The Stanford Prison Experiment: Does Authority Change Human Behavior?

Human being, the most civilized creature in the plant of earth, believed that their actions are based on their own moral and ethical values. However, sometime those values were not strong and can easily be affected by external factor which led to an “different” behavior. These factor can be culture, social norms, ethics of a society, religious inclination, coercion, and human influence by authority. The milgram experiment showed that our behaviors can be drastically impacted by higher-level authority factor. Several test subjects were given the authority to shock a subject when answering a question incorrectly, under the supervision of a “professional doctor”. Over time, the voltage of the shock increased as the subjects continued to answer questions incorrectly. At one point, the subject complains that the shock is too strong and that he has heart problems. At that time, the people in charge were affected by the test subjects’
In the dramatic simulation of this experiment the conductor posted some question “what happens when you put good people in an evil place?” Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? The result of the experiment answer does questions very well, and it was proven that most of the individual participating and acting as authority were becoming sadistic and the prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. A controlled experiment meant to last two weeks had to be stop by the sixth day because of the way that the guards and prisoners were acting, and these participants were college students with no background of violence or psychological problems, but just by impersonating their role in the experiment their behavior changed and adapted. The overall results of the experiment show that external situations are more powerful than internal characteristics of the individual, so we can say that circumstances shape our