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The Stanford Prison Experiment

What does the Stanford Prison Experiment tell us?

-Maria Konnikova, The New Yorker, 2015: We adapt to our surroundings--certain institutions and enviroments "require" oppression.

-Thomas Carnahan and Sam MacFarland recreated the ad in 2007, and found that the term "prison life" affected the types of people who signed up.

-We all have the capacity to be ruthless, depending on our enviroment.

Early Pscyhological Effects

-Three of the prisoners would have psych breaks. The first occured after only 36 hours.

-Only a few days into the study, many people involved were failing to distinguish between reality and simulation.

-The guards were becoming more and more sadistic as time went on.

The End

-Increasing abuse towards prisoners on the guard's own merit called for an early end to the study.

- Clear phsychological distress and loss of reality. Guards were quickly becoming sadistic, and prisoners were becoming spineless and distraught.

Asserting Authority

The guards were tentative at first, but after a minor riot broke out on the second day, they had no problem executing their "authority". They met as a group and decided to rely on a "Token Economy", as well as other psychological layouts that would give good prisoners rewards. The privalage cell the guards set up was an incentive for the prisoners to behave, but also pinned them against each other.

The Begining

-The Palo Alto Police Department collected the participants who would be the "prisoners" in a staged mass arrest.

-They were brought from the detainment center to the mock prison, where they were stripped, sprayed down, chained, and given their uniforms. This was meant to dehumanize them.

The Guards

  • It is important to note that the guards were given no formal training and very few instructions. They were told to do what was necessary to maintain peace and gain respect from the prisoners.

Set Up

-Zimbardo and his team at Stanford wanted to explore the psychological effects of prison and answer the question: What happens when good people are put in positions of power?

-Interested canidates took a series of psychological exams, and the psychologists weeded out the mentally ill, medically disabled, and people with a history of crime or drug abuse.

- The psychologists set up the mock prison in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department. Labratory doors were replaced with steel bars, "The Hole" was created for solitary confinment, and "The Yard" was made for prisoner's free time.

What happens when people are put in positions of extreme superiority or extreme inferiority?

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