Communist Prison Case Study

1. In the Communist Prison case study, there were many techniques used by the prison to bring about the destruction of the prisoners’ self-awareness. They would alienate the prisoners and force them to confess by humiliating them and having their cellmates berate them. The humiliation and beatings caused physical and mental abuse and would go on for weeks or months. Also if the prisoner would resist, then they would be restrained physically and then the cellmates would be responsible for all of the prisoner’s basic needs. The whole idea was for the prisoners to forget everything about their lives and confess to the crimes they have committed.

2. After doing some research on this topic, I found that a reward system would have worked best to strengthen the self-awareness. The rewards would help build self-esteem and make the prisoner more aware of who he is. This was proven at the time with the prisoners who developed a relationship with their interrogators, as they would be allowed to have an active group life if they were cooperative with them. The prisoner will also feel like the abuse will stop because of the rewards and will help them to regain their mental stability and may in turn allow them to change their attitude towards life and accept their faults.

3. In order to have the new managers understand their own strengths and inclinations, I would have them explain what they believe their strengths and weaknesses are according to them. After that I would have them do series of small tasks. I would have them team up with managers who have opposite strengths because they would work well together. The small tasks will test them to see how well they can work together and how they as a group can do the most good for the organization.

4. The mechanism that the prisoners could have used to change their self-concepts is mental imagery. If the prisoners viewed themselves in a good situation, they would be able to cope up with the difficult