Stanford Prison Experiment Power Quotes

had studied the “The Stanford Experiment” before, but this new book by Phil Zimbardo, “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil” added enormous detail. The Guards took on their roles seriously and within 5 days were involved in a degrading treatment of Prisoners. Five of the kids chosen to be prisoners experienced emotional breakdowns. It could clearly be seen that institutions have a lot of power to change human behavior. What I did not know until Zimbardo wrote his recent book was that he was not the one that stopped the experiment. His fiance and now current wife came to visit him on the fifth night, saw what was going on and said “What are you doing?

Social networks bring in another dimension of stimuli: social pressure. People are keenly sensitive to social status, judgment, and competition. Unlike most animals, people are not only born absolutely helpless, but also remain so for years. We only survive by getting along with family members and others. Social concerns are not optional features of the human brain. They are primal. The power of what other people think has proven to be intense enough to modify the behavior of subjects participating in famous studies like the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Normal, noncriminal people were coerced into doing horrible things, such as torturing others, through no mechanism other than social pressure.