Stanford Prison Experiment assignment

Stanford Prison Experiment assignment

Please watch the original documentary “Quiet Rage” done in the 70s.  After you watch the film, you will submit your responses to 5 questions.  Fun fact:  Dr. Zimbardo has come to speak on the campus of PCC more than once and people always stay around to take pictures and ask questions!  He’s a psychology rock star!

Directions

Please retype the questions when you are ready to submit your answers.  Please note that to get full points on these questions, you are to give thoughtful responses.  Answers less than 5 sentences will not earn full credit. Refer to terms learned in your readings where necessary.

  1. Referring to your textbook terms, what could have prevented “good guards” from objecting or overruling the orders from tough or bad guards?
  2. If you were a prisoner, would you have been able to endure the experience? What would you have done differently than those subjects did? If you were imprisoned in a “real” prison for five years or more, could you take it?
  3. Referring to your textbook terms, what factors might make the prisoners attribute brutality by the guards  to their character, rather than to the situation the guards were in?  
  4. What police procedures are used during arrests, and how do these procedures lead people to feel confused, fearful, and dehumanized?
  5. Knowing what this research says about the power of prison situations to have a corrosive effect on human nature, what recommendations would you make about changing the correctional system in the US?