The following activty is from Rusty Juban's Management of Organizations class at Southeastern Lousiana University
The Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971 is a dramatic example of the power of peer pressure, group norms, and institutional control to change the persona of normal people into brutal barbarians and whimpering broken souls. The 24 subjects were chosen from 70 applicants as the most normal, average, and healthy; in other words, those individuals most like you and I. Five days into a scheduled two-week experiment these individuals had become completely consumed by the artificial roles created for the experiment. So brutal were the "guards" (a randomly chosen dozen of the 24) and so emotionally distraught, depressed, and distressed were the "prisoners" (the other dozen of the 24), that at the end of five days the experiment was halted.
This is one of the most famous and dramatic experiments in Psychology and it has applications to those studying the art and science of management. Of course the study results have an impact on many facets of life and have thus become the subject of segments on 60 Minutes, Phil Donahue, PBS, and is even being developed as a Hollywood movie. Students and the public are very fortunate that details and pictures from this experiment are now available on the Stanford Prison Experiment Web site.
- Should we be frightened by what this experiment shows?
- What are some of the symbolic actions that reinforced the "prisoners" status?
- What was the basis of power for the guards?
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