Preview

How To Write An Essay About The Movie The Experiment

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
748 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How To Write An Essay About The Movie The Experiment
In the movie called “The Experiment”, a group of men are called to participate in a study wherein they take on the roles of prisoners and guards. The two most notable participants are the characters played by Adrien Brody and Forest Whitaker. They are assigned to prisoner and guard, respectively. Over the course of the time they spend together, many things happen between the men. The most notable thing observed in the movie is the aggression between the prisoners and guards. Violent incidents occur such as rape scenes, beatings and even the death of two participants in the experiment. In the end, the prisoners rebel against the guards and the experiment finally comes to an end. Charges are made against the propagator of the experiment – Dr. Archuleta. The participants agree to testify in court as a result of all the damages they suffered. …show more content…
Forest Whitaker’s character, at the start of the movie, was a calm and gentle man. It disturbed me to see him really change during the experiment – partly because it scared me to think that good people could be like that. It made me think that human nature , and rights and wrongs, could be subjective for some people. All the scenes wherein his character acted violently and rashly affected me. It also made me think that since his character was submissive at the start (especially to his mother), he liked being in charge in the experiment. He liked power. It gave me the idea that power is really something that changes people. What makes us different from animals is that we have morality. However, I did not even get a glimpse of this during the movie. When I was watching the movie, it made me remember the saying “survival of the fittest”. It was just very hard to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    When people are given little to no direction or training, and are faced with dealing with people they may perceive as a threat to their own safety and the well-being of others, they have a propensity to overstep what most would consider reasonable behavior. The “guards” in the experiment were put into a position of authority and took the steps they deemed necessary to maintain order. In spite of the fact that they knew it was an experiment, they were immersed in the situation and played the role given them. The “prisoners” played their part and were so wholly immersed in the role and the environment that their entire perspective of reality was altered. They began to believe they were helpless and unable to help themselves out of the situation they found themselves. They had become powerless to change the situation, in spite of the fact that it was just an…

    • 1846 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    A controversial experiment by Zimbardo (1971) (Spoors et al.) shows how a groups of males were separated into two groups of guards and prisoners in a make shift prison. After six days of a two week experiment it was stopped. The guards became abusive while the prisoners showed signs of emotional disturbance.…

    • 1128 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 1971, psychologist Phillip Zimbardo set out to create an experiment that looked at the impact of becoming a prisoner or a prison guard. The experiment was to test human behavior when one's role had been altered into authoritative one. Still powerful after all these years the experiment was the most powerful and popular experiment of all time (O'Toole, K). Researches set up a mock prison in the basement of Stanford University building. There were the 24 students out of 70 volunteers chosen to play the roles of the prisoners or prison guards.…

    • 615 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    My first impression from watching the film was the relationship between the study’s prisoners and guards seemed friendly at first. Though they’re encouraged by Zimbardo and his associates to take the experiment seriously and to invest themselves fully in their roles, the subjects initially still understand that they’re not really in a prison but then, the experiment takes a turn when a guard named Christopher Archer begins to embrace a meaner personality one, in which I suspect from watching the experiment, is not his normal demeanor but, rather, a more boosted version of himself of which he perceives to be his role. Archer introduces an element of meanness to the proceedings, altering the prisoners’ mindset the prisoners start to feel dehumanization…

    • 466 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Our textbook states that “Stanford prison experiment demonstrated the power of social roles, norms, and scripts in affecting human behavior”. However, “… has some parallels with the abuse of prisoners of war” (Spielman et al, 2016). The guards knew that they were being documented, although some may have forgotten about it. I disagree about the Stanford experiment going too far. Reaching for the parallels would be more like the video on 15 Most Violent Prison on Earth.…

    • 1055 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    A team at Stanford University, led by Phillip Zimbardo, conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment to investigate causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners. Zimbardo and his team were seeking to observe the inherent personality traits of prisoners and guards and see if this was the chief cause of abusive behavior in these settings (Haney, Banks, and Zimbardo, 1973). This study is one that is well know and well-recognized. Zimbardo and his study are often discussed in many psychology courses today, and have even caused reform in prison systems as well as IRB/APA ethical committees.…

    • 1783 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Zimbardo Prison Eperiment

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The experiment took place in the basement of the Psychology department in Stanford University and selected 24 undergraduate students out of 70 volunteers due to their lack of psychological issues and had no criminal record. Zimbardo paid each of the 24 participants 15 dollars a day in a span of one to two weeks. The 24 volunteers were randomly assigned to play a role as either a guard or a prisoner. The cell was made up of three prison cells, each one holding three mock prisoners. The guards chosen had to work in an eight hour shift alongside two other participants. The guards chosen have their own cell to themselves and one small room for solitary confinement. Kendra Cherry stated in her article that, “According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrates the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior” (Cherry). The volunteers for this experiments took on their role almost instantaneously.…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Those involved had forgotten they were playing a role. The prisoners were "behaving in pathological ways" and no longer realized that they were free to quit at anytime (Zimbardo, 2006). The guards had either become sadistic or allowed the behavior, believing that they were unable to do anything about it; and as previously stated, even the researchers playing a role had begun to lose their grip on reality (Zimbardo, 2006). This experiment showed just how detrimental inhumane prison conditions were to the health of everyone in the prison system from Super-Intendents to guards and prisoners.…

    • 641 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Higher Learning is a book made into a film which carries deep social and cultural issues that has plagued America since the time of its establishment. In this book, the author John Singleton sheds light on the never ending issues of education, racist, sexual abuse; social class, gender, and sexual orientation are faced head on. As a collection of freshman college students from all different walks of life they all come as one at Columbus University having to clash with stereotypes and prejudice in a new atmosphere. For illustration in the book, a ordinary white teenager from Idaho has a culture shock at his new school joins a Nazi bunch of criminals because they are the first friends he made, which let him exaggerate the angry he felt against different races of people for violating his social norms. As an end result he shoots up the school and murders a number of people then himself. This movie shows us how only through tragedy can people learn lessons of life and come together as human beings.…

    • 1119 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Experiments have been done for many more years than humans can count on the two hands in which they possess. Two experiments, in particular, were written, “The Stanford Prison Experiment” by Philip G. Zimbardo and “The Perils of Obedience” by Stanley Milgram. These experiments can be controversial for many different reasons, but neither of these experiments were completed under conditions of normality. The information collected in these experiments isn’t exactly based off of real life situations, it becomes difficult not to question the relevance of these experiments.…

    • 743 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Apa Code Of Ethics Essay

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages

    For Instance, The Stanford Prison Experiment carry out by Haney, Banks & Zimbardo is known for its significant study but also its violation of ethics in psychology (Haney, Banks & Zimbardo, 1973). The concept of this experiment was to determine the role of conformity in an experiment act to establish the correlation between prison guards and prisoners in the prison system(Haney, Banks & Zimbardo, 1973). Although, its success, the experiment received immense condemnation due to the ethical violations that occurred during the experiment. Philip Zimbardo failed to stop the experiment as soon as it was getting out of hand. Zimbardo and his colleagues were determining to see how far the experiment could go they failed to see the damage it was doing to their…

    • 801 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    (“On the Ethics of Intervention…” narration 1-3). More than seventy people signed up, but only a total of twenty four people were ‘clean’ from crimes or psychological problems (“On the Ethics of Intervention…” 1). “Virtually all had indicated a preference for being a prisoner because they could not imagine going to college and ending up as a prison guard. On the other hand, they could imagine being imprisoned for a driving violation or some act of civil disobedience” (“Reflection on the Stanford…” 5). Prisoners were arrested for either burglary or armed robbery (Lestik 1). The guards and convicts were destined to their roles by a flip of a coin to be fair (Lestik 1). College students who were selected to represent the role of prisoners were arrested by the Palo Alto police as if they actually committed action against the law (Lestik 1). Rights were read, fingerprints were stamped, and they were handcuffed into a police car (Lestik 1). The prisoners did not know what was going on even though they signed up for the experiment (Lestik 1). “We were studying both guard and prisoner behavior, so neither group was given any instruction on how to behave. The guards were merely told to maintain law and order, to use their billy clubs as only symbolic weapons and not actual ones, and to realize that if the prisoners escaped the study would be terminated”…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Perils Of Obedience

    • 1846 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgram conducted controversial experiments that had to deal with obedience. Zimbardo conducted an experiment in a mock prison that showed the roles of the guards and prisoners. Milgram conducted an experiment that tested how much pain a teacher would inflict on someone else at the command of an experimenter. The experiments that they conducted have been called wrong and unethical. Although the experiments vary from each other, they both changed the way the world looks at obedience and Authority.…

    • 1846 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Milgram Experiment

    • 513 Words
    • 3 Pages

    After the experiment subjects were debriefed, and told that the participants they administered shocks to were actually actors. The subjects realized the cruelty of their actions and some suffered emotional break downs. Because of the stress that a lot of the subjects experienced after the experiment, the experimental code of ethics was placed under review. The clause ‘no mental harm should come to participants' was added to the ethical code..…

    • 513 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When obeying authority one can often loose thought of morals and beliefs. In the experiments the men obey the authority figure by doing cruel things they would not usually do. These experiments turn mentally stable men into a person willing to inflict harsh punishments on innocent people while following orders. Night by Elie Wiesel, The Milgram Shock Experiment, and the stanford prison experiment shows how obedience to an authority can cause people to stray from their conscience.…

    • 424 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays