The Stanford Prison Experiment

L Butler

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Anyone catch this film? Makes you think humans are nothing more than cattle. Thank you, 416. Crazy
 
Mar 23, 2012
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Haven't seen the film but am well versed in that experiment from my college psychology classes, along with several other experiments that show how depraved humans can be in a controlled environment. Luckily for psychological experiment participants there are much stricter guidelines for experiment approval that prevent such atrocities from happening.
 

VT/UK Rondo

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Havent seen the movie but know of the experiment. Might have been that way in 1971 but alot has changed.
Stanford Prison experiment 2015: The same criminals keep coming back because they miss their MP3 players, emails, Christmas packages, 4th of July ribeyes, Thanksgiving cornish hens and medical/dental care. Maybe Stanford needs a new experiment on why men would choose to live in prison as composed to a free society.
 

GonzoCat90

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What always amazed me was how quickly educated, civilized people lost touch with reality. I get role playing for the experiment and all that, but how do you completely buy in, especially that quickly? A week in and you're already able to forget that these are all just folks experimenting?

That's the one thing I could never really come to grips with about the experiment. I could see it easily happening in a real environment over the course of weeks or months, but how do you just detach yourself from reality that easily when you know it's fake?
 
Mar 23, 2012
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What always amazed me was how quickly educated, civilized people lost touch with reality. I get role playing for the experiment and all that, but how do you completely buy in, especially that quickly? A week in and you're already able to forget that these are all just folks experimenting?

That's the one thing I could never really come to grips with about the experiment. I could see it easily happening in a real environment over the course of weeks or months, but how do you just detach yourself from reality that easily when you know it's fake?
Because sometimes your fake reality is better than your real reality.
 

dezyDeco

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It's on my to-see list, along with The Experiment (w/ Adrien Brody)... which is loosely based on the Stanford event, I gather.
 

Ukbrassowtipin

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Which documentary? I do believe the OP is talking about the new movie, not a documentary, which is based on the experiment.
Just type in stanford prison experiment on youtube. Yes I know he's talking about the film, but the documentary has footage from the actual experiment and interviews with the real subjects.
 
Mar 23, 2012
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Just google messed up psychological experiments if you want to see how sick and twisted human beings can be, both the experimenter and the subjects.
 
Apr 13, 2002
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One of the more famous and disturbing psycho social experiments in history.

One of the other really disturbing ones, was the one where an interviewer in a room with someone wearing a lab coat would ask someone in the next room a question and THOUGHT they were deliver increasing amounts of electric shock for every wrong answer. Most people would continue delivering the shock all the way up to fatal levels; despite the other person begging.

Also iirc the presence of the person in the white lab coat made a difference in the results.

People can be very, very evil. Especially when they think they can place the blame on someone else for their actions.
 
Mar 23, 2012
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sounds like just a bunch of pusses to me. You go in knowing it's an experiment, you can actually leave any time you want, you're completely safe, the other people are acting, etc. If that went down today someone would end up in the hospital either from the guard's end or prisoner's end. People were just stinky ***** in 1971.


Well for one it couldn't go down today unless as psychologist wanted to lost their accreditation
 
Mar 23, 2012
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I think the experiments on learned helplessness are perhaps even worse because it shows how creatures can feel so completely helpless after long periods of torture that they just give up even when eventually circumstances change and they can easily escape the torture.

There was a famous one done on three groups of dogs in harnesses. Dogs from group one were released after a certain amount of time, with no harm done. Dogs from group two were paired up and leashed together, and one from each pair was given electrical shocks that could be ended by pressing a lever. Dogs from group three were also paired up and leashed together, one receiving shocks, but the shocks didn’t end when the lever was pressed. Shocks came randomly and seemed inevitable, which caused “learned helplessness,” the dogs assuming that nothing could be done about the shocks. The dogs in group three ended up displaying symptoms of clinical depression. Later, group three dogs were placed in a box by themselves. They were again shocked, but they could easily end the shocks by jumping out of the box. These dogs simply “gave up,” again displaying learned helplessness.
 
Mar 23, 2012
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But two that are especially damning for their long term negative effects on the subjects (I mean victims) were Dr. Harry Harlow's experiments with the Rhesus Monkeys concerning social isolation and John Money's experiment with David Reimer.

Harlow's experiments involved taking a baby monkey that had already bonded with it's mother and placing it in isolation with no contact for up to a year. Many of the monkeys came out psychotic and failed to recover. Imagine the outrage there would be if this had happened to a human instead. Given how similar monkeys and humans are, lord knows what kind of monster that baby could have become because of the experiment.

David Reimer had his penis burned off during a botched circumcision, and a psychologist suggested to the Reimer parents that David receive a sex change operation. But his motive was to prove that nurture instead of nature determined gender identity. Basically, he used a baby boy and fundamentally changed the entire course of the child's life for a psychological experiment without informing anyone about it.

Alas, Brenda (David's name after the operation) acted every bit the part of a boy and didn't know she had received a sex change operation. The result of it all caused the mother to become suicidal, the father became an alcoholic, and the brother was severely depressed. At 14 Brenda was told about it, decided to go back to being a male, committed suicide at age 38. And yet John Money still insisted that the entire experiment was a success, despite torturing an entire family for his own personal benefit and the hypothesis that nurture determines gender identity being proven rather blatantly false in this experiment
 
Mar 23, 2012
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ALl of the below info from http://www.bestpsychologydegrees.com/30-most-disturbing-human-experiments-in-history/

Syphilis experiments in Guatemala saw the US and Guatemalan officials deliberately infect Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases to trak their natural progression, only treating them with antibiotics. It led to at least 30 documented deaths.

Look up Tuskeegee Syphilis Study. 40 years of the US Public Health Service infecting people with Syphilis, failing to inform the subjects they were being infected with a deadly disease, and then those subjects ended up spreading it to their sexual partners and future children.

In 1956 and 1957, the US conducted biological warfare experiments on the towns of Savannah, Georgia, and Avon Park, Florida. In one of the experiments, the government released millions of infected mosquitoes to see if the mosquitoes could spread yellow fever and dengue fever. Hundreds of people contracted illnesses that included fevers, respiratory problems, stillbirths, encephalitis, and typhoid while several died. And that was just ONE of the experiments.

Radioactive materials in pregnant women - In an experiment at Vanderbilt University, 829 pregnant women were given “vitamin drinks” they were told would improve the health of their unborn babies. Instead, the drinks contained radioactive iron and the researchers were studying how quickly the radioisotope crossed into the placenta. At least seven of the babies later died from cancers and leukemia, and the women themselves experienced rashes, bruises, anemia, loss of hair and tooth, and cancer.

But #1 on the website is truly disgusting:
"In 1943, the U.S. Navy exposed its own sailors to mustard gas. Officially, the Navy was testing the effectiveness of new clothing and gas masks against the deadly gas that had proven so terrifying in the first World War. The worst of the experiments occurred at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. Seventeen and 18-year old boys were approached after eight weeks of boot camp and asked if they wanted to participate in an experiment that would help shorten the war. Only when the boys reached the Research Laboratory were they told the experiment involved mustard gas. The participants, almost all of whom suffered severe external and internal burns, were ignored by the Navy and, in some cases, threatened with the Espionage Act. In 1991, the reports were finally declassified and taken before Congress."

#1 They were lied to about what the experiment actually was
#2 They were forcibly exposed to a deadly gas without consenting to it
#3 The ones that survived not only were hurt pretty severely, they were threatened with a law that was supposed to prevent insubordination and helping the enemy, despite them agreeing to an experiment that they were told would help their own country shorten the war.

They were ****** over by their own country every step of the way.
 
Mar 23, 2012
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Here's another doozy that had to be cut way short like the Stanford Prison Experiment was

http://brainz.org/10-psychological-experiments-went-horribly-wrong/ - THe Third Wave
"The Third Wave, carried out in 1967, was an experiment that set out to explore the ways in which even democratic societies can become infiltrated by the appeal of fascism. Using a class of high school students, the experimenter created a system whereby some students were considered members of a prestigious order. The students showed increased motivation to learn, yet, more worryingly, became eager to get on board with malevolent practices, such as excluding and ostracizing non-members from the class. Even more scarily, this behavior was gleefully continued outside of the classroom. After just four days, the experiment was considered to be slipping out of control and was ceased."
 
Mar 23, 2012
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because I think it's funny.

Sad, but funny being as how the family went along with everything a psychologist told em to do and then even when it proved to be a failed experiment dude still proclaimed it a success. Just funny all the way around.
Good to know that you think an experiment that leads to suicide, suicidal thoughts, alcoholism, and severe depression is funny.
 

kentucky_wildcat_#1

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Not sure how you find humor in that story, but whatever works for you. Can't really feel for the parents. They did agree to go along with it. The poor kid, yeah, not sure he/she ever had a chance after the burning of the penis incident.
 
Apr 13, 2002
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I've got a whole queue of these psychological experiments and discussions about em lined up for the weekend on youtube. Never would've known about em if it wasn't for this thread. Started watching a documentary on Abu Ghraib last night and I'm fascinated how all the soldiers said they got numb to torturing these Iraqis and how most of em lost their sense of personalization/humanization. It got to the point that it felt they were torturing insects just to get information, when some of the detainees had no information to give at all.

iirc, the Stanford researcher who ran that jail experiment was an expert trial witness for the soldiers in the Abu Ghraib; where he discussed his experiment and the results as part of their defense/mitigation.
 
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liveblue92

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Just watched the movie. I thought it was really good. As someone who has endured a longer stretch of similar treatment (army basic training), I can relate to the prisoners. The guards took it really far.
 

CastleRubric

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this is up my alley

In 1956 and 1957, the US conducted biological warfare experiments on the towns of Savannah, Georgia, and Avon Park, Florida. In one of the experiments, the government released millions of infected mosquitoes to see if the mosquitoes could spread yellow fever and dengue fever. Hundreds of people contracted illnesses that included fevers, respiratory problems, stillbirths, encephalitis, and typhoid while several died. And that was just ONE of the experiments"


There was a MUCH more recent version of this where the Brits infected mosquitoes off the coast of Florida -- I've attached a link to show that this kind of thing still goes on ….. as I recall this experiment went forward

The CDC in Atlanta got it's start by studying tropical diseases that US Soldiers were encountering in the Pacific during WW2 -- it's no surprise that some of the 1950's experiments were still going on ---- what's surprising is what still goes on today …. I think the curtain will be pulled back on genetic experiments within the next decade and we're going to see some freakish things

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fda-debates-releasing-genetically-modified-mosquitoes-into-florida-keys/

^^^ CBS Link to the British/ Florida experiment from 2015


Never before have insects with modified DNA come so close to being set loose in a residential U.S. neighborhood.

"This is essentially using a mosquito as a drug to cure disease," said Michael Doyle, executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, which is waiting to hear if the Food and Drug Administration will allow the experiment.
 
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Bodvar Bjarki

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You will find a blizzard of abominations if you research this subject matter. A small sampling from Wikipedia:

In 1950, researchers at the Cleveland City Hospital ran experiments to study changes in cerebral blood flow: they injected people with spinal anesthesia, and inserted needles into their jugular veins and brachial arteries to extract large quantities of blood and, after massive blood loss which caused paralysis and fainting, measured their blood pressure. The experiment was often performed multiple times on the same subject.[85]

In a series of studies which were published in the medical journal Pediatrics, researchers from the University of California Department of Pediatrics performed experiments on 113 newborns ranging in age from 1-hour to 3 days, in which they studied changes in blood pressure and blood flow. In one of the studies, researchers inserted a catheter through the babies' umbilical arteries and into their aortas, and then submerged their feet in ice water. In another of the studies, they strapped 50 newborn babies to a circumcision board, and turned them upside down so that all of their blood rushed into their heads.[85]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uneth...nited_States#cite_note-cooter-name-104-105-15
 

warrior-cat

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Oct 22, 2004
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Have not seen any of these experiments but, any one that allows you to leave at any point is pointless IMO. It is like reality TV, not reality at all. Experiments must be without knowledge of the one being experimented on or it is tainted.
 
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Bodvar Bjarki

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Sounds like your usual bunch of D&D nerds taking things too seriously.

That's NOT A STUN POTION, IT'S A SLEEP POTION! YOU CAN'T ROLL THE HEALTH DICE YET!
 
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Big_Blue79

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Saw it a while back (summer maybe), and studied it even further back. Pretty good flick, but there were a couple of things I would have liked to have seen, such as some actual footage at the end so we see how the movie and experiment lined up.
 

Big_Blue79

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Here's another doozy that had to be cut way short like the Stanford Prison Experiment was

http://brainz.org/10-psychological-experiments-went-horribly-wrong/ - THe Third Wave
"The Third Wave, carried out in 1967, was an experiment that set out to explore the ways in which even democratic societies can become infiltrated by the appeal of fascism. Using a class of high school students, the experimenter created a system whereby some students were considered members of a prestigious order. The students showed increased motivation to learn, yet, more worryingly, became eager to get on board with malevolent practices, such as excluding and ostracizing non-members from the class. Even more scarily, this behavior was gleefully continued outside of the classroom. After just four days, the experiment was considered to be slipping out of control and was ceased."

There was a movie about this I remember watching in junior high school. Was pretty good.