No matter how many times I am exposed to the experiment it will always blow my mind with the direction it took. The man behind the experiment primary wanted to test people’s reactions. He wanted to test whether putting good people in an evil place made a difference. He wanted to know does the environment influence behaviors or is it your moral beliefs and values that determine your behaviors.

In the Stanford Prison experiment conducted in 1971 there were two parties: guards, and the inmates. Of course the authority was given to the guards. The experimenter wanted to create a sense of power over others to examine if this influenced people’s behaviors. In reality, inmates have to obey whatever it is that the guards tells them, so he wanted to see if this re-make would do the same as it does in reality. This case proved to do just what it does in real life.

Initially the experiment was assumed to be a failure. The experiment had changed direction once the prisoners became rebellious. People of authority do not take kindly to being disrespected by people of no power. Although this was not real, and anyone could have left whenever they wanted to everyone stayed until things had to cease. One prisoner did express that he wanted to leave the experiment, but the other inmates begin to chant, “Prisoner 412 did a bad thing.” That prisoner had begun to cry, and felt compelled to stay there.

The problem with this experiment was the use of power. The ordinary people really become who they were assigned to be. The uniforms gave them actual feel. The prisoners disrespected the guards by using profanity at the "correction officers". When someone is given a certain amount of power it becomes what they live and breathe. It affects the mind. The guards abused their power and made the prisoners feel like nothing.

This is where the psychological theory of Social Identity plays a role. Since the guards were given the power to act as guards they really started to believe that’s who they were. The uniform and the fact that the inmates were really acting as inmates the power got to their minds. Another factor was that since these subjects were acting as guard’s everyday it really started to affect them. During the first day it probably seemed just like a little game but repeating the same actions everyday leads them to the point where they are who they think they are. Since social identity goes off of behaviors of a group in this case other subjects acted off of each other which are another cause of these jobs being taking seriously.

Another psychological theory that played a role was self-perception. When the prisoners were given ID numbers and can only be addressed as a number and address the other prisoners by their ID numbers they started to think they were only just a number no longer having a name. This can lead to self-perception because if you are labeled and called something on a day to day basis it can be a form of brain wash because being dressed in the prisoner like clothing and being highly disrespected one you would start to think you really what you’re being treated as. Furthermore, the prisoners were awoken every morning during the night shift around 2:30AM so that they would become familiar with their numbers and even though during the beginning all the subjects were getting use to their roles so the counts were taken as serious. But once, it became a routine the prisoners started to feel the effect of a prisoner which is why went they self-reflected on themselves could they really not call themselves a prisoner.

In addition, Aggression played a role for bother the guards and the prisoners. First, for the guards because on the second day when the prisoners started to rebel by taking off their stocking caps, ripping off their numbers and barricading their doors they decided to fight aggression with aggression. The guards took fire extinguishers and sprayed the prisoners to get them away from the doors. They also called in other guards from the night shift and the stand-bys. They over used their powers because “the guards broke into each cell, stripped the prisoners naked, took the beds out, forced the ringleaders of the prisoner rebellion into solitary confinement, and generally began to harass and intimidate the prisoners.” As for aggression with the prisoners, they were going to fight back just as hard. But, the guards started to confuse them and they built up aggression against each other. For example, the guards came up with a privileged cell where those good prisoners would get their clothes and beds back but the catch was they would start switching the good and bad prisoners up so some prisoners thought others were snitching. So they started acting funny towards each other which potentially created violence because no-one could be trusted anymore.

The questions that I continue to ask, why did the prisoners accept the demands of the guards? Why did they take it so serious? How come none of the good guards intervened to say hey stop this is getting out of hand. Why do people behave like this? The people in the experiment who reacted in such delay, is based on behavioral thinking and influence. The authority based power within the experiment did in fact play a major role. When given the role of an authority, people tend to take these powers and act upon them to the extreme. The environment also influences the experiment because depending on whether it is a negative or positive flow within the environment, the authority will have judgment and actions based on everyone’s actions.