What is Digg?106 Comments
- molsen311, on 10/12/2007, -1/+59terrible failure? i don't think so.... every psychology class i've ever taken has mentioned that experiment and its implications. definitely not a failure.
- ohmar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+54If by terrible failure you mean a landmark realization of the authority/inmate situation that develops in prisons. Any Psychologist or Psychology Professor anywhere would argue very strongly that this experiment, although cut short, is incredibly important. We covered this experiment breifly in my Psych class and it is ridiculous what happened.
- sorrow, on 10/12/2007, -15/+46It should be mentioned that the actual study was done in 1971, and this is a documentary about the subject.
The study was actually a terrible failure which had to be cut short after 6 days, instead of the intended two weeks.
(and you don't have to "read it to belive" it, its a video) - TheWestExit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28There was a german movie based off this called Das Experiment. It's very good. Check it out if you get the chance.
- random42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22You should check out the Milgram experiments as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
It is amazing what people will do when someone in authority tells them to. - sorrow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18@Ohmar and Molsen311:
Very good point. I should have clarified i meant a terrible failure in the sense that they had to call it off, not because it did not work. Too bad that the psychologists and psychiatrists recognize it for being as important as it is, and the justice department does not.
And thats also a great point Molsen; it has been mentioned in all my psych classes too. - UncommonSense, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17You can view the official site of the Stanford Prison Experiment here, in detailed print form at:
http://www.prisonexp.org/ - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20It's only unethical to the degree that humanity is unethical...zing!
- gmillerd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Haha, failure? It was a huge success. If let go it would have ruined the study by becoming evidence in a trial no doubt (which done today likely it would be)
If you want to see this study today, just roll the globe over and check out that famous prison in Iraq. Lots of kids volunteering their time to show that unlimited power over weak people is entertaining. - aOenEz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17Yes... very unethical "experiment." Yet letting people rot in jails in reality is quite ethical indeed, isn't it?
I don't know. I'm against crime but prisons are just inhumane. - Atmandk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Over 50% of the over 2,000,000 people in American jails/prisons are in for drug offenses. You guys are right, fry those ***** for getting high. Send 'em to Abu Ghraib. Just say No! Right?
- abbott75, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17"24 college student ***volunteers, paid $15 a day***"
- lolwtfhaha, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13That's what they said in my college course-- they said they don't do experiments like that anymore for that very reason. And we wonder why science has become boring...
- TheDrunkMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13To be fair, this isn't a 100% accurate representation of how things might work in the prison system. Prison guards and anyone else working in a prison goes through somewhat rigorous training. These kids were just told to "be guards". They probably based their actions on what they saw in prison movies- which show an overly violent prison system- and thus did the job poorly.
- largeboot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9wonderful call random, that's what i was going to suggest. societal influences > individual thinking.
maybe we shouldn't always just go with the flow? - Tales, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12So... What's the alternative ?
- mnrosebud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The people affected weren't just the prisoners. Okay so we punish people and we make sure they serve the amount of time justified by their crime. What about their overseers? What have they done that allows them to commit crimes just as heinous as some of the people that they have complete and utter control over? This experiment shows that we need to be very careful about who we put in command, we can't make this a job that becomes so disgusting that the only people who apply are so desperate that they will do anything to make them look like they have control. We need to work on both ends of the spectrum here. Remember that most of these people will be in society again on both sides and we don't want to return them in a condition that is much worse for wear.
- chocobomog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Also check out "The Third Wave" experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_%28book%29
It was also done in Palo Alto and involved students getting too involved in their roles. I watched both in sociology class, very interesting indeed. - VPurpmalkV, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Wow. I'm not young. I'm in my 30's. I hadn't heard of the Russian Shuttle or this experiment. So I'm glad they were put on Digg. Sometimes news from yesteryear is still useful when making decisions about the future.
- Derter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6None of you ever do a psychology course? It's probably one of the most known human experiment and the 2001 movie (Das Experiment) make it more famous.
- wayniethep00p, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This is a famous / textbook (I mean literally) psychology experiment to show how quickly people can change and take up their assigned role. The experiment is often used to explain how Nazi Germany became so powerful. It was an interesting class. =)
- leobaby, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Maybe this was someone your age who thinks younger people could learn something from this; probably the same things you learned.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It is misleading to describe this as an experiment that showed how 'Nazi Germany became so powerful." It has nothing to do with the degree of power attained by Nazi Germany. It is a look at how the individuals who perpetrated the Holocaust could do such actions. The influence of the role in which someone is placed (a guard, a soldier, a prisoner) on INDIVIDUAL behavior was the focus of this research.
Stanley Milgram's research on obedience was also an important (and ethically controversial) study on a closely related topic. The gist was to address whether an individual would harm another and under what conditions they would or would not harm another person; the answer is that for suprisingly little reason and with no threat to one's own well being, one would give another person extremely painful electric shocks (450 volts). - JonnyTrombone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Dr. Zimbardo- who later became head of the American Psychological Association- actually made a great series of videos for college pysch. students- and seemed to greatly regret the Stanford Prison Experiment.
- SoLeft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I've read speculation that the ones who giggled didn't find the experiment pleasurable or funny; it was a response to their extreme discomfort with the situation. When asked, they said it was a "funny" experiment, but that was a post-hoc rationalization - "I'm giggling, so I must have found something funny." IMHO, the scary ones are the ones who do as their told, and don't feel anything at all.
- CanuckMakem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4AMAZING MOVIE!!! I watched it with my wife a while back and it blew us away....
... find it and watch it. - wtruong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ZIMBARDO!!!! this guy is a celebrity among psychology students in my school since we always see him
- fiver22, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Good point, TheDrunkMonkey. -And stupid of me not to have thought of that. -Training is certainly a variable in these experiments. But I do wonder if the training recieved by *professional* prison-guards actually relates to the behaviour seen in this experiment.
- mhockey14221, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Id be a prisioner for that money in 1979. thats good money.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No, there are 30 million people in Canada. Over 6 billion in the world... with 300 million in your neighbor to the south. MOST people don't get the CBC.
- enronias, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Ah the memories . . . remember this gem from psych class.
- Etheo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5It's old but informational. I watched this in my sociology class I think. I always linked this study has more to do with sociology than psychology, since it also has to do with how the "prison guards" interact with the "prisoners". (although that might not have been the purpose in the beginning)
- tdowling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@fiver: Yeah, I think it kind of went down that way. Not sure about her exact words, though. And I believe that she was just his graduate assistant at the time, but they did end up marrying.
- johneffort, on 06/06/2008, -0/+3The movie based on this is 'Das Experiment'. It's really cool.
IMDB Rating: 7.9 !
http://imdb.com/title/tt0250258/ - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Good to hear. Given that I teach Intro Psychology, it is amazing how many students who have taken Psychology in HS know very little about most of the topics in Psychology. I suppose if you learn Psychology from someone with a Bachelor's in Psychology, they might not know what to cover. Ironically though, you would think they would rely more on the most well-known topics covered in undergraduate psychology courses.
- tdowling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Although I think the more important thing to take away from the experiment is how the prisoners acted. And how "real" this became, regardless of students' inspirations. Even Dr. Zimbardo got too much into it...his assistant had to force him to stop the experiment.
- tybris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Ah yes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Experiment (probably a little more gruesome than the real experiment)
- callmejordy265, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4that's already been clarified thank you
- soil, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I never knew there were ghosts in prison... 26:12-26:30
- Navicerts, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I swear my squad leaders watched this. Forced letters home, humiliation, made to sing while doing push ups, solitary, punishment of the group for an individual act. It was all spot on.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just watched this video last week in my sociology class. Very interesting.
- cfazzini, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Heh, was just learning about Milgram's experiements today in my psych class.
- tybris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Didn't they make a movie about this?
- fiver22, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3If you really want to READ (as opposed to *viewing* a film) about this experiment, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
- Oxygen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Thats creepy.
We just watched this video in my Social Psychology Class last week. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2First, Philip Zimbardo is a psychologist; second, this is a social psychology; the focuses were the behaviors and thought processes of the individuals involved; this is psychology. Although the study was in the context of an institution (a prison) giving it the feel of a sociological study, as it was conducted it really fits better in psychology. It wasn't really a study about "prison life" per se.
- LegendX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I always have been reading up this type of experiment and its neat to finally see the video of the famous Stanford prison experiment. I am curious what would happen if it went through the whole 2 weeks. I remember one time I went in holding(reason is confeditional) and just for that 1 night I went crazy. I tried sleeping but just feeling powerless and submissive really got to me and I started losing control over my humanity. It wasn't the fact that being surrounded by other people that was in holding but it was the fact that I was in this cage. If you want to see a human become more on their animal side put them in a cage for a day or 2. An average human being can't control itself very long when they feel trapped. That can go for physical intrapment, spiritual, and psychological.
- fiver22, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@tdowling: I may be incorrect in this, but I seem to remember hearing that it was his girlfriend (a fellow psych. student) that convinced him to stop the experiment. She (if memory serves me right) said something along the lines of "I don't want to know you if this is what you are doing". And it shocked him into ending the experiment.
-This is all from memory so I might be wrong. - Buttercup, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7did anyone else catch the list of recent drug use in the psychological test? :)
Marijuana (yes) no
Uppers yes (no)
Downers yes (no)
Heroin/other yes (no) - berfmurret, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4this is one of the most interesting things ive seen on the internet ever. somewhat predictable results. but not necessarily to the degree that came to be. the devil is in the details.
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