Well when I was writing about the evil experiments that crossed the ethical boundries. I didn't forgot about this one . I just wanted to evaluate Philip Limbardo's experiment seperately. The experiment mainly studies the behavioral change on the individual in the circumstances of power shift. Eventhough I don't approve Limbardo's method this guy knows how evil looks like and he dedicated his entire scientific carrier trying to understand the nature of evil and heroism.
The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)
In 1971 Limbardo and his crew wanted to observe the responses of people to the social roles decided by the society. They created a prison in the Stanford psychology department. The next step was finding the subjects. They found the subjects so main idea in the experiment was simple . They were going to observe the responses of the individuals to the social roles. Zimbardo seperated the subjects in to two groups. First one was Guards other one was Prisoners. We can say that guards are the group that have power and acceptance by society. Prisoners were the individuals with limited rights and they were neglected by society. The fascinating part is the participants in both roles were just average people from society. These people never had the taste of power or never experienced losing their rights and become so powerless. Unlike the famous Milgram experiment Limbardo didn't gave any instructions to the applicants . He just gave them their new social roles and wanted to observe.
What Happened ?
Well the things happened after couple of days were amazing. Everybody accepted their role faster than expected. Guards started to become drunk with the power and abused their power in order to maintain order. Prisoners started to think they will never leave this prison and started to show agression and created anarchy. Because of the created chaos Guards started to become more agressive. Do I need to tell you these were just normal people ? . Things escaleted quickly and experiment cancelled after a week. The results were unbeleivable.
Eventhough the study got many criticism about the ethical issues and lack of ecological validity. I think it was a great well crafted experiment. Because even the big black glasses guard wearing was pre crafted and it prevented to them to show emotions to prisoners. However Most of the guards later claimed they were simply acting. Because the guards and prisoners were playing a role and their behavior simply may not be affected the same conditions in real life. However I still think this study was a milestone in social studies and pshycology.
Sources
https://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html (Great Source with lots of Details)
