Stanford Prison Experiments Summary

Can good, moral, and virtuous people be pushed to do bad things? This article seeks to compare an experiment done in 1971 to a real life military situation during wartime. The article also tries to link the experiment to another horrible act done by someone suffering from various mental illnesses with extremely mixed results. Is there a correlation between these three events as far as the mental states of the participants?

The article starts off telling the story of Sergeant John M Russell taking the lives of 5 American Soldiers on May 11, 2009. After he pled guilty to this appalling act, more detailed, information surfaced about his mental state. Sgt. Russell was on his third deployment in six years without incident. (Hong) Although
I believe the principles of entrapment (Wade, Travis, Garry 261) and situational attribution (Wade, Travis, Garry 263) apply in this case. I, personally, could not blindly comply, but it’s also situational. If I were in the military, I would have to comply or face a possible court martial. I don’t see a correlation between college students being paid to play prison guards (who are taking on an authoritative persona in a campus basement) to American soldiers guarding detainees at Abu Garaib during wartime, knowing that these said detainees more than likely want to kill Americans. U.S. soldiers take an oath to uphold the constitution and protect the homeland and its people. (US Army), whereas, civilians have a little more control over their personal decisions. After just recently having the experience of watching the movie American Sniper, Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle makes me somewhat empathetic to Sgt. Russell. I don’t agree with what Sgt. Russell did, however his mental state at the time was not in a good way. In a way, I connect his story more to Chris Kyle’s story. Simply, because that is along the lines of how Chris Kyle died. The college students that played the guards in the experiment were “given permission to create boredom, a sense of frustration, fear to some degree, and a notion of arbitrariness”