Stanford Prison Experiment

Title: Stanford Prison Experiment
Date: 30 September 2011
Class: Theory of Knowledge
Category: In class

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The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted by a professor at Stanford University – Philip Zimbardo. He was interested in seeing how people would react in a negative, forceful situation. The results were shocking. When given an indirect choice to go through with their actions, most people chose to go through with it. Perhaps it was the point that this choice was not clearly indicated to them; however I believe that everyone has a choice even if they may need to make sacrifices in doing so. This is where the idea of ethics is significant [Connection to area of knowledge]. If the person felt that ethics was important enough, the person would have possibly put him/herself in danger of violence, risk, or a form of abuse. Nevertheless, this is simply a possibility. Yet, no one was willing to think about sacrificing their safety and comfort for that of someone else. Although the results prove to be quite cynical, the reliability of the results can still be analyzed.

I believe the Stanford Prison Experiment showed signs of the observer effect [Connection to TOK terms]. The students who were involved in this experiment were college students who were paid to participate. This shows that these people felt obliged to carry out their tasks. In addition, because the person conducting the experiment was a professor (a person of high authority), they may have felt pressured once again. The students were aware that professor Zimbardo was watching the results of this experiment, which meant that the observer effect was put in place. Perhaps because the students wanted his experiment to be successful (as it could lead to future benefits such as the prevention to another incident similar to the Holocaust, or the increase in awareness of the value of morals), they acted differently to how they would have reacted if this was not an experiment but rather a real-life situation. With this, knowledge issues can be raised such as, how do we know which reaction reflects the student? If the student is being threatened to do something while people observe them, would their reaction be caused by the observer effect or their emotion of fear and panic [Connection to emotion as a way of knowing]?