Standford Prison

Standford Prison

The Stanford university in northern California is one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the United States. At this university during 1971 was the scene of the most notorious and contra dictionary experiment in the history of psychology. Professor Philip Zimbardo wanted to know what would happen if you would put good people into and evil place? He also wondered if the situation outside of a person such as an institution would control ones behavior or would ones attitude values and moral would rise above a negative environment. Just as the Milgram experiment Zimbardo was also interested in the power of social situation to overwhelm individuals.

To test his ideas and to answer his questions he had build a prison in the basement of the psychology department and advertized for a summer job in the newspaper. All the students that responded to his advertisement would come in be tested for psychological abnormality and start this procedure with a salary of $15 per day. Out of all the qualifying students he randomly selected the role of guards and prisoners. Zimbardo also took the roe of the prison super intendment and gave instructions to the guards and he briefed them.

When the experiment started and the prisoners were brought in blind folded the degradation process started. The guards would make fun of the prisoners by strip searching them and talking down on them. The second morning the prisoners rebelled against authority, against the system and not wanting to follow orders from the other students. The main guy that started to rebel was put in the solitary confinement where he had no contact with the other prisoners. Later prisoners made the mistake in making fun of the guards in a personal way, and so the guards got furious at them. The outcome of that interaction made the guards to repeatedly wake up the prisoners in the middle of the night making them do physical and diminishing