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Essay / Controversial Issues in the Stanford Prison Experiment
It was early Sunday morning on August 17, 1971, when the Stanford Study Experiment first began. A student was confused when he heard sirens blaring and a police officer placed him under arrest and drove him toward Stanford University. The “jail” had him fingerprinted and entered them into the system as he was incarcerated. They forced him to strip, sprayed him with disinfectant to prevent lice and disease, and gave him a cap made of women's stockings to imitate shaving his head. Then he was given a beige blouse and forced to wear it with nothing underneath. This was just the beginning of the embarrassment. When he got up that day, he had no idea that he would make history with one of the most famous and unethical experiments in psychology. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'?Get the original essayChief scientist Philip Zimbardo, who also acted as a prison warden, said the aim of the experiment from Stanford Prison was to determine whether a person chooses a certain job or role that may seem bad because they are also bad, or whether they are influenced to be bad because of the role they occupy. There is a saying that power corrupts, and by giving power to the prison guards in the experiment, he was essentially trying to prove this to be correct. He gave prison guards the freedom to make whatever rules they deemed necessary to do their jobs. He also studied how, after a while, prisoners began to forget that they were taking part in an experiment and think that they could not leave it, even though their contract stipulated that they could leave the simulation whenever they entered. wanted. The results of the experiment showed that during the simulation, students who played the role of guardians did bad things that seemed out of the norm for their personality. It also showed that those who acted as prisoners were likely to accept the abuse because they began to feel like they had done something that deserved the cruel treatment they received. Even though Zimbardo proved his hypothesis correct, there are still other variables we need to consider. A major problem is that there is no clear independent variable. If we look at the mechanics of the experiment, nothing was changed or manipulated to try to influence the results. Even Phillip Zimbardo agreed that this was a major flaw in his experience. On the website Zimbardo created for the experiment, he states: “Gordon had heard we were doing an experiment and he came to see what was going on. I briefly described what we were doing and Gordon asked me a very simple question: "Say, what is the independent variable in this study?" » To my surprise, I got really angry with him and now I had to deal with this bleeding-heart, liberal, academic, self-effacing dingdong who cared about the independent variable! This also raises another flaw in the experience. Zimbardo himself acted as prison director, which involved him in the experiment. By placing himself in this position, he distorts the results with potential and inevitable biases, but also exposes himself to the potential effects of the experiment. The behavioral effects he was trying to study! Of course, it would make sense if his hypothesis turned out to be correct, because he was in?