Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment was a social psychology study in which college students became prisoners or guards in a simulated prison experiment. The experiment, funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, took place at Stanford University on Aug 14, 1971 – Aug 20, 1971 by psychologist Philip Zimbardo . It was intended to measure the effect of role-playing, labeling, and social expectations on behavior over a period of two weeks. However, mistreatment of prisoners escalated so alarmingly that Zimbardo terminated the experiment after only six days.

The Stanford experiment was crazy. First of all, they were paid $15 which was technically a lot of money for back in the day. I would of took the job too. I'm pretty certain none of them really knew what they were getting into when they signed up. They said the experiment was supposed to last for 2 weeks which it didn’t. It only lasted 6 days. There was a total of 11 guards and 11 prisoners. Both being picked by flip of coin. None of them knew each other and were all Stanford students who needed the money. What I wonder is how did they manage to arrest them at their houses before the start of the experiment. Were they able to get real cops into it? I also wonder how did they come up with the experiment and how long did the planning process take until they perfected it. It looked like the boys really got messed up from the experiment. They got really into it and lost themselves. They were given rules at the beginning of it and almost all of them were pretty much broken. Like the biggest one no violence. As time went on prisoners seemed to be turning more into prisoners and guards started feeling the power that came with controlling a group.It got so bad that when the prisoners were asked what their names they responded with their prisoner number as if they completely forgot about their real names and selves. They had to be reminded that it all was an experiment and at the end of the day they were not prisoners but free men. The experiment took a real psychological toll on the boys that messed them up pretty bad. I wonder if any of them suffer ptsd from the traumatic experiment.