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Blaine Roberson

Psych 1113 Sec. 010

21 April 2015

Stanford Prison Experiment Extra Credit

A man named Philip G. Zimbardo put on the Stanford Prison Experiment. It was held at

Stanford University and it was to be a two-week trial but was cut short prematurely at only six

days. Zimbardo was in the psychology department and chose only a handful of students at the

university to test this trial. Half of the students were given prison guard uniforms and the

others were given prisoner uniforms. The students all thought this was a joke and did not take it

seriously until one of the prisoners, number 8612, barricaded the door with his mattress.

Zimbardo gave the prison guards a full uniform, which included sunglasses so that the

prisoners could not see their eyes. This was significant because essentially, they would not have

to make eye contact with the prisoners, therefore allowing themselves to do whatever they

pleased to the prisoners. The guards were allowed to do whatever they wanted to do to the

prisoners because they were not given any rules. Zimbardo did this experiment because he

wanted to see if the roles that were given to each person, and see how the label affected the

behavior and actions towards both the prisoners and guards. On the second day, the guards

decided that they were going to shake things up a bit and essentially torture the prisoners.

The prisoners were laughing and joking around on the first day and the guards did not do

anything about it. The prisoners were soon humiliated in front of all of the guards and other

prisoners.Eventually, all of the prisoners lost their names and were being called by the prison

numbers that were assigned to them on the first day. Also, they were put into cells in pairs of

three. If one of the prisoners messed up or did not cooperate with one of the prison guards, they
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would punish the cellmates. They would make them do meaningless tasks such as pushups and

even sing for the guards. This experiment got to the point that it was so bad that one of the

prisoners decided to quit the experiment and Zimbardo called up a man named Clay Ramsay to

take his spot.

Mr. Ramsay, also known as prisoner 416, did not know what he was getting himself into

whenever he signed up. Clay Ramsays worst nightmare was a man by the name of Dave

Eshelman. Eshelman was one of the meanest guards in the entire experiment. He was given the

name of John Wayne because of his attitude towards the prisoners. At one point in the

experiment, Mr. Eshelman man Clay Ramsay walk like Frankenstein and tell another inmate that

he loved him. Ramsay apparently did not do it correctly so he was forced to get on the ground

and do ten pushups. After the ten pushups that Ramsay did, the other prisoners were forced to do

pushups until prisoner 416 was finished singing Amazing Grace.

This experiment showed how something as simple as a label could affect the attitude of

someone and makes them a completely different person. This was shown by Dave Eshelman, or

John Wayne, as the other experimenters were calling him. Phillip Zimbardo was the prison

manager for the experiment and did not really get involved with any of the actions that

happened. Professor Christina Maslach, a fellow psychologist to Zimbardo, had heard about the

Stanford Prison Experiment and wanted to take a look at what was going on. The experiment had

gotten so out of hand that the guards were lining up the prisoners against the wall, with handcuffs

around their wrists, chains around their ankles, and even bags over all of their heads just to go to

the bathroom. Maslach could not handle all of the emotions and actions going on around her and

decided to let Zimbardo know how cruel it was to still be having this experiment going.

Zimbardo did not agree until Maslach pointed out the fact that young men were being physically
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and mentally corrupted and they could not do anything. Mr. Phillip G. Zimbardo was so caught

up in his own experiment that he too was playing along with it and not realizing the damage he

was causing to these college students.

All because Phillip Zimbardo gave labels and uniforms to a handful of student at Stanford

University, the students that played the roles of prisoners actually became prisoners for a week.

The guards were given a full uniform that included a baton, a badge, and a set of sunglasses. The

prisoners were given a cold hard mattress and a blanket. The labels quickly got to the heads of

the guards, especially Mr. Dave Eshelman. The prisoners lost their names and were referred to as

the number on their prisoner uniforms. This experiment was to show that a label can give

someone the sense of power to do whatever they please to anyone else. This experiment was

completely unethical but I do agree that it was a very knowledgeable experiment and many

others have learned from this.