Stanford Prison Experiment Zimbardo

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Stanford prison experiment and the human response to captivity The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971, was a study that sought to see the human response to captivity. A total of 21 male subjects were assigned to either prison guard or prisoner. The study was planned to last for two weeks but was ended in six days due to the behavior of both the guards and prisoners. He wanted to see how a person would react to such oppression endured in prison. While some of Zimbardo’s practices may have been unorthodox, this study provided vital information about how the average human functions and adapts to new, hostile environments. The behavior of the prisoners was exceedingly different than how they were in their daily life. …show more content…
He found that as the experiment progressed, the prisoners’ encounters became violent. However when prisoners were alone they would not exhibit violent behavior, rather they were depressed. One prisoner developed a psychosomatic rash after finding out his “parole” had been rejected. Another prisoner had to be released after 36 hours due to his uncontrollable screams and cries. That particular inmate had disorganized thoughts and displayed the early signs of deep depression. Over the next few days, three others were released because they began to display emotional disorders that could have had lasting effects (Haney et al, p. 10). Humans are social beings; without outside contact, an inmate can easily lose himself, mumble nonsense to himself, rock himself back and forth, hear voices that are not there, stare blankly and eventually hallucinate (Breslow, 2014, para. 3). After so much time in the mock prison, many prisoners stopped misbehaving and gave up. Whereas the guards were alert to any misconduct among prisoners and would demean and belittle the inmates. The guards were relentless and violent, especially in the yard. They would even encourage the inmates that were in susceptible states to instigate fights (Haney et al, p.
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