Zimbardo Obedience To Authority
Obedience to Authority
To what extent can humans’ morality be corrupted by environment, or are all humans cruel by nature? If an authority figure told another person to jump off a bridge, our response would be to reject his command and tell him to jump, but what would happen if an authority told somebody to execute a worthless criminal for his wrongdoings by pushing him off a bridge? According to research conducted by psychologists like Solomon Asch, and Philip G. Zimbardo, under the right variation of circumstances one may be compelled to push the criminal even if he/she originally felt that the act was immoral (Asch 306-313) (Zimbardo 344-355). Taking a close look at these experiments and real world examples such as Abu Ghrab prison along with …show more content…
Zimbardo. This groundbreaking experiment changed modern thinking at the time. Zimbardo selected 21 out of 75 college men who were willing to participate in a study of prison life. Zimbardo then separated them into 10 guards and 11 prisoners in which the subjects would play the role of each. This extended experiment was set up to “understand more about the process by which people called ‘prisoners’ lose their liberty, civil rights, independence, and privacy, while those called guards gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges” (Zimbardo). In result of this mock prison that mirrored the realism of an actual prison, the guards and prisoners fell immediately into the mental mind set of an actual guard or prisoner. The guards developed into cruel authoritarians and would tell good prisoners to cuss and sewer at a bad prisoner even if the good prisoner was unwilling. The subjects dramatically changed due to their environment. In fact, the experiment was cut short because of the uncontrollable reality that was created in
To what extent can humans’ morality be corrupted by environment, or are all humans cruel by nature? If an authority figure told another person to jump off a bridge, our response would be to reject his command and tell him to jump, but what would happen if an authority told somebody to execute a worthless criminal for his wrongdoings by pushing him off a bridge? According to research conducted by psychologists like Solomon Asch, and Philip G. Zimbardo, under the right variation of circumstances one may be compelled to push the criminal even if he/she originally felt that the act was immoral (Asch 306-313) (Zimbardo 344-355). Taking a close look at these experiments and real world examples such as Abu Ghrab prison along with …show more content…
Zimbardo. This groundbreaking experiment changed modern thinking at the time. Zimbardo selected 21 out of 75 college men who were willing to participate in a study of prison life. Zimbardo then separated them into 10 guards and 11 prisoners in which the subjects would play the role of each. This extended experiment was set up to “understand more about the process by which people called ‘prisoners’ lose their liberty, civil rights, independence, and privacy, while those called guards gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges” (Zimbardo). In result of this mock prison that mirrored the realism of an actual prison, the guards and prisoners fell immediately into the mental mind set of an actual guard or prisoner. The guards developed into cruel authoritarians and would tell good prisoners to cuss and sewer at a bad prisoner even if the good prisoner was unwilling. The subjects dramatically changed due to their environment. In fact, the experiment was cut short because of the uncontrollable reality that was created in