The Stanford experiment is extremely interesting, as well as very disturbing. In my opinion, although this experiment gave a lot of insight to the relation between human nature and environment, I am not sure that I agree with it being conducted. There definitely should have been more supervision, and guidelines during the experiment. The humiliation, verbal harassment, and degrading activities that took place within this “prison”, both shocked and horrified me. In less than two weeks this experiment escaladed to a point where many participants were distorting their perspectives of reality and make believe. These were educated, smart college students who lost their identities and believed the fantasy. Even the Professor, who invented the experiment, lost grasp of reality at one point. This pretend prison, actually transformed into a real one, and was not simply a social experiment.
One of the most influential details of this experiment was the outfits the participants were told to wear. Guards had official uniforms with reflective glasses, and the prisoners wore revealing, shabby gowns. The sunglasses allowed the guards to hide their eyes, which I feel allowed them to more easily submit to harassing of the prisoners without feeling personally connected to them. This entire experiment relates to the ideas of racial differences, privilege and oppression. The participants who held privilege and power was portrayed by who had more control over the other party. The outfits, behavior, and authority of the guards made them seem as though they had privilege over the prisoners. This idea can also be related to bigger social issues of oppression and white supremacy. The guards being the white supremacists, and the prisoners being minorities whom the white supremacists feel they have entitled power over. Power corrupts all genres of people, and it is hard for the victims to stand up and confront the oppressing party even in dire situations.
Throughout this experiment at Stanford, it is clear that social situations can overwhelm human beings, and that a persons environment does influence their nature. It is a scary thought to think that even intelligent students and a Professor could fall victim to their fantasy environment. I am around the same age as these participants and it makes me wonder if my classmates and I were in this same situation how far would we go?
We probably will never know how this experiment would go down today because there is a much stricter process of getting permission at colleges and universities to do any research that involves human subjects. This experiment opens up so much potential for abuse that it would not be authorized. I think it is not that the experiment reveals "human nature" but that people fall into the very patterns they have so often seen played out in the culture between agents and targets, oppressors and oppressed.
ReplyDeleteYes I can definitely see how people can fall into patterns played out in everyday culture.
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