According to Griggs, the famous Stanford Prison Experiment have been critically discussed in many different versions of Psychological textbook.Philip Zimbardo, the person-in-charge of this experiment, was a very reputable psychological expert in the world. In 1971, Zimbardo received a tenured position as a psychological professor at the Standford University. There he conducted the very famous psychological experiment, “the Stanford Prison”. He randomly selected twenty four college students to act as either “prisoners” or “jailors”. After a very short period of time, these students soon adapted to their roles. Jailors or Guards were discovered to be rather aggressive or even sadistic whereas the prisoners began to react passively. As it is very certain that the “jailors” had a very sadistic tendencies and the prisoners were extremely traumatized, in my opinion, their group behaviors could be effectively explained through two psychological theories, namely, the cognitive dissonance theory and conformity.
Psychologically, the cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort or stress created when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs or values. It often occurs when a person has to do something against his or her belief. In the experiment, the jailors for instance were just normal and innocent college students but they had to suppress rebellions and act aggressively to regulate prisoner’s behaviors. In order to counter this cognitive dissonance, jailors had to adapt to a sadistic group behavior. However, according to the cited academic study, it seems that sometimes the negative impact of cognitive dissonance might not be reversible. It is also the reason why some “jailors” could not control their mental status and quit half way.
On the other hand, the conformity theory could also be used to explain the Stanford Experiment. Conformity, by definition, is the act of adapting to a group value, norm, attitudes or beliefs. In fact, both prisoners and jailors proved to adapt to their respective group behaviors. For instance, jailors were told to hold an aggressive attitude toward the prisoners in order to ensure that prisoners were disciplined. Even some jailors initially were reluctant to have such attitude. They gradually became sadistic or had sadistic tendency due to the influence from other people. On the other hand, as prisoners were told to listen to jailor’s orders. Even though many of them initially rebelled and disobeyed orders, they started to be disciplined and submissive when they were aggressively treated or threatened. As a result, they were rather submissive or fully obeyed what jailors asked them to do.
In conclusion, it is indisputable that the Standord Prison Experiment is really a very important phonological experiment which provides very insightful and informative knowledge on investigating human’s mental behaviors. In my opinion, the respondent’s behaviors could be fully explained by the theory of cognitive dissonance and conformity. However, it is also very true that this kind of psychological experiment may not be easily conducted in today’s context as it might result irreversible impact on respondents’ mental status.
Reference
Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American, 193(5), 31-35.
Griggs, R. A. (2014). Coverage of the Stanford Prison Experiment in introductory psychology textbooks. Teaching of Psychology, 41(3), 195-203.