So how do you think you would cope in this situation?

but what did it do to the prisoners? They havent spoken yet

Look like Tarzan talk like Jane! HAHA

bezorta


There are different prisons. The one you are describing is a prison in a normal functioning society. But in prisons like Abu Gharib in Iraq where the prisoners were abused at the hands of American soldiers, things are very different.

It's a situation without normal rules. The guards know they can do whatever they want, even kill the prisoners, without any consequences. And the prisoners know they can easily be shoot for no reason, let alone rioting.

The ONLY reason it all was stopped was because those pictures got out and published. And still no real punishment for the sadistic guards. So yes, it can easily happen. Just needs the right conditions.

superharrybird

Take over the prison and throw the guards into the cells

true but its stressful for the inmates




Look like Tarzan talk like Jane! HAHA

The problem was that this was 1971 and there was no google and knowledge of Stanford Prison Experiment. So it is hard to say how people would have behaved if they would have had knowledge we have today. In 1970's smoking was still quite popular and it was advertised a cool thing to do. Still nowadays people smoke even though they know that it bad. People eat *beep* food and get overweight and know it is bad and which foods are fattening. So people do stupid things even though they know it is stupid. We are still animals and we try to be alpha and copulate as much as possible. Even though people aren't participating 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, they bully weaker on the internet, in the workplace etc.

Also everyone was just a teenager who didn't know really what prison was and everyone started on same day. So there was no learned experience on either side of experimenters. so everyone had their own agenda to take a part of that experiment and they used their imagination to create false reality. In real prison most people know why they are there and they have strict guidelines how to behave and also older inhabitants/guards to guide them, so in real prison there is no power vacuum. Basically guards know that their work is easier if they're behaving humane and don't try to create their own entertainment by harassing prisoners and prisoners know that it is easier for them not to try fight against guards. In this case prisoners were as guilty or innocent as their guards and Zimbardo created those abstract fantasy rules to test his thing, not observing prison experiment. So Zimbardo wanted create Nazi Germany style oppression and those participants didn't know that.

More similar experimenting was done in 1960's by Stanley Milgram and it feels odd that Zimbardo wouldn't have known about those experiments and wouldn't have learned them. So maybe Zimbardo just couldn't believe Milgram's experiments, like most of us don't believe that how people could have behaved like they did in Zimbardo's experiment. And they still don't believe that same style oppression has happened in Abu Ghraib and is still happening in Guantanamo. And if they believe it they still think that those prisoners deserved that oppression, because they were/are Muslims, terrorists, Jews, North Koreans, Russians, Nazis, black, gay, animals etc.