The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment

Well it's over, and I believe we are all a little more enlightened on the subject of psychological evil and the power of role playing. There have been many surprises throughout this experiment but I think the most important surprise concerning the result of the experiment is how it was closed early (Zimbardo, 1971). The prison was “shut down” only after six days after it began when it was scheduled to go on for 14 days. That's a whole eight days early, this fact is important because it shows how real the experiment became, the prisoners aren't real convicts against society, most of them are just college students trying to earn a few extra bucks who would've guessed it would turn into this huge mess? As the prison opened and everybody started experimenting with their new roles, some were hesitant about the thing and how it would affect their lives over the next 14 days and even for the rest of their lives. 

To summarize the experiment, Zimbardo and his team of like two other people set out to test the idea that people are who they pretend to be. Zimbardo placed an ad out and out of the 75 people that responded to the ad, Zimbardo only picked 24 who, he believed were the most mentally fit candidates for the job (Reicher, Stephen & Haslam, 2006). The participants who were assigned to be prisoners were arrested at their homes by real police officers and taken to the make shift prison at Stanford University. Most of the guinea pigs were white middle class and attending Stanford University at the time. After the selection, it was time to create a makeshift prison in the basement of part of the University. A dark, dreary little place that was selected to dizzy and disorient the prisoners. The guards and prisoners alike were given new clothing to mask their old identity and to create a new one, both of which came from a military surplus store. The prisoner's uniforms consisted of a nylon cap on their heads to degrade them and humiliate them for the guard's amusement (Musen & Zimbardo, 1991). The prisoners no longer had names, they were to be called by the numbers they had sewn onto their shirts. In this way the prisoners didn't have anything left of their identity they had before the experiments. The guard's, of course hiding their identities from the prisoners so as not to become responsible for their own actions, wore mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye-contact. The guards were also given wooden batons to use as weapons against the prisoners if needed at all during the experiment, even though the guards were told beforehand that they were to not physically harm the prisoners in any way.   

The experiment quickly got out of hand and the superintendant, Zimbardo, lost all control of his own experiment. Even at the beginning on day one prisoners suffered sadistic and humiliating treatment from ...