The Stanford Prison experiment really disgusted me. It was amazing to see how young men could change so drastically in such a short time at the chance to be powerful over other men. The “guards” where oppressing the “prisoners” in horrible ways. It was like watching young boys actually start to think they were real prison guars and mistreating the fake prisoners.
I think the experiment should have stopped after the one of the prisoners started to act like he was going crazy, which eventually led him to think he was really crazy. That part of the video boggled my mind as to why a psychologist would keep going with an experiment when clearly terrible things were going on and he didn’t seem to care too much. Especially when one of his colleagues started asking him questions about his experiment and he just shrugged them off. I understand he was trying to prove a point, but to what extent should people really be willing to go to prove something especially when the people involved are starting to change?
Another part that shocked me was at the beginning when people were asked to play teacher and student and the teacher would shock the “student” when they answered wrong. But it really amazed me how far someone would go until breaking at a chance to be the powerful one. How far would you go?
On another note, watching the video “Driving While Black” it became increasingly clear to me how much racial profiling is still going on today. I don’t think its right to assume things about people just because they are of a different race. It stunned me to watch the young black male get pulled over, then asked to get out of his car by the police, have his car searched, and be handcuffed for an hour just because he was driving around a white residential neighborhood at 3 am. People need to take a step back and really think about how horrible it is to perform such acts. Seriously our country has made huge strides in many ways to stop being racist, but things like this just put us right back where we started in the 60’s at times.
I absolutely agree that they should have ended this experiment after one prisoner (after only a few days) started acting crazy in order to be released. I'm not even sure if I agree with this experiment being conducted at all. Yet, ultimately there should have been more supervision of the activity, and progression of the experiment.
ReplyDeleteI was also bothered by the Driving While Black Video. It angered me that the police handcuffed him for over an hour as if he was a threat while they searched his car (without his permission.) It seemed as if they were basically looking for something to justify their assumptions that he must be a criminal. This whole situation disgusted me.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the fact that even though there has been progress in fighting racism incidents like the Driving Whil Black video really make it difficult. It is unjustifiable and shows that a segment of our populaion still think in unequal terms.
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