Paper Topic:

Forensic Psychology

Stanford Prison Experiment

Abstract

The prison Experiment conducted at Stanford University in 1971 was intended to find out what would happen if average innocent people were placed in a prison environment on both sides (inmate and guard . The experiment began with a news add asking for male college aged volunteers to participate in the experiment and outlined some of the things they might endure . The large number of volunteers was reduced through a series of psychological tests to find those who appeared the most stable

The researchers anticipated some psychological

effects on the participants , but the results they discovered were far more intense than they had prepared for . These overwhelming effects on even the research professionals involved led to an early end to the experiment

Procedure

The experiment began with an ad in the asking for college aged male volunteers , who would be paid fifteen dollars per day (Zimbardo 1999 . There were more than one hundred people who responded to the ad The large number of respondents was narrowed down through a series of psychological experiments . The group was narrowed to twenty-four young men , who were determined to be mentally stable and average . The twenty-four were divided randomly into two groups by a coin toss . Half were to be prison guards and the other half was to be prison inmates

In to set the stage for the prison to look realistic , three rooms in the basement of one of the Stanford buildings were sectioned off and the doors were replaced with doors containing bars and cell numbers There were no windows or clocks provided to keep the prisoners from knowing the time of day (Zimbardo , 1999 . Both ends of the hallway were boarded off to keep the prisoners from seeing ways to escape

The head psychologist was assigned as the prison superintendent . Other researchers participated in various capacities , but the direct supervision of the prisoners was left up to the experimental guards . A person who had spent time in prison was called in to be a consultant for treatment of the prisoners to determine how close the simulation was to a real prison setting

Methods

The first day of the experiment , the people selected to be inmates were arrested from their homes by real policemen and placed in real police cars . They were taken to jail for processing and were then taken to the made-up prison . Once inside the prison the guards were given free reign within reason to treat them as prisoners . There were nine prisoners in the prison unit at all times with three on-call at their homes in case a replacement was needed

Each prisoner was strip searched and de-liced and was then given a gown with no undergarments and with an inmate number printed on it . The inmates were forced to wear hats made from panty hose to simulate shaved heads (Zimbardo , 1999 . The purpose of this was to start them off with a feeling of humiliation to gain control over them

They were...

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