prison for the study, while the guards were allowed to go home after an 8 hour shift.

This experiment showed many things about humans and the ability to conform. The guards were given no real guidance on how to treat the prisoners, except that they were not allowed to impose physical violence. What happened is that the people took on the roles based on their own perceptions. The guards ended up being demeaning, aggressive, and abusive towards the prisoners. They took on a persona that they would not have had in their normal day to day life. The prisoners on the other hand went in a completely opposite direction and pretty much just shutdown. They began to truly take on the role that was given to them. Instead of being in an experiment, most truly thought that they were in jail. They became hopeless, nervous and suffered severe negative emotional problems as a result of the behavior from the guards. A few of the prisoners were so disturbed that they had to be released from the study early.

We as humans, as this study shows, will conform to whatever role we are put in. If we perceive that the person who placed us in this position has given us true power, we will take on that persona. In my opinion it shows that we are a product of our environment. If you live in a place of crime and...