What is your reaction to the Stanford Prison Experiment? Do you think the experiment was very ethical?
Stanford Prison Experiment, was a social psychologyLinks to an external site. study in which college students became prisoners or guards in a simulated prisonLinks to an external site.environmentLinks to an external site.. The experiment, funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, took place at Stanford UniversityLinks to an external site. in August 1971. It was intended to measure the effect of role-playing, labeling, and social expectations on behavior over a period of two weeks. However, mistreatment of prisoners escalated so alarmingly that principal investigator Philip G. ZimbardoLinks to an external site. terminated the experiment after only six days.
More than 70 young men responded to an advertisement about a “psychological study of prison life,” and experimenters selected 24 applicants who were judged to be physically and mentally healthy. The paid subjects—they received $15 a day—were divided randomly into equal numbers of guards and prisoners. Guards were ordered not to physically abuse prisoners and were issued mirrored sunglasses that prevented any eye contact. Prisoners were “arrested” by actual police and handed over to the experimenters in a mock prison in the basement of a campus building. Prisoners were then subjected to indignities that were intended to simulate the environment of a real-life prison. In keeping with Zimbardo’s intention to create very quickly an “atmosphere of oppression,” each prisoner was made to wear a “dress” as a uniform and to carry a chain padlocked around one ankle. All participants were observed and videotaped by the experimenters.
Stanford Prison ExperimentLinks to an external site.
On only the second day the prisoners staged a rebellion. Guards then worked out a system of rewards and punishments to manage the prisoners. Within the first four days, three prisoners had become so traumatized that they were released. Over the course of the experiment, some of the guards became cruel and tyrannical, while a number of the prisoners became depressed and disoriented. However, only after an outside observer came upon the scene and registered shock did Zimbardo conclude the experiment, less than a week after it had started.
The Stanford Prison Experiment immediately came under attack on methodological and ethicalLinks to an external site. grounds. Zimbardo admitted that during the experiment he had sometimes felt more like a prison superintendent than a research psychologist. Later on, he claimed that the experiment’s “social forces and environmental contingencies” had led the guards to behave badly. However, others claimed that the original advertisement attracted people who were predisposed to authoritarianismLinks to an external site.. The most conspicuousLinks to an external site. challenge to the Stanford findings came decades later in the form of the BBC Prison Study, a differently organized experiment documented in a British Broadcasting CorporationLinks to an external site. series called The Experiment (2002). The BBC’s mock prisoners turned out to be more assertiveLinks to an external site. than Zimbardo’s. The British experimenters called the Stanford experiment “a study of what happens when a powerful authorityLinks to an external site. figure (Zimbardo) imposes tyranny.”
The Stanford Prison Experiment became widely known outside academiaLinks to an external site.. It was the acknowledged inspiration for Das Experiment (2001), a German movie that was remade in the United StatesLinks to an external site. as the direct-to-video film The Experiment (2010). The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015) was created with Zimbardo’s active participation; the dramatic film more closely followed actual events.
Check out this video:
https://youtu.be/KND_bBDE8RQLinks to an external site.
Answer the following questions:
1. What is your reaction to the Stanford Prison Experiment? Do you think the experiment was very ethical?
2. Do you think the media paints a different picture of what prison is like?
3. Do you think prisons are a good idea and are beneficial to society? Why or why not?
Requirements: questions
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