Stanford Prison Experiment (Documental)

Είδος: Ντοκυμαντέρ
Γλώσσα: English
Υπότιτλοι: Ελληνικά
Χρονολογία: 1992 , US
Σκηνοθεσία: Ken Musen
Διάρκεια: 29'

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.^[1]
Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. After being confronted by Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating,^[2] and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days.^[3]
Ethical concerns surrounding the famous experiment often draw comparisons to the Milgram experiment, which was conducted in 1961 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo's former college friend. Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr wrote in 1981 that the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment were frightening in their implications about the danger which lurks in the darker side of human nature.^[4]

Conclusions

The Stanford experiment ended on August 20, 1971, only six days after it began instead of the fourteen it was supposed to have lasted. The experiment's result has been argued to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority.
In psychology, the results of the experiment are said to support situational attribution of behaviour rather than dispositional attribution. In other words, it seemed the situation caused the participants' behaviour, rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities. In this way, it is compatible with the results of the also-famous Milgram experiment, in which ordinary people fulfilled orders to administer what appeared to be damaging electric shocks to a confederate of the experimenter.
Shortly after the study had been completed, there were bloody revolts at both the San Quentin and Attica prison facilities, and Zimbardo reported his findings on the experiment to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From http://www.prisonexp.org/documentary.htm

Guaranteed to stimulate critical thinking and discussion, the film features archival footage, flashbacks, post-experiment interviews with the prisoners and guards, and comparisons with real prisons. It documents the surprise arrests by city police and vividly shows the pathology that developed among participants, forcing the two-week study to be terminated after only 6 days. Viewer-tested previews reveal its value across many high school and college courses and among a variety of community audiences, including correctional, judicial, military, and civic.



THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT [Greek subs]