Stanford Prison Experiment

Simulation, Reality or Both?
In 1971, an experiment was done on 18 college vollunteers.   The initial purpose of the experiment was to observe what effects   being in a prison like institutional setting has upon regular, healthy people, and how they react to being placed in certain situations both with and without authority. As it evolved however, the experiment quickly spiralled out of control, the “guards” abuse of the “prisoners” became excessive causing them far more trauma than the experiment had intended. Whether the experiment went horribly wrong or horribly right is entirely a matter of opinion, although the “horrible” seems pretty clear cut. The experiment showed how good, perfectly normal people were capable of assuming roles quite contrary to their nature. The guards and prisoners were self-selecting sample groups, offered $15 dollars a day in exchange for their voluntary involvement in the experiment, their backgrounds were checked to make sure they had no records of mental illness, violence or criminal activity. These bright, mentally and physically healthy young men were selected at random into 2 groups of nine, one of which were designated as guards, the other as prisoners. The division was entirely random, the subjects had no way of influencing the selection process and no individual qualities were taken into account, although some prisoners later believed that the larger boys had been picked as guards deliberately, in fact a coin had simply been flipped nine times. The experiment got out of control because the subjects entered too deeply into the roles they were assigned, the prisoners felt dehumanized and began to forget that they were not genuine prisoners, but only subjects in a psychological study, the guards became ever more sadistic, seeing the inmates more and more as the enemy and deserving of the treatment they gave to them as the experiment went on. Perhaps because they did so much to prevent the prisoners feeling like real people they... [continues]

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