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Stanford Prison Experiment

Standford Prison Experiment

http://www.prisonexp.org/

A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University

Welcome to the Stanford Prison Experiment web site, which features an extensive slide show and information about this classic psychology experiment, including parallels with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? These are some of the questions we posed in this dramatic simulation of prison life conducted in the summer of 1971 at Stanford University.

How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please join me on a slide tour describing this experiment and uncovering what it tells us about the nature of human nature.

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Personal Comments:

Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo conducted this experiment to see how good people become evil. Upon my own review - it offers great insight into how situational ethics come into play when people are placed into various environments.

I encourage everyone to explore the website to gain an understanding as to how and why good people turn bad. For me it definately offered insights into many things that have been happening in the world around us and provided an interesting perspective/approach as to how to consider various events in the world.

sounds interesting. but i am having problems opening the page..

yes this is quite an old experiment...some interesting findings into the human psyche indeed.

I watched an interesting documentary on this on Google Video but when I went to look for it now the video was taken down.

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Originally posted by Adamo yes this is quite an old experiment...some interesting findings into the human psyche indeed.

yeah, I first read about that a while ago (Don't remember how) but it was very interesting w/ how things developed!

Re: Stanford Prison Experiment

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Originally posted by rabbitjoker

lol rj, didn't i post the exact same thing in the documentary thread and no one said a word or replied back?
i even posted a video link to it.

edit: lisa and mk did

quote:

Originally posted by geroin Stanford Prison Experiment - Psychology of Imprisonment The Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular, to the real world circumstances of prison life and the effects of imposed social roles on behavior. It was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. Undergraduate volunteers played the roles of guards and prisoners living in a mock prison built in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their assigned roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to genuinely dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. Despite the now highly unsanitary and out of control conditions evident, only one of 50 observers, graduate interviewer Christina Maslach, objected to the experiment. Zimbardo then ended the experiment early. Ethical concerns surrounding the famous experiment often draw comparisons to the Milgram experiment, which was conducted in 1963 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo's former high school friend. Must Watch VIDEO LINK 50minutes

Re: Re: Stanford Prison Experiment

quote:

Originally posted by geroin lol rj, didn't i post the exact same thing in the documentary thread

Sorry, I haven't opened the thread on documentaries.

Re: Re: Re: Stanford Prison Experiment

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Originally posted by rabbitjoker Sorry, I haven't opened the thread on documentaries.

there was as awesome video about the actual experiment filmed in 1971
too bad it went down

here is only a little part of it

^^^ I was lucky enough to watch the documentary before it was taken down. It was really interesting to watch, as I've discussed this experiment in a number of my classes.

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Originally posted by *~LiSa-LoO~* ^^^ I was lucky enough to watch the documentary before it was taken down. It was really interesting to watch, as I've discussed this experiment in a number of my classes.

yeah me too, it was great with all the naration and explanation from zimbardo + the interviews at the end were great :P

I recommend that those who find the dynamics of this study interesting watch 'Das Experiment'.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/

quote:

Originally posted by geroin yeah me too, it was great with all the naration and explanation from zimbardo + the interviews at the end were great :P

I have also seen this documentary, and I was astounded by what happened. What struck me the most is when the one prisoner, who after only a few days started going crazy because his prison mates turned against him, didn't leave when given the opportunity because he wanted to make his prisonmates like him again. This happened in a matter of a few days!!! I spent a lot of time thinking about this experiment for a couple of days after I watched this movie in my class.

I will definitely check out Das Experiment. Thanks for the suggestion.

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Originally posted by The Highroller I have also seen this documentary, and I was astounded by what happened. What struck me the most is when the one prisoner, who after only a few days started going crazy because his prison mates turned against him, didn't leave when given the opportunity because he wanted to make his prisonmates like him again. This happened in a matter of a few days!!! I spent a lot of time thinking about this experiment for a couple of days after I watched this movie in my class. I will definitely check out Das Experiment. Thanks for the suggestion.

No problem.

Das Experiment does, however, take the narrative far past the point of what actually transpired during the experiment. The movie is basically a 'what would happen if the experiment was permitted to continue until the bitter end' kind of portrayal.

I am quite familiar with The Stanford Prison Experiment...

An additional thing that came out of this experiment was the idea of accountability.
In the days following the experiment, Zimbardo argued that he should not be held responsible for the harms that were caused. Yet people were tortured. Someone had to be held accountable though didn't they?
Innocent people were tortured.

There are shocking parallels that exist between this experiment and the Adolph Eichmann trial from the holocaust. Eichmann claimed that he was not guilty of sentencing thousands of jews to die (despite his signature being on their death warrants), because he was merely following orders from the state.

The idea of personal responsibility, versus who has responsibility when working in part of a mechanism is something that continues to plague society today (look at international corporations for example).

An additional experiment that explores similar ideas is...

The Milgram Experiment

In this experiment, three people are involved.





In this picture the person labelled "E" represents the experimenter(often Milgram himself). The person labelled "S" represents the subject, the person labelled "A" represents another subject.

The instructions of the experiment were that "S" would read word pairs to "S". After reading combinations like dog-lamp, rug-door, etc "S" would then read one word and expect "A" to be able to remember the second. If he answered incorrectly "S" would administer an electric shock to "A". The experiment was supposed to test shock therapy with memory.

What it was actually testing was how much people were obedient to authority. What actually was taking place was that "A" was an actor, and no shocks were being administered. For every wrong answer that "A" gave "S" was to increase the amount of voltage he would administer to him.

After a while the shocks would be reaching what would be lethal levels. The person being shocked "S" would start reacting stronger and stronger, saying things like "I have a heart problem, I demand that you stop."

Whenever the person administering the shock would want to stop the experimenter "E" would say something like, "you will not be held responsible, the experiment must go on."


The end results were that an alarming number of people continued to shock past what would have been the lethal limit. The experiment showed that people are willing to do things that they would not normally want to do when being watched by a figure of authority.

The wikipedia article does a good job of explaining further details about the experiment and is located here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

it's an extremely famous experiment...most psychology or ethics students will come across it in one class or another, because of the various issues touched upon.

IMHO, the most interesting aspect was Zimbardo's own involvement (i.e. being sucked in himself) and how he sugarcoats it as being an bonus observation gleaned from the study.

He also seems to dispute that the main reason for the experiment being stopped was due to the Phd student being shocked at the lack of ethics on display. IIRC, he was in so deep that until she questioned him, he was not really going to terminate the study.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6567335.stm

quote:

Though not part of the plan, there were also prisoner rebellions. And, notoriously, there was chilling abuse and torture by the guards. The experiment was supposed to last two weeks, but we had to pull the plug after only six days because nearly half the prisoners had emotional breakdowns in response to the extreme stress and psychological torments invented by their guards - good, young men who'd been overwhelmed by situational forces in the roles they were playing.

interesting...no mention of the near 'intervention', as if Zimbardo had some epiphany on his own and called a stop to it.

In addition to providing some very interesting results, the experiment remains a classic example of flawed, unethical methodology.

I would not agree with suggestions that we ought to substantially mitigate how much responsibility people need to take for their own actions...though I do agree that situational psychology needs to be considered.

This is DEF uber interesting

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Originally posted by ShadoWolf http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250258/

This is an amazing film!!!! everyone should watch it.

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