PSYC 101 APUS Authority Can Be Intoxicating Discussion

Peer Response on Discussion:

Good afternoon class, 

After watching the video of the prison study, I think there is a lot of information and knowledge that came from that study. For example, when they say in the video that the guards were put into a position to be eviler and maybe be more aggressive towards the prisoners, you still have to remember it is still a “study” at a university and that they are not professional guards, it’s all an experiment. 

One of the Psychological constructs that everyone learned from this would be, once you put someone in a position where they have to be aggressive or even “pushing the limits”, that completely changes their mindset of how to treat people at the end of the day. Another example of that would be inside the U.S Military, these instructors especially in the Marine Corps, are expected to push these civilians into a military lifestyle within 3 months, so they have to get inside the heads of each one of them and try to mentally break them. comparing this to the study, it’s basically the same concept just more control and order in the military. You still those ones and twos where they become an instructor and get put into a position where they have to change their mindset to accomplish the objective.

I feel like if they chose to go in a different direction of how it would be conducted, I don’t think that it would such a huge study today and I don’t think that we would’ve got the same results if the guards were being nice or even just showing no emotion. once they got put into that position where they had to be aggressive and evil towards the inmates, that totally changed the direction that they were either going for or not going for.

Back in 1971 most people were trying to ensure the next generation transformed into adults as “good communists” and “loyal Soviet citizens”. Maybe their mindset going into this experiment was if I volunteer for this then maybe I would help the government ensure the future generation would be better adults then they were currently. In 2023 everyone is worried about themselves and their self-image.  I believe if this experiment was tried in today’s world, nobody would volunteer because of the fact that they just care about self-image and nothing more than that. With that they started out with that they were just to test and observe. ” On all dimensions that we were able to test or observe, they reacted normally”. Nothing out of the ordinary until they put the guards into situations and scenarios. After they separated them by the flip of a coin and group 1 would be the guards and group 2 would be the inmates.” Our goal was to produce similar effects quickly by putting men in a smock without any underclothes. Indeed, as soon as some of our prisoners were put in these uniforms, they began to walk and to sit differently, and to hold themselves differently.” 

In Conclusion, the experiment was very complex at times, but the overall goal was to learn human behavior when their mental altitude took on all stress, scenarios and humiliation would all build up to human behavior as a psychological study.