In fact, during the study, the guards became more sadistic when they thought no one was watching them. Zimbardo notes, "Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners" (Zimbardo). This may be the same reason guards at Abu Ghraib tortured and humiliated their charges, and the study seems to indicate this could happen in just about any prison anywhere, if the guards have enough power. The world should pay more attention to this study and its implications. As another writer notes, "The young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how much circumstances can distort individual personalities -- and how anyone, when given complete control over others, can act like a monster" (Alexander). This is what happened at Abu Ghraib, and chances are it is happening all around the world as well. In an interview about Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo notes the prison environment there was perfect for abuse. A reporter writes, "Zimbardo said the report on Abu Ghraib prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba describes a prison that was the perfect petri dish in which the culture of guard violence could flourish" (Stannard). It shows that people can become monsters, but also that humankind must find ways to keep this from happening, for the good of all.
The lessons learned from this experiment are still quite valid today. They show that with the right conditions, power and control can create evil and dominance in the human mind. This bears out what happened in Nazi concentration camps to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. There is evil in many people, and it comes out when it can do the most damage.
Doctor Zimbardo continued his studies into prison psychology, and married another psychologist, Christina Maslach. Two of the "prisoners" went on to major in psychology and prisons, and the most notorious guard is a real estate broker. Maslach is credited with helping end the experiment early, because she came...
Experimental Critique You have just answered an advertisement to participate in an experiment from researchers at Yale University. You enter a professional looking building and are met by a professional looking man in a white lab coat. You have been paid $4.50 (which would have easily filled up your gas tank in 1961) to participate in a memory and learning experiment. The experiment requires that you play the role of "teacher"
By that time, several guards had become sadistic and the behavior of the prisoners provided clear indications of psychological breakdown. Interviews with study participants suggested that merely the perception of their respective roles influenced their behavior. More importantly, the groupthink that prevailed within the group of prison guards overcame any individual personal reluctance they may have had to treat their prisoners so harshly (Macionis 2003). The Significance of the
History Of Social Psychology According to Kruglanski and Stroebe (2012) social psychology is defined as the scientific study of how a person's feelings, behaviors, and thoughts are influenced by the implied, imagined, or real presence of other people. Social psychology will analyze various social topics including social perception, behavior leadership, conformity, prejudice, nonverbal behavior, and aggression. It attempts to understand a person's behavior in a social context. Therefore, social psychology will
Human Aggression and the Stanford Prison Experiments Studies of human aggression tend toward myriad and often competing conclusions about that which drives us to behave ethically or unethically, about the forces that incline us toward altruism as opposed to those which incline us toward aggression, about the impulses to behave according to internal values and the pressures to bend to contextual authority. Perhaps few studies on the subject have penetrated the
In highly-publicized criminal offenses and violations of international law, American servicemen in charge of the Abu Ghraib facility abused Iraqi prisoners by terrorizing them with military service dogs and the threat of electrical shocks. They also purposely humiliated them by dragging them around naked, forcing them to simulate homosexuality, and by various other degrading acts specifically intended to disgrace their religious beliefs and cultural values. In some cases, abusive conduct
Social Psychology Studies: Explaining Irrational Individual Behavior by Understanding Group Dynamics Social psychology is, as its name suggests, a science that blends the fields of psychology, which is the study of the individual, and sociology, which is the study of groups. Social psychology examines how the individual is influenced by the group. It looks at the influence of group or cultural norms on individual behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. However, because group
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