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.
In almost all of my psychology courses I hear about the infamous Philip Zimbardo prison experiment. Until I read this article (see below), I never really thought about some of the points brought about by author Brian Dunning.
Dunning examines flaws in the methodology of this famous experiment including a poor sample and other issues you will read about if you choose to do so.
To me, Dunning's most interesting point has to do with Zimbardo's lack of personality assessment before and after the experiment (i.e. were the "prison guards" friendly people outside of the experiment who became malicious as a result of the experiment, or were they generally mean people to begin with?).
Overall, this article adds a different, often times overlooked side of the Zimbardo experiment we are all familiar with. Check it out and let me know what you think!
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/5AvLJa/skeptoid.com/episodes/4102
This experiment is very interesting to me. I found the information of this website very helpful, but it made me think of what long-term effects may have occurred from this experiment? When thinking of this I looked up the Stanford Prison. Experiment online and found this documentary. The documentary is called Stanford Prison Experiment and is 29 minutes long. It shows how the experiment originated, the effects of the study on the students at the time of the experiment and years later. I think that this documentary helps show the psychological effects of this experiment.
The link to the documentary is:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=677084988379129606#
This experiment is very interesting to me. I found the information of this website very helpful, but it made me think of what long-term effects may have occurred from this experiment? When thinking of this I looked up the Stanford Prison. Experiment online and found this documentary. The documentary is called Stanford Prison Experiment and is 29 minutes long. It shows how the experiment originated, the effects of the study on the students at the time of the experiment and years later. I think that this documentary helps show the psychological effects of this experiment.
The link to the documentary is:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=677084988379129606#
In almost all of my psychology courses I hear about the infamous Philip Zimbardo prison experiment. Until I read this article (see below), I never really thought about some of the points brought about by author Brian Dunning.
Dunning examines flaws in the methodology of this famous experiment including a poor sample and other issues you will read about if you choose to do so.
To me, Dunning's most interesting point has to do with Zimbardo's lack of personality assessment before and after the experiment (i.e. were the "prison guards" friendly people outside of the experiment who became malicious as a result of the experiment, or were they generally mean people to begin with?).
Overall, this article adds a different, often times overlooked side of the Zimbardo experiment we are all familiar with. Check it out and let me know what you think!
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/5AvLJa/skeptoid.com/episodes/4102
Here is an NPR of an interview with Philip Zimbardo about his experiment. According to Zimbardo, the students chosen for the study were given personality tests (contrary to what I found in Dunning's article I posted earlier). Zimbardo also answers questions from listeners in his interview.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1870756
This is an experiment which seems to come up quite frequently when talking about psychology and humans relationship. There are many seemingly horrifying things that have been done by what seem to be ordinary people with this type of experiment. I found the article that Kayla posted to be quite informative as well, I also had never heard of these points which are raised against Zimbardo’s experiment. It is important to consider the points raised, and always have a somewhat skeptical eye when observing this sort of data. However, there are other instances which also show the effect environment and authority figures can have on what seem like ordinary people. One of these is the famous Milgrim experiment.
Here’s is a quick link http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm
The link provides information on this study; although I am sure many of you have heard or seen it. It shows how people will continue to hurt someone (or so they believe) just because an authority figure tells them too. Another instance, which is not an experiment, but a situation that is important when discussing the role of the environment on people’s actions, is the My Lai Massacre.
Here is a link to the Wikipedia page which will provide a basic summary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
The My Lai massacre raises several questions, such as who is to blame for such a disaster? Is it the commanding officer, or all the soldiers who listened? It becomes an important argument when deciding the fate of these people.
After learning and reading about the Standford Prison Experiment, another experiment similar to this came to mind. It was an experiment conduncted in Riceville, Iowa, by a school teacher named Jane Elliot. She did this experiment the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered to show her school kids what it was like to be differet. She did this by dividing up her class into two groups-those with blue eyes, and those with brown eyes.
The first day, the brown eyed students were told they were smarter, better looking, and just overall better people than that of the blue eyed kids. They got special priviledges throughout the day, and the blue eyed kids were not called by name, but by a number assigned to them. To distinguish between the two groups, the blue eyed kids had to wear navy blue collars around their necks. The second day, the roles were reversed, and the blue eyed kids got all the priviledges.
Obvious roles were seen throughout this experiment. Whoever was "better" that day pushed other kids around who, the day before, were once best friends. Many years after this experiment took, place when the kids were all grown up, they met back with Jane Elliot to discuss how this experiment impacted them. Many of those students today now teach their kids to accept anyone, no their matter race, or eye color. Both of these experiments shows the impact on how much being put into a certain role can impact us, and how we can subconsiously take on these roles.
I put a link below that has more information on this if anyone would like to find out more. :)
http://library.flawlesslogic.com/elliott.htm
I really am not surprised by this experiment. I remember hearing about it a couple of years ago in a different class with psychology. The only thing I would have against this experiment is the fact that when the college students are done, how can the ones running the experiment be sure that the college students will come out of it sane and not emotionally or psychologically altered in some way and not for the better. I would also like to say that bohemanl had a good example of another experiment done that I also remember in another psychology class of mine that brought great insight on how we perceive things when certain things bring us above everyone else all of a sudden. Like one day having brown eyes makes you better than everyone else but the next day it makes you worse.
As I stated in class, this experiment closely mirrors a documentary I am reading about what happened in Nazi occupied Poland during World War II. The book is entitled, “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.” This documentary follows various units of Reserve Policemen in Poland during Hitler’s Final Solution. Units of men, ranging in age from 25 – 55 years old, willingly participated in the systematic annihilation of thousands of Jews. They also participated in loading Jews cattle cars and looting and ransacking Jewish homes. The book specifically makes a point to illustrate that these men came from small farming communities in Poland and were a diverse group of individuals. These seemingly “ordinary” men performed some of the most malicious acts recorded during WWI.
So often people look back at the events of the Holocaust and ask, “What kind of person could commit these acts?” The fact of the matter is that those who participated in Hitler’s Final Solution were, like the book suggests, ordinary people. They were fathers, brothers, farmers, and teachers that grew up in rural communities that are comparable to any small town in Iowa. While these men might have started off very normal, well-rounded citizens they soon learned to abuse their power and inflict cruelty onto their fellow man.
If anyone is interested at taking a closer look at this book, enclosed is a link to the Amazon page for the book. The book is very thorough and provides many firsthand testimonies as well as several actual documents that provide keen insights into what happened in Poland.
http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068
I thought this experiment was really interesting. I believe I have heard of it in the past but never looked into it in detail on the website. I think the experiment is probably pretty accurate in measuring the amount of psychological distress that a prisoner would experience by being locked up. The only thing that I would say negatively about the experiment is that i think some people react differently to incarceration then others. For instance a person that grows up on the streets and is used to the day to day power struggles may react differently then someone that grows up in a "normal" environment would. I would think that the person that grows up in the streets that doesn't really know what it is like to have many priveleges would adapt better. Im not saying that they wouldnt start to go crazy over time but I think its hard to measure the true psychological distress other then through true prisoners that actually experience incarceration for a long period of time. Overall I thought it was really interesting how the students and even the professor got so in depth in the roles they were playing.